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Bug 345122

Summary: Consider to discontinue IE6 support in RAP
Product: [RT] RAP Reporter: Ralf Sternberg <rsternberg>
Component: RWTAssignee: Project Inbox <rap-inbox>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P3 CC: chris, tbuschto
Version: 1.5   
Target Milestone: 1.5 M3   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:

Description Ralf Sternberg CLA 2011-05-09 07:02:48 EDT 
Internet Explorer 6 is now ten years old. Even Microsoft itself campaigns to stop using it [1]. Among the browsers supported by RAP, it is the one with the worst performance by far and it is causing a lot of the cross-browser trouble we have to work around.

With a usage share below 5% in the western world, we should consider to terminate IE6 support in the next version of RAP (1.5) too.
Since even today most RAP applications are not running smoothly in IE anymore, I think it would be just fair to make it clear that this browser should not be used with RAP anymore.

[1] http://www.theie6countdown.com/default.aspx
Comment 1 Tim Buschtoens CLA 2011-08-26 12:54:53 EDT 
We agreed that 1.5 will no longer support IE6. What is left to do is remove IE6 specific javascript code.
Comment 2 Chris Fairhall CLA 2011-08-29 20:56:54 EDT 
(In reply to comment #1)
> What is left to do is remove IE6 specific javascript code.

I've found that IE8 in Quirks mode as it does with RAP uses the same exact same rendering engine as IE6 did, just running in an IE8 tab. (That, or they decided to "emulate" browser crashes)

When you force IE8 into standards mode things fail to render correctly, if at all. The application we develop is completely unusable when rendered in IE8 standards mode.

I would imagine removing the IE6 work-arounds would break compatibility with IE8 unless RAP is re-worked to render in standards mode.
Comment 3 Tim Buschtoens CLA 2011-09-27 06:38:16 EDT 
IE8 in Quirksmode is not identical to IE6, though the difference (performance aside) is minimal. (Mostly just opacity and png support.) We would only remove code that specifically runs in IE6 only, so behavior IE8 would not change in any way.
Comment 4 Tim Buschtoens CLA 2011-10-25 06:47:04 EDT 
IE6 specific code has been removed in CVS HEAD. Website also updated, now IE7 is listed as lowest supported version. (1.4 still supports IE6)