Help me convince a teacher that he needs to stop teaching IE filters! [closed]

Question

The Issue

Just to give you some background, I'm currently enrolled as a student at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Currently the web design classes there are somewhat... sub-par. My DHTML teacher worked on websites in the Netscape/IE clash and most of the stuff he teaches is deprecated, non-semantic HTML, or inline code. He is still a huge supporter of IE and is still avid about students learning IE filters. From what I've seen he seems to see no need to support multiple browsers. I'd really like to see the web design section of the school grow and as long as the teachers are still teaching deprecated code, it probably won't. I'm planning on sending him an e-mail trying to convince him to drop the IE filters section of the course next semester and replace it with something that students will actually be able to use cross-browser.

The Request

I need help building my argument.

• I need to build a list of reasons on why filters are deprecated and shouldn't be used(I believe they aren't even supported in IE9 anymore).
• It might also be advantageous to give reasons why cross-browser support should be achieved.
• I need some reputable sources that I can quote. This excludes sites like wikipedia.

Also, on a side note, one of the reasons I'm asking this here is because I don't have any type of real world coding experience. If I had support from someone else who worked in the same era of the web, it could do wonders for the legitimacy of my argument. I don't want this to sound like I'm just bashing his methods, or even worse... just trying to get out of work.

Thank you in advance for any help you post! I know this is a huge request. I appreciate any time your willing to give.

Edit

I just wanted to point out that I agree with some of the comments made. The filters section of the course is a very minor problem. There is a numerous amount of other issues that would be far more important if the students were going into a web design career. Unfortunately most of the students are forced into this class specifically for degree requirements of the CGD Major. There currently is no major dedicated to web design and there are probably only 4 people on campus that actually are pursuing web design as a career. The average Joe of this class will probably never produce more than a personal website. This being said, version compatibility and other issues solved by filters will probably never be used.

The main issue isn't that the teacher is teaching IE filters, though, it's that he's teaching a three week section on filters. Through the entire semester, the class has only been able to go over very simple Javascript such as variables, functions, arrays, loops, and attaching events via event attributes. We haven't even touched the DOM yet and the stuff we have gone over we only touched on very lightly. I would just like to see the last section of the class dedicated to the more universally useful information such as the DOM, Objects, Object methods, and Regular Expressions.

Despite all of this though will be making a large section of the document over browser compatibility and I appreciate the information y'all have supplied for that. I wish I could tell him everything that he's doing wrong, but that would be way more than one e-mail. I would like to take it one step at a time though and at least point him in the right direction.

Sorry for the long post! Thanks

Answer 1

Cross-browser support:

• If it's a project for a client: What do you tell your client if the site you created does not work on non-ie browsers? Actually usually clients require cross-browser compatibility.
• Only supporting IE means losing customers which means losing money
• Why use proprietary filters if cross-browser alternatives exist? IE9 supports CSS3, opacity etc
• Modern developer tools facilitate and support modern technologies - and all developers want to use shiny new tools (they're more fun :-))
• Forward compatibility: You may create an ie-only site with table-layouts and proprietary filters, but you will need to start from scratch once you'll realize what you've done, whereas building a site based on today's standards will be maintainable longer before a complete remake is due.
• Maintenance: A web site needs to be maintained, probably by different people - choosing current and well-known technologies will make this easier.
• It's not that hard (once you exclude IE6 - see compatibility table linked below)

Some sources:

• Browser compatibility by PKK, for example CSS: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html Excellent resource for implementing cross-browser compatible web sites. PPK is one of many professionals promoting cross-browser compatible web sites, you won't find the contrary (professionals promoting IE only sites).
• Even Microsoft promotes moving on from IE6 towards modern browsers and technologies, and is proud of ie9's CSS3 support: http://www.theie6countdown.com/default.aspx

Answer 2

It might be worth mentioning the fact that filters can be applied by use of HTC files. There's really no way I know of to convert IE filters into proper CSS(3) rendering, while there are lots of great scripts out there like CSC3 PIE for achieving the opposite, which can all be thrown away the minute you decide that old IE support is no longer a relevant to your audience. Filters are proprietary to Microsoft, CSS is supported in basically* every browser ^{* Just warding off the potential Lynx comments :)}. We should be supporting standards first, and resorting to proprietary solutions like -ms, -webkit, and -moz only as long as they are relevant. The relevance of IE filters is dwindling.

The existence of IE conditional comments may be a compelling argument that IE support is a special case, and not something that should be a priority from the outset. IE targeting, including version targeting, is much easier to implement than targeting say, Opera 8 or Firefox 2 (which is rarely necessary, just an example), and that IE's "problems" will be less and less significant as we move to IE9. IE9 has great CSS3 support, and it will be the future browser for every Joe Schmoe who buys a new PC. I actually got the prompt yesterday on Win7 to upgrade, which most users will be getting as well about now. Windows yelled at me for not installing it, so most users won't know any better and assume it's a required security upgrade or something.

And then there's IE's compatibility view. All these signs seem to point to the fact that the need for IE hacks is becoming less necessary (if it was ever necessary to begin with) and should be considered the edge case these days. You should learn how to use them, but don't rely on them as any more than a fallback. And with the huge popularity in mobile web: How many mobile phones have IE8 installed?

When people say "cross browser compatibility", 99% of the time it means "will work in IE". If something doesn't work - it doesn't work. If something doesn't work in IE, you have all these wonderful tools to work with.