Spin-off from #1465948-26: [meta] Drop some IE8 coddling from Drupal core.

Comment from Dries:

At the end of the day, we have a lot of work ahead of us to improve the user experience of Drupal. Making that progress is more important than trying to optimize for IE8. I'm comfortable with a single-column layout for IE8 users, especially if that means we see velocity improvements elsewhere in the project.

Noteworthy comment from jessebeach earlier in that issue:

Serving a single-column layout to IE8 is perfectly acceptable as long as the interface is usable. To say that a single-column layout is sub-optimal is to say that our mobile design will be sub-optimal (this assumes that the single column layout will be the primary layout on mobile devices). Rather than make exception for IE8 in core, I'd rather see us make the mobile experience so killer, that interacting with Drupal through a single column layout in IE8 will be completely acceptable. And if folks want a more complex layout, they can install one of many free, alternative, modern browsers on their system.

And I would add that for websites not convinced by the above argument, they can look to contrib for Respond.js, IE8-specific CSS additions to core themes, IE8-optimized contrib themes, etc.

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#6 IE8-no-patch-front.png119.5 KBnod_
#6 IE8-no-patch-node-edit.png70.82 KBnod_
#6 IE8-patch-front.png113.81 KBnod_
#6 IE8-patch-node-edit.png68.76 KBnod_
#5 no-ie-special-layout.patch2.04 KBeffulgentsia
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Comments

Crell’s picture

Crell CreditAttribution: Crell commented

This is already marked RTBC, so I don't know if it needs comments, but register me as very +1. :-) IE 8 marketshare is only going to decline. This also, really, only affects core themes; if someone making a custom theme wants to support IE 8 with multi-column layouts, more power to 'em. That's their business and there's plenty of ways to do that. Core doesn't need that grief.

Forward!

rupl’s picture

rupl
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CreditAttribution: rupl commented

This sounds great! I already have a D8 branch of respond.js module available for people that need it.

chx’s picture

chx CreditAttribution: chx commented

It doesn't worth bothering with stellar IE support. If it works to some extent, so be it.

kristiaanvandeneynde’s picture

kristiaanvandeneynde
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Location Antwerp, Belgium
CreditAttribution: kristiaanvandeneynde commented

Hear hear

effulgentsia’s picture

effulgentsia CreditAttribution: effulgentsia commented
Title: [policy, no patch] Allow core themes to display single-column on IE8: do not compensate for lack of media query support » Allow core themes to display single-column on IE8: do not compensate for lack of media query support
Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Needs review
Issue tags: +Needs screenshots
FileSize
no-ie-special-layout.patch2.04 KB

Alrighty, let's take this from a policy issue to a patch. Someone with access to an IE8 environment, please attach some screenshots of what a couple pages look like in Stark (e.g., a node page to anon and a node edit page to an admin and whatever else you think is worth having people look at as part of reviewing this).

nod_’s picture

nod_
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Location Lille
CreditAttribution: nod_ commented
FileSize
IE8-patch-node-edit.png68.76 KB
IE8-patch-front.png113.81 KB
IE8-no-patch-node-edit.png70.82 KB
IE8-no-patch-front.png119.5 KB

Well, there is no more sidebar, that's what was expected.

I'd RTBC it but i'll let someone else do that.

nod_’s picture

nod_
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CreditAttribution: nod_ commented
Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

Actually that's very straightforward. works for me.

effulgentsia’s picture

effulgentsia CreditAttribution: effulgentsia commented

Well, there is no more sidebar

By the relative size differences of the scrollbars in the before and after, I'm assuming the sidebar is simply below the content?

nod_’s picture

nod_
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CreditAttribution: nod_ commented

indeed.

Sorry about that, I kinda suck at screenshots.

jessebeach’s picture

jessebeach CreditAttribution: jessebeach commented

Lovely.

The .fieldset-legend CSS for IE8 in Seven seems necessary for content access. The patch above is a great start.

Dries’s picture

Dries CreditAttribution: Dries commented
Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

Great. Committed to 8.x. And it feels great too. ;-)

chx’s picture

chx CreditAttribution: chx commented

Single column! Single column! Sorry. Couldn't resist.

JohnAlbin’s picture

JohnAlbin
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CreditAttribution: JohnAlbin commented
Issue tags: -Needs screenshots +mobile

yay!

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

tim.plunkett’s picture

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CreditAttribution: tim.plunkett commented
Title: Allow core themes to display single-column on IE8: do not compensate for lack of media query support » Change notification for: Allow core themes to display single-column on IE8: do not compensate for lack of media query support
Priority: Normal » Critical
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active
Issue tags: +Needs change record

Cottser pointed out that http://drupal.org/core-gates states that markup, CSS, or JS fixes should be "tested in the browsers Drupal core currently support[s]".

Upon further inspection, the only pages we could find were http://drupal.org/node/61509 and http://drupal.org/node/367318. Which are both very out of date.

Also, unlike http://drupal.org/node/1569578, this never got a change notice.

tim.plunkett’s picture

tim.plunkett
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Related: #1030090: Document our browser support list

jessebeach’s picture

jessebeach CreditAttribution: jessebeach commented

I'm not sure how much sense it makes any more to list target browsers. We need to mention the split at IE 8/9 in terms of complex presentation and style. Otherwise, any other browsers will be 3 versions ahead of anything we specify within a year. Chrome by 5 or 6 versions most likely.

nod_’s picture

nod_
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CreditAttribution: nod_ commented

draft for the notice: http://drupal.org/node/1722502

tim.plunkett’s picture

tim.plunkett
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CreditAttribution: tim.plunkett commented
Title: Change notification for: Allow core themes to display single-column on IE8: do not compensate for lack of media query support » Allow core themes to display single-column on IE8: do not compensate for lack of media query support
Priority: Critical » Normal
Status: Active » Fixed

Good enough for me.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

xjm’s picture

xjm
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Issue tags: -Needs change record
xjm’s picture

xjm
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xjm’s picture

xjm
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Issue summary: View changes

Inlined comment from Dries