4 ms·

Completely agree. Anyone who wants to support IE and Outlook astonish me. I'm going to be starting an email newsletter soon and I've not done one before outside

by rcarr 4y ago

Completely agree. Anyone who wants to support IE and Outlook astonish me. I'm going to be starting an email newsletter soon and I've not done one before outside of mail chimp but I am absolutely not fucking around using tables. Why are we indulging Microsoft on this and letting them think it's acceptable to use their shitty Word rendering engine for email? How much productivity is being wasted from people globally having to spend time working around their piss poor decisions? Newsletter makers should just refuse to indulge it and provide a plain text email alternative for Outlook users along with the reasoning at the top of the email: sorry this email isn't pretty for you but Microsoft need to sort this the fuck out. Please use a proper email client in order to view the nice version. Let things die that need to die. I can understand it more with Outlook because it still has just under 5% market share according to this[1] (guessing this is a US centric survey and not global) but are you really going to be getting paying customers or even just the eyeballs you want on your site from people who are using IE? Internet Explorer makes up less than 0.5% of browser use nowadays. You have got better things to be spending your time and money on than supporting it.

dmitriid 4y ago
> Anyone who wants to support IE and Outlook astonish me. Welcome to large companies (who may still get more people browsing from IE than populations of entire countries) and government agencies (good government agencies cannot afford not to support a wide array of old, weird, and unsupported browsers)
- rcarr 4y ago
  > Welcome to large companies (who may still get more people browsing from IE than populations of entire countries) Would like more info on this and examples of the companies you're talking about. How are they turning a profit from the 0.25% of the population using IE. > and government agencies (good government agencies cannot afford not to support a wide array of old, weird, and unsupported browsers) How can they not afford to support it? I don't see how they're raking in massive amounts of extra tax income, political goodwill, or providing a huge amount of value by supporting old browsers. I've not been in a local library, in the UK at least, that didn't have Chrome installed. The only people left using IE are boomers and last time I checked they're the segment of the population most able to afford a new laptop but, predictably, least willing to buy a new one or learn more about computers. Or just generally do anything for the greater benefit of society but that's a whole other conversation.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    As others have pointed out, IE is a poster child. There are many, many outdated browser versions and devices beside IE. If you have 200 million users, 0.25% is 500 000 people. You may think it's not much, but most cities on Earth have fewer people than that. And it's 0.25% IE, and 0.25% QQ, and 0.25% that Samsung browser from 2014, and... And suddenly you have 5 million people using outdated browsers. And when it comes to government agencies, "afford" does not mean "profit" because you can't measure everything in terms of profit. And no, not every "boomer" has the money to upgrade their 2012 Android phone bought for them by their kids. And not every millenial sports the latest iPhone. Etc. --- start quote --- In the middle, a young woman sits on a hard plastic chair. She is surrounded by canvas-bags containing her worldly possessions. She doesn't look like she is in a great emotional place right now. Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable... Walking behind her, I glance at her console and recognise the screen she's on. She's connected to the complementary WiFi and is browsing the GOV.UK pages on Housing Benefit. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven... --- end quote --- There's a reason ADA exists: it's because people only view everything through the lenses of "how much profit do I get from these people even if I am government"
    - rcarr 4y ago
      > If you have 200 million users, 0.25% is 500 000 people. You may think it's not much, but most cities on Earth have fewer people than that. And it's 0.25% IE, and 0.25% QQ, and 0.25% that Samsung browser from 2014, and... And suddenly you have 5 million people using outdated browsers. Yes but I’m still not convinced it makes economic sense for companies to support those users. Those users are signalling a clear aversion to technology and technology purchases. So how many sales or subscriptions are they getting from those 5 million people? Because a 0.5% conversion rate on 5 million people is 25,000 sales. Is that worth it for a company of that size and does it cover the development and management costs? And I see what you’re saying about access for governments sites but the government routinely hires contractors for £500 or more a day and the cost of a new iPad is £369. You would probably save more money loaning people on benefits a bottom of the range ipad and just supporting safari and chrome rather than throwing manpower and money supporting old browsers. Everyone involved gets a better experience (other than the contractors who aren’t needed any more).

by rcarr 4y ago

dmitriid 4y ago

> Anyone who wants to support IE and Outlook astonish me. Welcome to large companies (who may still get more people browsing from IE than populations of entire countries) and government agencies (good government agencies cannot afford not to support a wide array of old, weird, and unsupported browsers)

rcarr 4y ago
> Welcome to large companies (who may still get more people browsing from IE than populations of entire countries) Would like more info on this and examples of the companies you're talking about. How are they turning a profit from the 0.25% of the population using IE. > and government agencies (good government agencies cannot afford not to support a wide array of old, weird, and unsupported browsers) How can they not afford to support it? I don't see how they're raking in massive amounts of extra tax income, political goodwill, or providing a huge amount of value by supporting old browsers. I've not been in a local library, in the UK at least, that didn't have Chrome installed. The only people left using IE are boomers and last time I checked they're the segment of the population most able to afford a new laptop but, predictably, least willing to buy a new one or learn more about computers. Or just generally do anything for the greater benefit of society but that's a whole other conversation.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  As others have pointed out, IE is a poster child. There are many, many outdated browser versions and devices beside IE. If you have 200 million users, 0.25% is 500 000 people. You may think it's not much, but most cities on Earth have fewer people than that. And it's 0.25% IE, and 0.25% QQ, and 0.25% that Samsung browser from 2014, and... And suddenly you have 5 million people using outdated browsers. And when it comes to government agencies, "afford" does not mean "profit" because you can't measure everything in terms of profit. And no, not every "boomer" has the money to upgrade their 2012 Android phone bought for them by their kids. And not every millenial sports the latest iPhone. Etc. --- start quote --- In the middle, a young woman sits on a hard plastic chair. She is surrounded by canvas-bags containing her worldly possessions. She doesn't look like she is in a great emotional place right now. Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable... Walking behind her, I glance at her console and recognise the screen she's on. She's connected to the complementary WiFi and is browsing the GOV.UK pages on Housing Benefit. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven... --- end quote --- There's a reason ADA exists: it's because people only view everything through the lenses of "how much profit do I get from these people even if I am government"
  - rcarr 4y ago
    > If you have 200 million users, 0.25% is 500 000 people. You may think it's not much, but most cities on Earth have fewer people than that. And it's 0.25% IE, and 0.25% QQ, and 0.25% that Samsung browser from 2014, and... And suddenly you have 5 million people using outdated browsers. Yes but I’m still not convinced it makes economic sense for companies to support those users. Those users are signalling a clear aversion to technology and technology purchases. So how many sales or subscriptions are they getting from those 5 million people? Because a 0.5% conversion rate on 5 million people is 25,000 sales. Is that worth it for a company of that size and does it cover the development and management costs? And I see what you’re saying about access for governments sites but the government routinely hires contractors for £500 or more a day and the cost of a new iPad is £369. You would probably save more money loaning people on benefits a bottom of the range ipad and just supporting safari and chrome rather than throwing manpower and money supporting old browsers. Everyone involved gets a better experience (other than the contractors who aren’t needed any more).