Maybe so, but I'm referring to features in web applications here, not "sites" with "neat" things. The corporations who buy my software most certainly do want those features, or else they wouldn't pay me to write them.
In a country with an extradition treaty with the US.. what? In a country with an extradition treaty with the US, you can either choose to not sell to US citizens, and you don't have to comply with any of our trade laws, or else you do want to sell to US citizens, in which case you do have to comply with our relevant trade laws. It's not like if you do something illegal in another country that you have to answer to the US. If you're smoking pot in the Netherlands you're not going to get extradited to the US to stand trial for smoking pot in the Netherlands.
The law criminalizes behavior, not intent. Intent is no longer necessary to be convicted in the United States.
I'm not sure how many juries you've been on, but when I was on a jury 2 weeks ago for a criminal case the judge made it explicitly clear several times that we could only find the defendant guilty if evidence showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to commit the crime (theft). In fact, intent is part of the definition of theft, which needs to be met in order to find someone guilty.
Civil cases are held to a lower standard, but criminal cases require "beyond a reasonable doubt". In fact, the very reason why he was found not guilty is because the prosecutor could not prove intent in a way that satisfied the indictment. It's extremely difficult to prove intent, the prosecutor was able to show intent to commit the crime several months after the crime was allegedly committed, but because of the wording of the indictment we could not find evidence of intent when the specific events happened. The prosecutor understood why we reached the verdict we did.
That sounds a little vague, I'll be happy to go into details of the trial if you're interested.
Re:Crossbrowser libraries just perpetuate the prob
on
Learning Ext JS
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"But my customers want it to work in their browser!" is not an argument when better browsers are freely available.
Really? When your customers contact you about this or that not working right in IE, all you tell them is to use a different browser? Don't you think that's a bit lazy?
How "standard" is a "standard" if people aren't following it?
It's pretty bad when more than half the time ona web project is "fixing" broken IE rendering.
Oddly enough, the exact reason I don't have to spend a considerable amount of time debugging IE is because I use a library that is cross-browser compatible, because of things like browser sniffing. My time spent debugging problems in IE has dropped significantly since starting with ExtJS.
Re:The guys behind EXTJS are terrible
on
Learning Ext JS
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
That's a nice story, so I might as well give my story too.
I started using ExtJS when they were using the LGPL. I read through the terms of the LGPL and realized it wasn't really the type of thing I was looking for (our application isn't open source), so I looked into their commercial license. I looked over the terms and price of the commercial license and met with my boss to tell him that this was the library I wanted to use to build our next application, and that the commercial license was a better fit for our plans. He agreed, and we purchased the license. We're a small company, less than 20 employees, but the few hundred dollars for the commercial license was a no-brainer (a few hundred dollars isn't a lot of money for any company to spend on product development).
We went ahead and also got the support package which gave us SVN access, support forum, etc. During my first several months I posted several times to the support forum and got my questions answered. In addition, like you pointed out, the API documentation is one of the better examples of good documentation (far from perfect, but far more than what a lot of other products have). It took a few months to really get comfortable with everything, but the learning process was easy and the product made sense to use.
As ExtJS 3.0 rolled around I decided to plug that in to the application and see how it worked. I've got about a page of changes that need to be made to get it to work with ExtJS 3.0, but considering all of the changes that went into the new version it looked like we were eventually going to want to use it, so we went ahead and bought another commercial license for 3.0. ExtJS is using GPL3 now, but that didn't apply to us.
The core developers of Ext, which are the people running the company, all post in the forum and have all been quite a bit of help with regard to tracking issues and dealing with bugs. They respond to requests for documentation pages, new examples, bug reports etc. I've never thought them to be unprofessional (let alone EXTREMELY unprofessional, in caps), nor "bad to deal with". They are available for communication through the forum, email, and phone.
For our own application, it now has about 3000 hours of development behind it and continues to grow, and we're just getting ready to begin marketing and selling it. ExtJS has continued to be a good product to use and develop with, and I've got no regrets about choosing ExtJS as the framework for our application.
Maybe that's what your AC wisdom is telling you, but here in reality I've got customers paying good money for those functions "that no one wants".
You can keep designing and selling your "pure HTML" web sites, as long as that makes you happy keep doing it. I'm happy making attractive and functional web applications, so that's what I'll continue doing.
The FTC is wrong to suggest that a "product review" is some easy to identify thing.
The FTC isn't talking about "product reviews", it's talking about "endorsements".
If I write that I love the Slap-Chop am I reviewing it?
No, but you're endorsing it. If you represent yourself as an unaffiliated third party but were actually paid to say that you love it then you need to state that. This isn't difficult to figure out.
Actually, they don't say "blog" at all, they say "endorser". If you're an "endorser", it doesn't matter if you're online or not, and you're endorsing a product, and you got compensated for endorsing that product, you need to state so.
It doesn't matter how or where you endorse the product. If you endorse it, and the public is likely to see your endorsement as that of an unaffiliated third party, but you were actually compensated, you need to state that.
So does that include someone who posts a review on newegg (or any other website with reviews of purchasable products)?
Yes.
If so, does this open up other weird legal issues? For example: there was a mail-in-rebate included with the item, so you must mention in the review the amount of money that you will (hopefully) receive at a later date. How about Newegg combo deals? How about Newegg gifts?
None of those are incentives for giving the product a positive review. You can get a rebate or combo deal without reviewing the product at all, you're not being compensated for reviewing the product.
You don't have to follow our legal system if you don't want to do business in the US. If you want to advertise and sell to US citizens, then you agree to operate by our rules. If you don't agree to do that, then don't sell to us. Pretty simple.
Saying "results not typical" won't make it legal any more.
Good, every time I see one of those ads for an online computer diagnostic service (name withheld) which claims that it can "immediately diagnose any hidden problems" I always get the urge to create a hidden problem, prove that they can't "immediately" diagnose it, and then sue them for misleading advertising. That little disclaimer is the only thing that stops me.
Also, procrastination and not wanting to actually do that stops me too, it just annoys me to see those commercials because I know that they're just preying on people who don't know any better.
Well I know I'm going to remind everyone that buys a netbook that Windows 7 is not certified to run on it, so they should just use Linux.
Then you're just as bad as the people who rely on the presence of the sticker to make their decisions. Just because every version of Windows 7 might not be able to run on a given machine doesn't mean the user can't have a good experience with at least one version of Windows 7 on that machine. This isn't exactly heavy logic we're dealing with here.
I've got a computer sitting next to me, it doesn't have any Microsoft stickers on the case at all. Does that mean I should just run Linux on it? Does that mean that it's not capable of running XP, or Vista, or Windows 7? How can you draw any conclusions at all based on the presence or lack of a little piece of paper with some glue on the back? I can go into an Apple store and buy a $4000 computer. That computer doesn't have a Windows 7 sticker on it, so does that necessarily mean the hardware is not capable of running Windows 7?
this time PCs will have to work with all versions of Windows 7 to qualify for the sticker Nonsense, there are lot's of systems out there, particularly Netbooks, which will not. Certainly will not necessarily be 64-bit. If it only ran on 64-bit-capable systems, why is there a 32-bit version of Win 7 at all?
What exactly are you not understanding? This has exactly zero to do with a machine's ability to run Windows 7. This has everything to do with whether or not the manufacturer gets to put a little sticker on the case. The lack of the sticker does not mean that the computer is not capable of running any version of Windows 7, it simply means that the computer has not been certified to run every version of Windows 7.
You don't have much to say about my last reply, do you? Perhaps it's difficult to remove your foot from your mouth. Regardless, hopefully I was able to turn you on to the fact that not only is it possible to create desktop-like applications for the web, and that people have been doing it for years, but it's also entirely possible even with IE6, without requiring any plugins. You're a little late to the game, but welcome all the same. Good luck to you with your own "real applications". And, just so that I don't confuse you further, when I say "real applications", I mean a web application that looks and behaves as well as any desktop application, and also happens to bring in a profit.
You know, that actually makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised I haven't heard more people bring that up before. I'd give you another mod point if I hadn't already posted.
the acceptance of false positives in the name of safety is generally as bad an idea as false negatives
I disagree, when talking about computer security a false positive is much more preferable than a false negative. This is essentially the scanner saying that it doesn't know what it's looking at, so it's going to quarantine it. I would rather it do that than not take any action against something that may or may not be a threat. It should only leave those things alone that it can determine with a very high degree of certainty not to be a threat, anything else gets quarantined for analysis. Which, incidentally, is exactly the opposite of how the justice system should work.
and pander to every possible wealthy client with an established software pathology
That's not what I said, I said a larger customer base is better for business. That doesn't mean one solution that works for 100% of businesses, that means maximizing my customer base by staying away from things that only a minority will have support for. There's a balance between usability and functionality that involves making a product to do what you want it to do while trying to keep your possible customer base as large as possible.
So what happens when your next wealthy client has JS disabled citing security concerns, and they want access to your same product line?
Then I explain to them that disabling all Javascript for security purposes is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and that if they want to use my software they need to make an exception. This isn't the same as asking them to upgrade their entire infrastructure, this is just a policy change. Javascript is far too useful to just disable it outright.
Do you expect us to believe you'll blithely support clients who have established themselves to be browserless, offline, or paper-only?
Of course not, I make software. If someone's business model doesn't involve software then they aren't my client.
You are being hypocritical if you do not admit that everyone has to draw the line somewhere regarding legacy support.
Of course, that's exactly what I'm saying. The line is still far away from IE6. I've dropped support for IE5, but it would frankly be stupid at this point to come out with new software that I'm trying to market to business customers that does not support IE6. The vast majority of business software can do a lot of cool things while still staying within the bounds of what's possible with IE6. I don't need a canvas or SVG to create reports with their data on it. I don't even need either of those to create interactive graphs. Yeah, it would be useful if I could use canvas instead of a Flash chart library, but that's not the reality I'm living in today. I'm not trying to create a technology demonstration here, this is software to help people run their business more efficiently, and as user-friendly as possible.
So should we be chastised not supporting IE6 in markets where the IE6 users are not going to add heavily to our profit margins?
Of course not, that's ridiculous to assume. If your target market is people who develop for the Linux kernel or if you're creating an Apple fan site it doesn't really make a difference if you support IE or not. If you're making business software it makes a hell of a lot of difference.
if CF is a shortcut that magically gives you a slightly larger user base without having to audit your entire stack for compatibility with a browser barely distinguishable from Netscape 4, then why shouldn't we give it a shot?
Go for it man, if you just absolutely need to have canvas and SVG on your iPod rumor site, I'm not going to stop you. But, like I said before, my software doesn't require anything that IE6 doesn't support. This is business logic, customer support, and reporting with a nice responsive interface.
Google has dropped support for IE6 on Youtube
I was extremely happy to hear Youtube and others make that announcement, I can't wait until I'm able to drop support for IE6.
Some of us want client-side databasing to reduce or serialize calls to the server. Some of us want to provide a more desktop-like experience in our web-based applications. Is drag and drop really that psycho of a thing to expect out of a web application?
It's funny that you should mention those two as examples. ExtJS has a very powerful data API, including support for storing data client-side in memory, batching calls to the server, directing and
Say I rewrote a C program in C++ and you rewrote the same program in javascript. I could have some valid criticisms of your language choice without criticising your desire to port the program -- and it wouldn't make me a hypocrite.
Yeah, you're right, but that analogy doesn't apply. If I rewrote your program and then you tell me that programs like that are a bad idea, then I would call you a hypocrite.
Maybe I wasn't clear, but I don't do much extra work to support IE these days. There are too many good libraries out there that do things without a lot of hassle and work in all major browsers. I'm talking about things like ExtJS, jquery, etc. Of course, this assumes you're not trying to use things that IE specifically doesn't support, like canvas.
a standards compliant browser, and there is more than one of those to choose from
You should be aware that quite often when you're dealing with the client you don't have the luxury of telling them what software to use. I'm not talking about building your personal website, I'm talking about building a marketable product that other companies want to buy because it helps them do their own business better. You can't tell these people that in order to run your software they need to upgrade their entire software infrastructure, however unfortunate that is. You also can't take the attitude that if they don't want to install a supported product then they just don't get to use your fancy software, because maybe your fancy software is your livelihood and your livelihood depends on a wide customer base, in addition to other things.
The last major problem I had with IE was an issue where you have a Flash movie inside of a frame, and the Flash movie sends out a post request that results in a file being downloaded which Office would normally open, and you have Office installed, then IE won't let you save or open the document, it just trashes it. That one took me a few days to work around, but Javascript and CSS libraries these days have progressed beyond IE, IE isn't the problem it was three years ago. Before you say I should have told the client with that IE issue to use a different browser, once when I requested that they install PHP on one of their internal servers I was met with the response that their corporation has a "no open-source" policy, whatever that means.
Yeah, IE is still a problem, it's still holding back development potential, but your product is going to look a lot more attractive to a client if it doesn't lose any functionality when you run it with IE6. When fewer than 5% of people are using IE6 then I'll consider dropping support for it, but that's not an option at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe so, but I'm referring to features in web applications here, not "sites" with "neat" things. The corporations who buy my software most certainly do want those features, or else they wouldn't pay me to write them.
In a country with an extradition treaty with the US.. what? In a country with an extradition treaty with the US, you can either choose to not sell to US citizens, and you don't have to comply with any of our trade laws, or else you do want to sell to US citizens, in which case you do have to comply with our relevant trade laws. It's not like if you do something illegal in another country that you have to answer to the US. If you're smoking pot in the Netherlands you're not going to get extradited to the US to stand trial for smoking pot in the Netherlands.
The law criminalizes behavior, not intent. Intent is no longer necessary to be convicted in the United States.
I'm not sure how many juries you've been on, but when I was on a jury 2 weeks ago for a criminal case the judge made it explicitly clear several times that we could only find the defendant guilty if evidence showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to commit the crime (theft). In fact, intent is part of the definition of theft, which needs to be met in order to find someone guilty.
Civil cases are held to a lower standard, but criminal cases require "beyond a reasonable doubt". In fact, the very reason why he was found not guilty is because the prosecutor could not prove intent in a way that satisfied the indictment. It's extremely difficult to prove intent, the prosecutor was able to show intent to commit the crime several months after the crime was allegedly committed, but because of the wording of the indictment we could not find evidence of intent when the specific events happened. The prosecutor understood why we reached the verdict we did.
That sounds a little vague, I'll be happy to go into details of the trial if you're interested.
"But my customers want it to work in their browser!" is not an argument when better browsers are freely available.
Really? When your customers contact you about this or that not working right in IE, all you tell them is to use a different browser? Don't you think that's a bit lazy?
How "standard" is a "standard" if people aren't following it?
It's pretty bad when more than half the time ona web project is "fixing" broken IE rendering.
Oddly enough, the exact reason I don't have to spend a considerable amount of time debugging IE is because I use a library that is cross-browser compatible, because of things like browser sniffing. My time spent debugging problems in IE has dropped significantly since starting with ExtJS.
That's a nice story, so I might as well give my story too.
I started using ExtJS when they were using the LGPL. I read through the terms of the LGPL and realized it wasn't really the type of thing I was looking for (our application isn't open source), so I looked into their commercial license. I looked over the terms and price of the commercial license and met with my boss to tell him that this was the library I wanted to use to build our next application, and that the commercial license was a better fit for our plans. He agreed, and we purchased the license. We're a small company, less than 20 employees, but the few hundred dollars for the commercial license was a no-brainer (a few hundred dollars isn't a lot of money for any company to spend on product development).
We went ahead and also got the support package which gave us SVN access, support forum, etc. During my first several months I posted several times to the support forum and got my questions answered. In addition, like you pointed out, the API documentation is one of the better examples of good documentation (far from perfect, but far more than what a lot of other products have). It took a few months to really get comfortable with everything, but the learning process was easy and the product made sense to use.
As ExtJS 3.0 rolled around I decided to plug that in to the application and see how it worked. I've got about a page of changes that need to be made to get it to work with ExtJS 3.0, but considering all of the changes that went into the new version it looked like we were eventually going to want to use it, so we went ahead and bought another commercial license for 3.0. ExtJS is using GPL3 now, but that didn't apply to us.
The core developers of Ext, which are the people running the company, all post in the forum and have all been quite a bit of help with regard to tracking issues and dealing with bugs. They respond to requests for documentation pages, new examples, bug reports etc. I've never thought them to be unprofessional (let alone EXTREMELY unprofessional, in caps), nor "bad to deal with". They are available for communication through the forum, email, and phone.
For our own application, it now has about 3000 hours of development behind it and continues to grow, and we're just getting ready to begin marketing and selling it. ExtJS has continued to be a good product to use and develop with, and I've got no regrets about choosing ExtJS as the framework for our application.
It's BIG
They also have Ext Core available, which is all of the DOM/Ajax/Data components and none of the GUI components.
We don't want rich internet applications
Who do you think you're speaking for?
even if they're rich, the quality is poor
Really? All web applications are poor quality?
The 1% have functions that no one wants
Maybe that's what your AC wisdom is telling you, but here in reality I've got customers paying good money for those functions "that no one wants".
You can keep designing and selling your "pure HTML" web sites, as long as that makes you happy keep doing it. I'm happy making attractive and functional web applications, so that's what I'll continue doing.
Uh, yeah.. maybe your data wants to be free, but my data is staying right the hell on my computer, where it belongs.
The FTC is wrong to suggest that a "product review" is some easy to identify thing.
The FTC isn't talking about "product reviews", it's talking about "endorsements".
If I write that I love the Slap-Chop am I reviewing it?
No, but you're endorsing it. If you represent yourself as an unaffiliated third party but were actually paid to say that you love it then you need to state that. This isn't difficult to figure out.
That depends, does the government pay you to debunk UFO sightings on the internet? Or do the two actually have nothing to do with each other?
How are they defining a blog or blogger?
They aren't, they're defining "endorser". The medium doesn't matter. You can read the text here:
http://www2.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm
Actually, they don't say "blog" at all, they say "endorser". If you're an "endorser", it doesn't matter if you're online or not, and you're endorsing a product, and you got compensated for endorsing that product, you need to state so.
It doesn't matter how or where you endorse the product. If you endorse it, and the public is likely to see your endorsement as that of an unaffiliated third party, but you were actually compensated, you need to state that.
So does that include someone who posts a review on newegg (or any other website with reviews of purchasable products)?
Yes.
If so, does this open up other weird legal issues? For example: there was a mail-in-rebate included with the item, so you must mention in the review the amount of money that you will (hopefully) receive at a later date. How about Newegg combo deals? How about Newegg gifts?
None of those are incentives for giving the product a positive review. You can get a rebate or combo deal without reviewing the product at all, you're not being compensated for reviewing the product.
You don't have to follow our legal system if you don't want to do business in the US. If you want to advertise and sell to US citizens, then you agree to operate by our rules. If you don't agree to do that, then don't sell to us. Pretty simple.
Saying "results not typical" won't make it legal any more.
Good, every time I see one of those ads for an online computer diagnostic service (name withheld) which claims that it can "immediately diagnose any hidden problems" I always get the urge to create a hidden problem, prove that they can't "immediately" diagnose it, and then sue them for misleading advertising. That little disclaimer is the only thing that stops me.
Also, procrastination and not wanting to actually do that stops me too, it just annoys me to see those commercials because I know that they're just preying on people who don't know any better.
Well I know I'm going to remind everyone that buys a netbook that Windows 7 is not certified to run on it, so they should just use Linux.
Then you're just as bad as the people who rely on the presence of the sticker to make their decisions. Just because every version of Windows 7 might not be able to run on a given machine doesn't mean the user can't have a good experience with at least one version of Windows 7 on that machine. This isn't exactly heavy logic we're dealing with here.
I've got a computer sitting next to me, it doesn't have any Microsoft stickers on the case at all. Does that mean I should just run Linux on it? Does that mean that it's not capable of running XP, or Vista, or Windows 7? How can you draw any conclusions at all based on the presence or lack of a little piece of paper with some glue on the back? I can go into an Apple store and buy a $4000 computer. That computer doesn't have a Windows 7 sticker on it, so does that necessarily mean the hardware is not capable of running Windows 7?
this time PCs will have to work with all versions of Windows 7 to qualify for the sticker
Nonsense, there are lot's of systems out there, particularly Netbooks, which will not. Certainly will not necessarily be 64-bit.
If it only ran on 64-bit-capable systems, why is there a 32-bit version of Win 7 at all?
What exactly are you not understanding? This has exactly zero to do with a machine's ability to run Windows 7. This has everything to do with whether or not the manufacturer gets to put a little sticker on the case. The lack of the sticker does not mean that the computer is not capable of running any version of Windows 7, it simply means that the computer has not been certified to run every version of Windows 7.
You don't have much to say about my last reply, do you? Perhaps it's difficult to remove your foot from your mouth. Regardless, hopefully I was able to turn you on to the fact that not only is it possible to create desktop-like applications for the web, and that people have been doing it for years, but it's also entirely possible even with IE6, without requiring any plugins. You're a little late to the game, but welcome all the same. Good luck to you with your own "real applications". And, just so that I don't confuse you further, when I say "real applications", I mean a web application that looks and behaves as well as any desktop application, and also happens to bring in a profit.
You know, that actually makes a lot of sense. I'm surprised I haven't heard more people bring that up before. I'd give you another mod point if I hadn't already posted.
That's fine then, that means more public funds available for other projects.
the acceptance of false positives in the name of safety is generally as bad an idea as false negatives
I disagree, when talking about computer security a false positive is much more preferable than a false negative. This is essentially the scanner saying that it doesn't know what it's looking at, so it's going to quarantine it. I would rather it do that than not take any action against something that may or may not be a threat. It should only leave those things alone that it can determine with a very high degree of certainty not to be a threat, anything else gets quarantined for analysis. Which, incidentally, is exactly the opposite of how the justice system should work.
and pander to every possible wealthy client with an established software pathology
That's not what I said, I said a larger customer base is better for business. That doesn't mean one solution that works for 100% of businesses, that means maximizing my customer base by staying away from things that only a minority will have support for. There's a balance between usability and functionality that involves making a product to do what you want it to do while trying to keep your possible customer base as large as possible.
So what happens when your next wealthy client has JS disabled citing security concerns, and they want access to your same product line?
Then I explain to them that disabling all Javascript for security purposes is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and that if they want to use my software they need to make an exception. This isn't the same as asking them to upgrade their entire infrastructure, this is just a policy change. Javascript is far too useful to just disable it outright.
Do you expect us to believe you'll blithely support clients who have established themselves to be browserless, offline, or paper-only?
Of course not, I make software. If someone's business model doesn't involve software then they aren't my client.
You are being hypocritical if you do not admit that everyone has to draw the line somewhere regarding legacy support.
Of course, that's exactly what I'm saying. The line is still far away from IE6. I've dropped support for IE5, but it would frankly be stupid at this point to come out with new software that I'm trying to market to business customers that does not support IE6. The vast majority of business software can do a lot of cool things while still staying within the bounds of what's possible with IE6. I don't need a canvas or SVG to create reports with their data on it. I don't even need either of those to create interactive graphs. Yeah, it would be useful if I could use canvas instead of a Flash chart library, but that's not the reality I'm living in today. I'm not trying to create a technology demonstration here, this is software to help people run their business more efficiently, and as user-friendly as possible.
So should we be chastised not supporting IE6 in markets where the IE6 users are not going to add heavily to our profit margins?
Of course not, that's ridiculous to assume. If your target market is people who develop for the Linux kernel or if you're creating an Apple fan site it doesn't really make a difference if you support IE or not. If you're making business software it makes a hell of a lot of difference.
if CF is a shortcut that magically gives you a slightly larger user base without having to audit your entire stack for compatibility with a browser barely distinguishable from Netscape 4, then why shouldn't we give it a shot?
Go for it man, if you just absolutely need to have canvas and SVG on your iPod rumor site, I'm not going to stop you. But, like I said before, my software doesn't require anything that IE6 doesn't support. This is business logic, customer support, and reporting with a nice responsive interface.
Google has dropped support for IE6 on Youtube
I was extremely happy to hear Youtube and others make that announcement, I can't wait until I'm able to drop support for IE6.
Some of us want client-side databasing to reduce or serialize calls to the server. Some of us want to provide a more desktop-like experience in our web-based applications. Is drag and drop really that psycho of a thing to expect out of a web application?
It's funny that you should mention those two as examples. ExtJS has a very powerful data API, including support for storing data client-side in memory, batching calls to the server, directing and
I'm glad you aren't a judge.
What? Are you trying to claim that "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" is a good policy for security software?
Say I rewrote a C program in C++ and you rewrote the same program in javascript. I could have some valid criticisms of your language choice without criticising your desire to port the program -- and it wouldn't make me a hypocrite.
Yeah, you're right, but that analogy doesn't apply. If I rewrote your program and then you tell me that programs like that are a bad idea, then I would call you a hypocrite.
Maybe I wasn't clear, but I don't do much extra work to support IE these days. There are too many good libraries out there that do things without a lot of hassle and work in all major browsers. I'm talking about things like ExtJS, jquery, etc. Of course, this assumes you're not trying to use things that IE specifically doesn't support, like canvas.
a standards compliant browser, and there is more than one of those to choose from
You should be aware that quite often when you're dealing with the client you don't have the luxury of telling them what software to use. I'm not talking about building your personal website, I'm talking about building a marketable product that other companies want to buy because it helps them do their own business better. You can't tell these people that in order to run your software they need to upgrade their entire software infrastructure, however unfortunate that is. You also can't take the attitude that if they don't want to install a supported product then they just don't get to use your fancy software, because maybe your fancy software is your livelihood and your livelihood depends on a wide customer base, in addition to other things.
The last major problem I had with IE was an issue where you have a Flash movie inside of a frame, and the Flash movie sends out a post request that results in a file being downloaded which Office would normally open, and you have Office installed, then IE won't let you save or open the document, it just trashes it. That one took me a few days to work around, but Javascript and CSS libraries these days have progressed beyond IE, IE isn't the problem it was three years ago. Before you say I should have told the client with that IE issue to use a different browser, once when I requested that they install PHP on one of their internal servers I was met with the response that their corporation has a "no open-source" policy, whatever that means.
Yeah, IE is still a problem, it's still holding back development potential, but your product is going to look a lot more attractive to a client if it doesn't lose any functionality when you run it with IE6. When fewer than 5% of people are using IE6 then I'll consider dropping support for it, but that's not an option at this point.