Rails spinoffs - Jul 2005 - Browser compatibility goes back how far?

I asked this on the Rails list, but it might be more appropriate here.

When we''re estimating how many users would have access to our site if  
we choose to use AJAX and script.aculo.us -style javascript, what  
kind of percentage are we looking at? 50%? 75%?

Does this kind of fancy JS work on IE 5.0, or earlier?

Thanks!

Duane Johnson
(canadaduane)

Check your site stats what your users are using.
It works with IE 6, Firefox 1.0, Mozilla 1.7 and Safari 1.2 or higher.
It does NOT work with IE 5.x or Opera.

If I''m not mistaken it''s the same requirements as GMail and
Google maps.

// Per

8 jul 2005 kl. 19.41 skrev Duane Johnson:
> I asked this on the Rails list, but it might be more appropriate here.
>
> When we''re estimating how many users would have access to our site
> if we choose to use AJAX and script.aculo.us -style javascript,  
> what kind of percentage are we looking at? 50%? 75%?
>
> Does this kind of fancy JS work on IE 5.0, or earlier?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Duane Johnson
> (canadaduane)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rails-spinoffs mailing list
> Rails-spinoffs@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails-spinoffs
>
Mvh
Tuxie, Dekadance
http://www.dekadance.se

GMail, though, has an alternate low-tech version: their "basic HTML"
view. Many of my web site members will be constrained by university
(and community college) IT departments. I''m concerned that clusters
they use may have stripped-down older browsers with Javascript turned
off. I''m just starting to explore ways of providing worst-case basic
functions if we sense XMLHttpRequest (and Javascript) aren''t enabled.

One possibility I haven''t fleshed in yet: keep the main html as simple
as possible (like http://www.ripcord.co.nz/behaviour/) and
automatically provide alternate paths to posting if AJAX is disabled.

On 7/9/05, Per Wigren <tuxie@dekadance.se> wrote:
> Check your site stats what your users are using.
> It works with IE 6, Firefox 1.0, Mozilla 1.7 and Safari 1.2 or higher.
> It does NOT work with IE 5.x or Opera.
> 
> If I''m not mistaken it''s the same requirements as GMail
and Google maps.
> 
> // Per
> 
> 8 jul 2005 kl. 19.41 skrev Duane Johnson:
> 
> > I asked this on the Rails list, but it might be more appropriate here.
> >
> > When we''re estimating how many users would have access to our
site
> > if we choose to use AJAX and script.aculo.us -style javascript,
> > what kind of percentage are we looking at? 50%? 75%?
> >
> > Does this kind of fancy JS work on IE 5.0, or earlier?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Duane Johnson
> > (canadaduane)

That''s a really good idea.  That way you have good markup for all  
browsers and just as important search engines can fully navigate your  
site.

I could see you having an anchor tag surrounding an element you want  
ajaxed, and then applying behaviour to it dynamically.  If JS is on,  
your ajax can work and then disable the anchor event by returning  
''false''.  If JS is off, then the anchor works fine and
triggers a
server hit to re-render the page.

I''m going to investigate if I can do this on my site.  The only  
problem I see is logic duplication - you need JS code to update the  
UI, and the same server side code just incase JS is disabled.

---Dave.

On 10-Jul-05, at 1:47 AM, Bill Katz wrote:
>
> One possibility I haven''t fleshed in yet: keep the main html as
simple
> as possible (like http://www.ripcord.co.nz/behaviour/) and
> automatically provide alternate paths to posting if AJAX is disabled.
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> I''m going to investigate if I can do this on my site.  The only
problem I
> see is logic duplication - you need JS code to update the UI, and the same
> server side code just incase JS is disabled.
You can use the same controller action.  At the end, just use
@request.xhr? to determine whether to render an action for non-ajax,
and a quick partial or text for ajax.

Also, do the Ajax functions return true or false depending on if AJAX
is used?  I''ll have to look.  It would be cool if they checked for
AJAX support and return true if it wasn''t there, so the event could be
handed off to the link href or the form submit.

-- 
rick
http://techno-weenie.net