From: Jason S. <jsi...@gm...> - 2010-10-15 18:49:36
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On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 12:12 PM, Fetzik, John <JF...@sa...> wrote: > The majority of users are accessing things from Windows XP. Which is where the IE 7 hits come from. Thanks for these numbers, Mr. Fetzik. I know these are just one group of users, but I have a feeling that, whether we like it or not, we cannot ignore IE7 for a few more years. At least IE6 seems to be fading away finally. There's a lot we can do with progressive enhancement though. We just have to make sure that any functionality we include isn't completely reliant on some feature in HTML5/CSS3 so that older browsers will at least have a baseline functionality. Also, scripts like Modernizr (http://www.modernizr.com/) can make it possible to take advantage of new features without disregarding users with reasonably older browsers. As far as Jquery UI, I'm skeptical about building an entire UI that's dependent on the presence of JavaScript. But I have never created a website with it, so perhaps it is built with a progressive enhancement philosophy. The basic jquery toolkit seems to be very thoughtfully designed, so I would give the UI the benefit of a doubt. Also, I see Obexer has suggested another theme engine. I don't know anything about developing with theme engines. Every time I start reading the documentation it seems like you would be merely trading widely understood and studied complexity (HTML and CSS) for a unique, possibly novel, but narrowly understood or studied complexity. I think our efforts would be better invested in core functionality. We must first build a full-featured, stable, easy to use and nicely designed bug tracker that lots of people want to use. We can always develop a more sophisticated theme system later if there is demand for it. I know Mantis already fulfills many of these goals as it is, but focusing on a theme engine at this point (at least to me) would be like painting the sides of an aging, leaky house without fixing the roof. Mantis needs to improve the quality of its markup output. With good markup and good default CSS many web developers would be right at home creating customized appearances. -Jason Simanek |