# Programming for IE and old systems? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 22, 2007, 9:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programming-for-ie-and-old-systems/117966 "2007-10-22T21:34:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b38774/32.png) [@jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jdruse)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2007, 9:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programming-for-ie-and-old-systems/117966/1 "2007-10-22T21:34:22Z")
Hello all, hopefully this post will spark conversation and nasty debates… Since most of us (ruby programmers) are on macs… (maybe someone has actual stats?) we are not limited to the 1024x768 screen size that most windows users are. this poses a problem when laying out pages and apps i’m sure most of you can agree with me. so what is the “correct” testing environment? what is your opinion? i’m using VMWare Fusion to run an XP and a Vista Machine to test all the differences, also i use the Web Developer plugin for FireFox to accomplish a multitude of things. also, does anyone take in to account the people using 800x600 (God forbid)? i personally thing those people deserve to have messed up webpages. let me know what you think! ---
**Author:** ![jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b38774/32.png) [@jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jdruse)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programming-for-ie-and-old-systems/117966/2 "2007-10-22T23:21:09Z")
On Oct 22, 2007, at 3:34 PM, Jon D. wrote: > Since most of us (ruby programmers) are on macs… (maybe someone > has actual > stats?) we are not limited to the 1024x768 screen size that most > windows > users are. I think this is a gross and probably incorrect generalization. I haven’t had a 1024x768 monitor on a (work-provided) windows box since 1998. I recently bought a Dell for my mother and the smallest monitor I could buy was 1280x1024. This is not to say that your user base may not be all running at 1024x768, but I do not find it to be remotely true that Windows = 1024x768. -faisal ---
**Author:** ![jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b38774/32.png) [@jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jdruse)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2007, 12:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programming-for-ie-and-old-systems/117966/3 "2007-10-23T00:01:31Z")
I think it depends greatly on your user base. If you’re building a site for a primarily tech savvy base, you can probably forgo some of the more hideous aspects of designing for IE as you’re likely to have a much higher ratio of compliant browsers than just any random sampling. 800x600 seems to thankfully be mostly a thing of the past, but 1024x768 is still a block, even among tech savy users sadly. I was working on a project with some professors (Computer Science professors) and, sadly one of them was running a set up with 1024x768. I generally try to make things work on a large range, such as 1024x768 and MAYBE 800x600, for sure make it run correctly on IE 6.0 or higher, but on projects I work on things generally always run “better” on more sophisticated systems. Now if you’re building something for total mass consumption by the public at large, I’d advise making sure your application works as well in worse set ups as it does in the better ones. And that’s probably the best approach to take in general but… damn if I don’t hate working with IE6, and I refuse to support less than IE6 on my own projects. ---
**Author:** ![jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b38774/32.png) [@jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jdruse)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2007, 4:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programming-for-ie-and-old-systems/117966/4 "2007-10-23T16:56:50Z")
I’ve been doing web design since 1995 and this has always been an issue. it used to be 640px and then 800px. Roughly 50% of your audience will use 1024, while another 25% will use higher, with the remaining using something else. One thing to note is that 1024 wide is a good baseline right now because as screens get wider, people start to leave windows at normal state, not maximized. I started noticing this when the widescreens came out - IE doesn’t launch maximized, and I’ve seen people have windows open side-by-side. To work in those confines on the Mac, I use parallels in full-screen mode, and I set the resolution to 1024x768, but I don’t let Parallels change the resolution. This gives me a smaller screen with black borders around it. It makes it easy to then switch to TextMate or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b38774/32.png) [@jdruse](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jdruse)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2007, 2:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/programming-for-ie-and-old-systems/117966/5 "2007-10-23T14:02:19Z")
On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:19:45 -0400, Faisal N Jawdat wrote: > monitor I could buy was 1280x1024. > Yup. I’m mostly Windows, and I’ve had 1920x1200 working in single-link > DVI > for about seven years, back when you could hardly find graphics cards > that > could support that. That said, it really, really, really depends on your user base. For example, there’s an online game called “Slingo” that’s particularly popular with senior citizens (who aren’t known for running on bleeding-edge hardware). They recently rewrote one of their games, and apparently they assumed that everyone would have larger screens nowadays. And the chat window is at the bottom of the screen. The result? A huge number of their users were convinced that “chat was taken away”, because they couldn’t see the chat window. – Jay L. | Boston, MA | My character doesn’t like it when they Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit. [http://www.jay.fm](http://www.jay.fm) | - Kristoffer