The changes in styling on some of the php.net sub domains has flagged up a few
questions. A lot of legacy systems are retained simply because they do have to
work with legacy browsers, and a properly designed system where the content is
maintained independent of the display/styling processing naturally allows a
legacy view to be maintained in parallel with a more modern html5/css style
sheet. But if the legacy system is still doing it's job is there any real
incentive to waste time reworking something that is working fine? Most modern
mobile devices handle legacy sites quite happily.
Bring into the mix 'responsive', 'mobile' and other modern developments, and
maintaining compatibility is something of a nightmare? Some of the modern css
frameworks do address the problem, but I don't think that there is currently a
good base to work from? Bootstrap has been used for the main php.net style, and
while version 2 supported IE7, this has been dropped from version 3. Some
elements of 'bodging' older versions if IE to be compatible with html5 are
generally available. html5shiv.js is a fairly standard fix, and many of the
frameworks provide .css fixes for various versions of IE. However these are only
sticking plasters that need the new designs to pay lip service to the
restrictions these fixes dictate. The current php.net sub domin updates fail on
legacy browsers because of missing .css and style limitations.
http://www.sitepoint.com/support-old-browsers-responsive-web-design/ is another
nice piece of work which provides an alternative solution but has it's own set
of restrictions, so we are now seeing sites like github simply telling people
they have to update. Probably the right answer since IE has now dropped below
10% of the user base, with IE7 only 0.4%, but IE8 is still the most popular
version and many of the fixes apply to both versions anyway with older versions
of windows still command nearly 15% of the market.
Basically the question is "Does anybody have a good option for a generically
tidy cross browser css framework?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_frameworks
provides a starting point but lacks any compatibility detail. I'm currently
using 'ink' but even that is not a full answer to the problems.
--
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-----------------------------
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