Facebook to kill IE6 support for Chat on IE9 beta day

[Max™]

ok if you hate ads, i do, heres a small trick i picked up,
in your hosts file you can block ads, for this instance, Google Ads, just pop these two lines in your hosts file directly under your loopback ip (dont have a space/blank line) it works for me,

Code: [Select]

127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
also theres a nice liitle app that removes flash cookies that hide on your pc in a different location to all the other cookies, its free,
Just Click Here

[Pri]

Pri,
      Much as there are some improvements to software and hardware from year to year, what attracts users to update is when a point is reached when a perceived significant leap forward can be seen by the user. Companies and software writers have a different agenda. They are constantly striving to improve their wares and generate additional money. The amount that these improvements are to a users benefit and demand an upgrade is often questionable.

If you want to keep enjoying the web you need to keep upgrading your browser. It's not like any of us would use Mosaic or Netscape Navigator. And again the browsers are free, to the user there isn't much reason not to install a 3rd party browser. Keep IE6 if you are afraid of IE7/8 WGA but get Chrome or Safari or Opera or Firefox. Something that is standards compliant and continually updated.

A good example of some performance improvements is with native h.264 and WebM playback in the browser using the HTML5 video tag instead of using Flash (which gobbles CPU cycles when playing Video). This is video playback that scales from desktop systems to even 600MHz single core mobile devices. Something Flash still cannot do. But you need to upgrade your browser to get this free performance enhancement.

[White Stripes]

Something Flash still cannot do.

actually the 'big' flash 10.1 update added quite a bit of hardware accel.... more is planned... flash runs on android phones after all


@Max; blocking ads by pointing their servers 'home'  in the hosts file can sometimes cause glitches... sometimes very nasty glitches...


adblock for IE8;

http://www.vista4beginners.com/AdBlock-Plus-Filters-Internet-Explorer-8 (NOTE: not tested... i dont have IE8 installed either lol)

an old copy of adsubtract SE (the freeware version... if you can find it....) will work with older IEs....

adblock for opera;

http://dev.opera-wiki.com/URL_Filter_List (works great)

ofc firefox has adblock plus and.... i honestly dont know what chrome does/uses... (if it blocks ads im surprised google would let it block theirs)

as far as IE6 goes even the simplest things can drive a webdev nuts; http://entropymine.com/jason/testbed/pngtrans/
(admittedly there are a mirad of fixes for alpha png in IE6 but they dont always work right or at all in some designs)
it doesnt have to be the bleeding edge stuff that breaks IE or gives devs headaches...

but if you dont want to update dont update.. hell i used netscape 3 for ... years... after it was considered 'obsolete' and it can still be used in limited capacity on todays web (this site works in it... no edit button or any javascript works but the site is readable... lol) .... things just dont 'work right' ...

http://sillydog.org/narchive/full123.php (make sure the download is coming from sillydog.org as netscapes own ftp archive doesnt work anymore... hasnt in a long time...) 3.03 gold professional is a good one... 2.02 gold was a good one too... used that one for quite some time too... its quite a bit faster on older hardware but doesnt dither images as well on 256 color displays... (note: link for 2.02gold doesnt work)

now imagine getting todays sites to work in this browser ...

[Pri]

Something Flash still cannot do.

actually the 'big' flash 10.1 update added quite a bit of hardware accel.... more is planned... flash runs on android phones after all

No need to school me I am 100% informed about Flash. The GPU acceleration inherent in the new 10.1 Flash version is a joke. Each frame goes form the CPU to the GPU back to the CPU and then to the GPU again! It is a mess. True H.264 GPU processing goes CPU -> GPU no back and forth no re-formulating of the frames. And the performance of Flash on the Android phones (which I develop for) is rubbish. No video on the web that is designed for desktop systems runs smooth. Very choppy and unwatchable only the made for mobile flash sites work smoothly.

To say that flash runs on Android is about as valid as saying Windows XP runs on an android phone within a virtual environment. It executes but it's not usable.

[White Stripes]

well... damn... they need to do more fixing then...

btw, those of us who dont have gpus capable of h.264 have to rely on cpu anyway...   (i doubt a Matrox g220 or an intel i810 GMH support it... but it plays...)


btw, has anyone found adsubtract SE (freeware) .... its bugging me now

* Silver Stripes headscratches....

and as far as codecs go id rather theora than h.264....

[Bluey_412]

Nuffin' like a good ragin argument...

keeps watchin'...

[Pri]

Nuffin' like a good ragin argument...

keeps watchin'...

lol I'm not arguing with Silver.

and as far as codecs go id rather theora than h.264....

Theora is great from a technical standpoint but it has some drawbacks that I think you are probably aware of but for others reading the topic I'll just list a couple. MPEG LA is the 'group' which handles pretty much all video patents. A bunch of companies (Pretty much all tech companies with any video patents at all) have submitted their patents in to the MPEG LA cross licensing pool. Which basically allows anyone who puts a patent in to create new video standards based on any of the other patents present in the pool. The people behind Theora are not part of this because they have no patents and any patents they tried for would most certainly infringe on the ones already existing in the MPEG LA alliance.

What this means is that although Theora is great and open it is also thwart with a legal axe above its head. At the moment the MPEG LA aren't doing anything about it because its not mainstream it's being used by free software advocates who don't have any money invested for the MPEG LA to take in a lawsuit. But if device manufacturers (like Sony or Samsung for example) began to offer hardware decoding of Theora video that is when the MPEG LA would strike, sue those companies and soon no one will risk embedding Theora in to their software or hardware for fear of being sued.

This brings me on to my 2nd point, hardware acceleration. Theora has none among embedded devices. (TV's Set-top boxes, Mobile Phones and so on) due to the above. I wish the MPEG LA never existed but while they are still here H.264 is the only real codec we got to work with. It is now royalty free forever, is used for Bluray media, internet streaming media, even Flash uses h.264 for some of its video delivery (but the Flash player itself which renders the video is the weak link, native playback through the browser would be much better). The other competitor to Theora is WebM which has the backing of Google but this codec is also of questionable sustainability due to patents that the MPEG LA control.

The short and skinny is that we all have to use h.264 if we want web delivered video because all the other options are not certain at this time.

[White Stripes]

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/

GIF & MP3 were 'free for life' at one point too..... just because they say its free for life now doesnt mean they wont pull the rug out anytime from under the 'web' later...

IE update free... h.264 codec extra... plz to take credit card from wallet and fill in the required data to decode this video....

...software patents suck...

-edit-

@bluey; no argument... from a technical standpoint h.264 is pretty damn impressive... from a $$$ standpoint its not.... i think pri and i can both agree on that one....

[Pri]

Yes I agree H.264 is exspensive. It costs $5 Million dollars to ship the codec to consumers. But Microsoft and Apple both have already paid that fee and the H.264 codec is thus included in Windows 7 and Mac OS X which any developer can simply call as a function in their own applications. This makes it very affordable to implement in software for those operating systems.

Most mobile devices also include H.264 decoding already.

[White Stripes]

but unfortunatly... F/OSS looses again....

[GhostShip]

I see the topic has shifted again so let me reiterate something I often mention in such topics.

I don't care what manufacturers want to sell and I don't care to see more of my bandwidth being sucked up by video/flash adverts, if this was about who can make the most prettiest site it may be important but face facts the majority of sites dont need such stuff so lets remember here upgrading to keep some advert ridden site happy is great if your stupid but for the rest of us watching our wallet being forced to buy new hardware and software by these upgrade forcing parasites its just plain wrong.

Think about this sensibly, do we force ford cars off the road because we think rolls royces are better ?

  /me waits for incoming

[Max™]

being forced to buy new hardware and software by these upgrade forcing parasites its just plain wrong.

i agree, i can not afford to upgrade and personally, i dont want to upgrade,
i like my XP and Firefox,
my pc is now 7-8yrs old, it has never done a windows update, i did obtain SP3 as a downloaded package, not on updates, because i dont want the microsoft xp termination patch to make me use win7.

[Pri]

I see the topic has shifted again so let me reiterate something I often mention in such topics.

I don't care what manufacturers want to sell and I don't care to see more of my bandwidth being sucked up by video/flash adverts, if this was about who can make the most prettiest site it may be important but face facts the majority of sites dont need such stuff so lets remember here upgrading to keep some advert ridden site happy is great if your stupid but for the rest of us watching our wallet being forced to buy new hardware and software by these upgrade forcing parasites its just plain wrong.

Think about this sensibly, do we force ford cars off the road because we think rolls royces are better ?

  /me waits for incoming

Maybe you should have read the topic where we mentioned Adblock for all the major browsers. I've not seen an Ad for years   And um cars do get taken off the road due to poor emissions and safety (lack of seatbelts for one).

i agree, i can not afford to upgrade and personally, i dont want to upgrade,
i like my XP and Firefox,
my pc is now 7-8yrs old, it has never done a windows update, i did obtain SP3 as a downloaded package, not on updates, because i dont want the microsoft xp termination patch to make me use win7.

If your using Firefox you get a big + from me. That is all developers want you to do. There are simply a lot of things that we want to deliver through the web but simply cant for 10 year old browsers. That's just the facts of the situation. If you don't want to use the new services then by all means stick with your current browser in my opinion. (that's @ Ghost)

[GhostShip]

Why should I have to run around cleaning up after some advert shoving scum Pri ?  Why should I have to run something like this (any good stripes ?) to stop my bandwidth being stolen by parasites , your looking at this from your own point of view but mines simple enough also, is there not enough brainpower among developers to have a simple "compatibility" mode  or is there no money to be ripped off from the consumer in that approach ?

http://www.aplusfreeware.com/categories/internet/files/AdSubtract1.68.zip

[Pri]

Dude what ads are you talking about specifically because Flash is on IE6 too and all the other types of ads (images, text overlays, javascript hovers) all work on IE6. Either give examples or get out the kitchen

What we are talking about is enriching the web with more content. Dynamic content including in-browser games, not just 2D crappy games but complete 3D worlds that use your Graphics Card instead of leaving it idle and much much more. This has nothing to do with Ads at all.

[Bluey_412]

I mentioned ads, cos like it or not, they ARE a form of  'served content',  detestable, despisable, but still 'content' that needs the newer browsers to display properly, which means even us IE8 users have to suffer the damned things, hence the discussion about ad-blockers...

And push firefox as much as you like, it too is becoming bloatware...

[White Stripes]

@GS thats the app... how the hell you found it i dunno but thats it... its old so it wont work 100% but it works pretty good...

as for the web looking 'pretty' http://www.csszengarden.com ... looks pretty good and functional ....and quite a few of the examples break in IE6...

3d worlds arent quite ready but they are coming... canvas does some nifty 2d stuff with tidbits of 3d in current browsers tho...

[Pri]

I mentioned ads, cos like it or not, they ARE a form of  'served content',  detestable, despisable, but still 'content' that needs the newer browsers to display properly, which means even us IE8 users have to suffer the damned things, hence the discussion about ad-blockers...

And push firefox as much as you like, it too is becoming bloatware...

To be honest even if you use IE6 your going to get tons of ads.

[GhostShip]

Is this the same Falsebook site that refused to inform the police of child abuse images even when one user told them about it 10 times ?

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/43317

Or the one being sued for using childrens images without parental consent

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/43289


They need to get their own house in order it seems before they start dictating what web browser folks should be using.

[Pri]

Facebook is like the worst site on the web in my opinion. I'll never use it. Period.