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"It seems though that if you need Internet Explorer 8 support, you’ll have to stick to using Bootstrap 3." I'm kind of surprised. No doubt some user bases hav

by draebek 11y ago

"It seems though that if you need Internet Explorer 8 support, you’ll have to stick to using Bootstrap 3." I'm kind of surprised. No doubt some user bases have user bases running newer browsers, but with IE 8 still sitting at ~13% market share[1] I suspect this will prevent many people from using Bootstrap 4, including myself. [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=ie8+market+share https://www.google.com/search?q=ie8+market+share

thedufer 11y ago
I don't know where Net Market Share is getting their data, but that's _way_ off compared to literally everyone else who's reporting. The tip-off for me was that they report all of Firefox+Chrome as ~10%. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers - the IE share reported on that site is being overestimated by at least 2.5x and more likely around 4x. Or everyone else is getting it completely wrong, I guess.
- AJ007 11y ago
  I'm at a fraction of a percentage for IE 8 as of yesterday in a sampling of over 100,000 sessions. If the sample is from desktop only users, that numbers moves up. That is still a large enough number to matter for a startup where those make or break growth & retention numbers matter. It would be insane to throw out 1% of your visitors while other employees are doing cartwheels in A/B testing for 2% improvements. The general principle I follow is drop support if a platform no longer receives security updates. The second part of that is to continue to produce a simplified version of your site that should work on all browsers. This provides big benefits for disability access, low bandwidth users (which is all of the developing markets), and edge cases.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - wj 11y ago
    Probably depends on a site's audience. I know in the financial industry that an unfortunately large amount of people still use IE8 as many vendor websites require it (long live Active X). But I imagine the visitors to many B2C websites no longer use IE8.
  - thedufer 11y ago
    > That is still a large enough number to matter for a startup where those make or break growth & retention numbers matter. I disagree. I work at one of said startups, and we have dropped support for IE9 and below. We figure the 50+% increase in productivity (directly translated into new features, speed improvements, etc.) is well worth it.
- draebek 11y ago
  Thanks for pointing out that Google's chosen data may be questionable. I found two other sources citing more like ~2.5% market share, which is in line with what you cite. I was motivated to go check our analytics and we're at more than 7% IE 8, so way too high for us to think about dropping support. I speculate that sites with low numbers of IE 8 users are typically oriented towards more technically savvy users, and/or if those sites were never working for IE 8 to begin with and so never had an opportunity to pick up IE 8 users in the first place.

by draebek 11y ago

thedufer 11y ago

I don't know where Net Market Share is getting their data, but that's _way_ off compared to literally everyone else who's reporting. The tip-off for me was that they report all of Firefox+Chrome as ~10%. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers - the IE share reported on that site is being overestimated by at least 2.5x and more likely around 4x. Or everyone else is getting it completely wrong, I guess.

AJ007 11y ago
I'm at a fraction of a percentage for IE 8 as of yesterday in a sampling of over 100,000 sessions. If the sample is from desktop only users, that numbers moves up. That is still a large enough number to matter for a startup where those make or break growth & retention numbers matter. It would be insane to throw out 1% of your visitors while other employees are doing cartwheels in A/B testing for 2% improvements. The general principle I follow is drop support if a platform no longer receives security updates. The second part of that is to continue to produce a simplified version of your site that should work on all browsers. This provides big benefits for disability access, low bandwidth users (which is all of the developing markets), and edge cases.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- wj 11y ago
  Probably depends on a site's audience. I know in the financial industry that an unfortunately large amount of people still use IE8 as many vendor websites require it (long live Active X). But I imagine the visitors to many B2C websites no longer use IE8.
- thedufer 11y ago
  > That is still a large enough number to matter for a startup where those make or break growth & retention numbers matter. I disagree. I work at one of said startups, and we have dropped support for IE9 and below. We figure the 50+% increase in productivity (directly translated into new features, speed improvements, etc.) is well worth it.
draebek 11y ago
Thanks for pointing out that Google's chosen data may be questionable. I found two other sources citing more like ~2.5% market share, which is in line with what you cite. I was motivated to go check our analytics and we're at more than 7% IE 8, so way too high for us to think about dropping support. I speculate that sites with low numbers of IE 8 users are typically oriented towards more technically savvy users, and/or if those sites were never working for IE 8 to begin with and so never had an opportunity to pick up IE 8 users in the first place.