Forums » Impact Engine » Unpopular question: Old versions of Internet Explorer?

Hi :)

So the only thing holding me back from buying Impact at the moment is IE<9's lack of support for HTML5. I know it deserves to die, but for commercial reasons I may end up being obliged to support it. =|

I was wondering... would it be possible to support older versions by having the canvas rendering behind an abstraction layer, and using, say, VRML instead for IE the way raphaeljs does? That still leaves the sound to be worked out because there would be no audio tag.

Opinions?

chrome frame might be an option?

Not for me, it isn't =| If I'm asking people to download a plugin I might as well ask them to use a different browser - or do it in Flash. At least that's something most people will have already.

I actually tried making it work with FlashCanvas (by using a local HTTP proxy to tamper with the HTTP response of playbiolab.com and have it include FlashCanvas) but it didn't work. More sophisticated meddling will be required to see if I can make it work, for which I'd need to buy impactjs - and this is a pre-sales question, so I'd prefer it answered first...

Still not sure about how I'd make audio work.

For what it's worth the number of people using old versions of IE is going down. IE 6,7 and 8 have 11.8%. That still sounds like a lot but how long before you have a product?

IE browser stats
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp

Someone had success using libraries like FlashCanvas (http://flashcanvas.net/) with Impact?

@Blammo and @Datamosh, I just made flashcanvas.net's pro product work with Scirra Construct 2. That's also a product whose developers have steered away from the whole flash canvas thing and support for IE7/8.

Check my solution here:
http://www.scirra.com/forum/flashcanvas-an-answer-for-nonhtml5-browsers_topic48639.html?KW=

scroll down a bit to my long post in that thread. I explain exactly how I made it work. You need to replace addEventListener() with attachEvent() and remove audio mainly. I'm going to need to replace their audio engine.


You can see it in action here:
http://linkit.faceyspacey.com

You can open that up in all browsers. In ie7/8 flash will be used as a fallback.

The only thing to do is to try it. @blammo, go to appmobi.com and signup for their $20/month package. You'll get access to impactjs. It's only $20 bucks.

Let me know if you have any luck. Just try to get it to work in IE8 and use the IE8 debugger. You'll see exactly which code is problematic. If you don't have windows, run in a virtual machine like I did:
http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/04/internet-explorer-for-mac-ie7-ie8-ie-9-free/

Otherwise, feel free to grab my code from http://linkit.faceyspacey.com. I have some code to toggle between different scripts for IE7/8 vs. other browsers. I also have flashcanvas installed properly so you see how it works. Anyway, you'll read about all that in my other post.

Also, here's some tips about removing appMobi code:

http://impactjs.com/forums/help/help-with-iexplore