Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Ticket #22044, comment 33

Timestamp:
10/02/12 22:28:42 (8 months ago)
Author:
mor10
Comment:

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  • Ticket #22044, comment 33

    initial v1  
    1 Performance wise there is no good reason why the mobile menu should be default and the 'regular' menu should be in the media queries. This swap is what is causing the problem and it is a non-standard way of doing things precisely because it causes this type of problem. Best-practice for ensuring backwards compatibility and graceful degradation is to put the more advanced features in media queries (which in themselves are more advanced features). The decision to turn this on it's head to make the theme "lean and clean" doesn't really make any sense to me. 
     1On the reasoning why IE8 support matters, keep in mind that while most North Americans and Western Europeans have moved on from IE8, the rest of the world is stuck with the older browsers for economical reasons. The upgrade from XP to Windows 7 (and soon Windows 8) is prohibitively expensive for many individuals and companies and for this reason they are stuck with IE8. Because WordPress is a world wide application with a world wide reach, the world wide end-user should be provided with as good of an experience as possible. 
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    3 Our main focus as developers and designers should be on serving the best experience possible to the end-users. And we have no (nor should we have) control over what devices, OSes or browsers the end users choose to use. In this case IE8 users are served a lesser experience without there being a solid reason for it: The 'regular' menu works fine on all devices as does the mobile one. This is not graceful degradation or progressive enhancement. It's just upside down and it should be fixed. 
     3The main issue here is the decision to make the mobile menu default and placing the 'standard' menu in media queries. This makes sense if you take a mobile-first approach, but it is non-standard and against best practice scenarios. When advanced features like this are included in a theme, they should be added as progressive enhancements, i.e. the mobile menu should be added for browsers that can handle it while the 'regular' menu is served up for the rest. 
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    5 Also keep in mind that while most North Americans and Western Europeans have moved on from IE8, the rest of the world is stuck with the older browsers for economical reasons. The upgrade from XP to Windows 7 (and soon Windows 8) is prohibitively expensive for many individuals and companies and for this reason they are stuck with IE8. Because WordPress is a world wide application with a world wide reach, the world wide end-user should be provided with as good of an experience as possible. In this case that means simply flipping the stylesheet around. 
     5Twenty Twelve is a great theme and definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to making the shipped themes bases for further development. However, the menu approach is sub-optimal and I would urge that in future development this issue be avoided. Though IE bashing is fun, it is not our job to police the browser world.