5 ms·

Developing for old browsers is (almost) a thing of the past

42 points by lancashire 15y ago

AndrewDucker 15y ago
By moving to IE9 he's discounting all corporate customers who haven't moved to Windows 7 yet. This leaves them with only one option if they want support on a long-term supported browser, which is the recently shipped Firefox Enterprise Support Release.
- helipad 15y ago
  Except there are no customers. It's a new product, and if you want to use it then you'll need an up to date browser. No-one is being cut off.
- WildUtah 15y ago
  >>>By moving to IE9 he's discounting all corporate customers who haven't moved to Windows 7 yet. Nonsense. Chrome and Firefox will both run on XP.
  - AndrewDucker 15y ago
    You'll notice the second sentence there, which talks about Firefox ESR as the only option if they want a long-term supported browser. Many large corporations will not switch to a browser which updates itself more often than they can easily test it against all of their internal apps.
    - adhipg 15y ago
      Is the Google Chrome Frame for IE an alternative option for such users?
      - AndrewDucker 15y ago
        Sadly not, unless specifically allowed by the IT department. I certainly can't download EXEs past our firewall.
        sek 15y ago
        These are very easy to disable(i mean avoid), i don't assume they decode everything what would be very expensive. Just upload the exe file somewhere as .jpg and rename it again after you download it. ... but we are on hacker news, you probably know that yourself ;-) what's the problem? I never worked under such conditions, can they prevent you from executing not white-listed exe files?
        AndrewDucker 15y ago
        "These are very easy to disable" That would be a sacking offence.
    - batista 15y ago
      Those corporations tend to be a pain to work, have lots of internal crap apps, and don't use external stuff like Basecamp anyway. Good riddance.
      - dsr_ 15y ago
        They include banks and other very-security-conscious folk... with money to spend on easily deployable apps that address their needs. Feel free not to go after them as customers, though.
      - untog 15y ago
        They also have a ton of money. You might not want any of it, but some do. Continuing to support IE7/8 for that reason makes sense.
      - batista 15y ago
        They include banks and other very-security-conscious folk... with money to spend on easily deployable apps that address their needs. Feel free not to go after them as customers, though. Are you kidding me? Most banks wouldn't touch an external service like Basecamp with a ten-foot pool. Basecamp is not "deployable", it's externally hosted. They also have a ton of money. You might not want any of it, but some do. Every company does not necessarily fit into the "some" that do. Everybody has money, it's "how possible it is for them to part with it" VS "what your company has to do to make them give it to you", that matters. If you don't understand the notion of "opportunity cost", you shouldn't be running a business.
- melling 15y ago
  Sounds like they simply want to remove as much legacy as possible in the new product. The old product will still work. They are "skating to where the the puck is going to be..." in a year or so.
- batista 15y ago
  By moving to IE9 he's discounting all corporate customers who haven't moved to Windows 7 yet. Better framed: he's discounting all the corporate customers who drag their feet technology wise, and will give him more headache than money. Such corporate late adopters are not usually the ones to use something external, much less Basecamp, anyway.
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  It's totally necessary though. Developer's can't be supporting old browsers forever. And really, when we speak of "old browsers" we really just mean IE which still throws weird behaviors at you in the latest versions! When enough sites stop supporting these dinosaurs we not only give users a better experience on our sites but across the entire web. Corporate customers can always use Chrome or Firefox on XP and if they can't then there's still Basecamp Classic for them. I think they're doing the right thing. It's a calculated risk and I think the odds are in their favor.
  - untog 15y ago
    It's totally necessary though. Developer's can't be supporting old browsers forever. It's not really our choice, though. If you run an online shopping site and 40% of your customers use IE7, you should support IE7. Urge them to upgrade, sure, but if you want to actually make money you're going to have to bite the bullet and deal with old browsers.
    - dmethvin 15y ago
      Yep, it really comes down to money. If you are running a consumer retail site that gets traffic from Fortune 500 employees buying stuff on their lunch hour, you will either support IE7 or lose business. Sure IE7 has problems, but they are well known problems at this point. An experienced web designer should know how to deal with them to give IE7 users a degraded but functional experience.
      - billpatrianakos 15y ago
        Yeah, true. I just have this dream that all web developers will band together to stop supporting "problem" browsers forcing users and browser makers to fall in line. I mean, correct me if I come off as a spoiled brat but I think they should be making browsers to suit how we build sites and not how they want us to develop them.
        hello_moto 15y ago
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  IE9 runs on Vista.
huskyr 15y ago
I think the title is a little bit misleading. The moment you can drop support for browser versions is pretty dependent on the requirements of your client, and your visitors. 7% for users with IE8 or lower is a pretty tech-savvy crowd, many developers might not have the luxury of dropping support for IE8 because many of their visitors still use that browser.
- eropple 15y ago
  Agreed. There's still a very significant portion of China using IE6, for example. If you've got an international focus on non-developers, it's not really even close to feasible to drop IE6-7.
mrspandex 15y ago
I'm so sick of websites not even attempting to render in a browser not in their whitelist. Please give me a button that says "I understand the risks, but I want to try anyway."
- dhh 15y ago
  We don't do that. We only discriminate against browsers we know will have problems. Like IE6-8. So what we're running is actually a blacklist. If you show up with a browser that's not one of the big four, we're just letting you in on your own accord. I completely agree that whitelisting for browsers is bullshit.
  - 51Cards 15y ago
    I think cutting IE 8 off is a little premature. I agree it's a hassle to support but I think of for example Rogers Cable, a client of mine still sitting on locked down XP across the entire office base. You just cut their 6000-ish employees off at the knees. They can't install another browser even if they wanted to, and I'm sure that same situation exists in a lot of other corporations.
    - edash 15y ago
      The original Basecamp isn't going anywhere, so those 6000-ish employees won't be out a thing. They'll just need to advance a few IT years to be able to use Basecamp Next. From the article: "We know it’s not always easy to upgrade your browser (or force an upgrade on a client), but we believe it’s necessary to offer the best Basecamp we can possibly make. In addition, we’re not going to move the requirements on Basecamp Classic, so that’ll continue to work for people who are unable to use a modern browser."
- rmc 15y ago
  Some people don't understand the risks, but have been trained to click the OK button. They will then complain when the site doesn't work and completly forget that they clicked the "i accept the risks button"
hodder 15y ago
The multibillion dollar organization I work for just updated to IE8 from IE6 last week. We aren't allowed to use new browsers or chrome frame for "security" reasons. ha!
- randlet 15y ago
  Lucky you! I work at a large hospital with (likely) 10k+ computers running XP and we're still stuck on IE6. I'm not sure what the plan to migrate away from IE6 is but my guess is that it will be a massive pain for our IT department. I have to imagine that IE6 will continue to limp along for a number of years to come, but hopefully large organizations will have learned a lesson about depending on a specific browser version (or a specific browser for that matter).
  - sek 15y ago
    Is Chrome Frame an option?
johnbender 15y ago
My understanding is that IE has a significant market share among users with accessibiliy needs (came up in conversation after the recent jquery 2.0 browser support discussion). While that may not be important for 37 signals it's an oft overlooked side effect of dropping version 8 support.
kenrik 15y ago
IE6 may ye rest in peace... (or hell)
badmonkey0001 15y ago
Now the problem becomes mobile browsers... (hover vs. tap, tiny resolutions, differences in form controls, sometimes crippled features that work fine in a "pc" based browser, fluid layout choices, float issues) There will always be madness. [edit] Took me a few to find this link again. Do compatibility charts like this look familiar? http://www.quirksmode.org/m/css.html http://www.quirksmode.org/m/css.html

42 points by lancashire 15y ago

By moving to IE9 he's discounting all corporate customers who haven't moved to Windows 7 yet. This leaves them with only one option if they want support on a long-term supported browser, which is the recently shipped Firefox Enterprise Support Release.

helipad 15y ago
Except there are no customers. It's a new product, and if you want to use it then you'll need an up to date browser. No-one is being cut off.
WildUtah 15y ago
>>>By moving to IE9 he's discounting all corporate customers who haven't moved to Windows 7 yet. Nonsense. Chrome and Firefox will both run on XP.
- AndrewDucker 15y ago
  You'll notice the second sentence there, which talks about Firefox ESR as the only option if they want a long-term supported browser. Many large corporations will not switch to a browser which updates itself more often than they can easily test it against all of their internal apps.
  - adhipg 15y ago
    Is the Google Chrome Frame for IE an alternative option for such users?
    - AndrewDucker 15y ago
      Sadly not, unless specifically allowed by the IT department. I certainly can't download EXEs past our firewall.
      - sek 15y ago
        These are very easy to disable(i mean avoid), i don't assume they decode everything what would be very expensive. Just upload the exe file somewhere as .jpg and rename it again after you download it. ... but we are on hacker news, you probably know that yourself ;-) what's the problem? I never worked under such conditions, can they prevent you from executing not white-listed exe files?
        AndrewDucker 15y ago
        "These are very easy to disable" That would be a sacking offence.
  - batista 15y ago
    Those corporations tend to be a pain to work, have lots of internal crap apps, and don't use external stuff like Basecamp anyway. Good riddance.
    - dsr_ 15y ago
      They include banks and other very-security-conscious folk... with money to spend on easily deployable apps that address their needs. Feel free not to go after them as customers, though.
    - untog 15y ago
      They also have a ton of money. You might not want any of it, but some do. Continuing to support IE7/8 for that reason makes sense.
    - batista 15y ago
      They include banks and other very-security-conscious folk... with money to spend on easily deployable apps that address their needs. Feel free not to go after them as customers, though. Are you kidding me? Most banks wouldn't touch an external service like Basecamp with a ten-foot pool. Basecamp is not "deployable", it's externally hosted. They also have a ton of money. You might not want any of it, but some do. Every company does not necessarily fit into the "some" that do. Everybody has money, it's "how possible it is for them to part with it" VS "what your company has to do to make them give it to you", that matters. If you don't understand the notion of "opportunity cost", you shouldn't be running a business.
melling 15y ago
Sounds like they simply want to remove as much legacy as possible in the new product. The old product will still work. They are "skating to where the the puck is going to be..." in a year or so.
batista 15y ago
By moving to IE9 he's discounting all corporate customers who haven't moved to Windows 7 yet. Better framed: he's discounting all the corporate customers who drag their feet technology wise, and will give him more headache than money. Such corporate late adopters are not usually the ones to use something external, much less Basecamp, anyway.
billpatrianakos 15y ago
It's totally necessary though. Developer's can't be supporting old browsers forever. And really, when we speak of "old browsers" we really just mean IE which still throws weird behaviors at you in the latest versions! When enough sites stop supporting these dinosaurs we not only give users a better experience on our sites but across the entire web. Corporate customers can always use Chrome or Firefox on XP and if they can't then there's still Basecamp Classic for them. I think they're doing the right thing. It's a calculated risk and I think the odds are in their favor.
- untog 15y ago
  It's totally necessary though. Developer's can't be supporting old browsers forever. It's not really our choice, though. If you run an online shopping site and 40% of your customers use IE7, you should support IE7. Urge them to upgrade, sure, but if you want to actually make money you're going to have to bite the bullet and deal with old browsers.
  - dmethvin 15y ago
    Yep, it really comes down to money. If you are running a consumer retail site that gets traffic from Fortune 500 employees buying stuff on their lunch hour, you will either support IE7 or lose business. Sure IE7 has problems, but they are well known problems at this point. An experienced web designer should know how to deal with them to give IE7 users a degraded but functional experience.
    - billpatrianakos 15y ago
      Yeah, true. I just have this dream that all web developers will band together to stop supporting "problem" browsers forcing users and browser makers to fall in line. I mean, correct me if I come off as a spoiled brat but I think they should be making browsers to suit how we build sites and not how they want us to develop them.
      - hello_moto 15y ago
jamesgeck0 15y ago
IE9 runs on Vista.

huskyr 15y ago

I think the title is a little bit misleading. The moment you can drop support for browser versions is pretty dependent on the requirements of your client, and your visitors. 7% for users with IE8 or lower is a pretty tech-savvy crowd, many developers might not have the luxury of dropping support for IE8 because many of their visitors still use that browser.

eropple 15y ago
Agreed. There's still a very significant portion of China using IE6, for example. If you've got an international focus on non-developers, it's not really even close to feasible to drop IE6-7.

mrspandex 15y ago

I'm so sick of websites not even attempting to render in a browser not in their whitelist. Please give me a button that says "I understand the risks, but I want to try anyway."

dhh 15y ago
We don't do that. We only discriminate against browsers we know will have problems. Like IE6-8. So what we're running is actually a blacklist. If you show up with a browser that's not one of the big four, we're just letting you in on your own accord. I completely agree that whitelisting for browsers is bullshit.
- 51Cards 15y ago
  I think cutting IE 8 off is a little premature. I agree it's a hassle to support but I think of for example Rogers Cable, a client of mine still sitting on locked down XP across the entire office base. You just cut their 6000-ish employees off at the knees. They can't install another browser even if they wanted to, and I'm sure that same situation exists in a lot of other corporations.
  - edash 15y ago
    The original Basecamp isn't going anywhere, so those 6000-ish employees won't be out a thing. They'll just need to advance a few IT years to be able to use Basecamp Next. From the article: "We know it’s not always easy to upgrade your browser (or force an upgrade on a client), but we believe it’s necessary to offer the best Basecamp we can possibly make. In addition, we’re not going to move the requirements on Basecamp Classic, so that’ll continue to work for people who are unable to use a modern browser."
rmc 15y ago
Some people don't understand the risks, but have been trained to click the OK button. They will then complain when the site doesn't work and completly forget that they clicked the "i accept the risks button"

hodder 15y ago

The multibillion dollar organization I work for just updated to IE8 from IE6 last week. We aren't allowed to use new browsers or chrome frame for "security" reasons. ha!

randlet 15y ago
Lucky you! I work at a large hospital with (likely) 10k+ computers running XP and we're still stuck on IE6. I'm not sure what the plan to migrate away from IE6 is but my guess is that it will be a massive pain for our IT department. I have to imagine that IE6 will continue to limp along for a number of years to come, but hopefully large organizations will have learned a lesson about depending on a specific browser version (or a specific browser for that matter).
- sek 15y ago
  Is Chrome Frame an option?

johnbender 15y ago

My understanding is that IE has a significant market share among users with accessibiliy needs (came up in conversation after the recent jquery 2.0 browser support discussion). While that may not be important for 37 signals it's an oft overlooked side effect of dropping version 8 support.

kenrik 15y ago

IE6 may ye rest in peace... (or hell)

badmonkey0001 15y ago

Now the problem becomes mobile browsers... (hover vs. tap, tiny resolutions, differences in form controls, sometimes crippled features that work fine in a "pc" based browser, fluid layout choices, float issues) There will always be madness. [edit] Took me a few to find this link again. Do compatibility charts like this look familiar? http://www.quirksmode.org/m/css.html http://www.quirksmode.org/m/css.html