6 ms·
I doubt their userbase using IE7 is large enough for this to be a big deal. This tax's real goal is PR for Kogan.
by ceol 14y ago
I doubt their userbase using IE7 is large enough for this to be a big deal. This tax's real goal is PR for Kogan.
- josephcooney 14y agoKogan seem to be very good at attracting attention like this.
- frankydp 14y agoMaybe not for Kogan, but most of the DOD is still on IE6, as an example that is something like 2 million daily users. Uber large business and government is were the users are hiding. The reason the numbers are still off is because those same users are using chrome at there house in the evening. There should be a business only metric for browser usage. That would be very interesting.
- Kaizyn 14y agoNo, DoD switched from IE6 several years ago.
- mayneack 14y agoMany government offices now have firefox too. Not sure about the ones with higher security concerns, but I know the normal security places have FF.
- bmelton 14y agoAnd to be fair, the divisions in which we're talking about high levels of security aren't using those browsers on the internet anyway, they're locked away in SCIFFs, accessing internal-only applications.
- MrVitaliy 14y ago> Maybe not for Kogan, but most of the DOD is still on IE6, as an example that is something like 2 million daily users. With each passing day, this statement made less and less sense to a point of absurd. And that point has been reached a long time ago. I work for Department of Interior (the armpit when compared to DOD) and here its either fully patched IE8, latest Firefox or you are booted off of network. Can DOD be really that archaic and still allow employees to browse wild wild web with IE6?
- sliverstorm 14y agoI am not part of the DoD, but as I understand it a lot of entrenched usage of IE6 these days is usually internal apps. So, perhaps they use IE6 for private networks, and use IE8, Firefox, et al for public-facing workstations.
- beedogs 14y agoBut IE6 won't even run on new versions of Windows. You'd need to run up a VM on a user's machine with a copy of XP. What's the refresh cycle at DoD? Two decades?
- sliverstorm 14y agoSo, you just keep using XP. They probably have internal interfaces that aren't forward compatible, and re-factoring anything inside the DoD has got to be stupid expensive.
- molmalo 14y agoI don't know the internals of the DOD, but I bet that it's not too much for the costs (that doesn't seem to be a big problem there), but the human resources being used in other priorities.
- AndrewDucker 14y agoIf you have thousands of machines running an OS that works perfectly well for your purposes, then you only upgrade when support lapses, which is 2014 in this case.
- 27182818284 14y agoI'm not buying it. This is the reason always given, and in real life I've not come across this as the actual reason. 99% of the time it is lack of staff and will not lack of "We don't know how to make the adjustments to make it work." I've also seen universities with faculty and staff still using IE7 not because of infrastructure requirements, but just because nobody had come around to upgrade because they hadn't bitched loudly enough.
- eli 14y agoI've seen some numbers that are nearly all business users. They've actually improved considerably in the last year or two. IE6 was quite common in certain sectors like government, finance, healthcare, (see if you can guess what those industries have in common) but in late 2010 and early 2011 people finally really started upgrading either to newer versions of IE or, surprisingly, Firefox. IE6 use (even among business) is extremely rare right now. Which makes sense, because very few websites would actually work.
- pwaring 14y ago"Uber large business and government is were the users are hiding" Agreed. About 1/3 of our users - all of whom are insurers or brokers - use IR7
- pwaring 14y agoIt's not just large businesses. About 1/3 of our users use IE7, although thankfully there's hardly anyone still on IE6. About 1/2 are still on XP (NT 5.1). Some of these are small companies with <10 employees.
- seanp2k2 14y agoDon't forget third-world countries that largely rely on XP. IIRC as of about a year ago, a double-digit percentage of asia was still on XP.
- takluyver 14y agoA double digit percentage overall is still on XP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...
- chris_wot 14y agoI would imagine the proportion of DOD users going to an Australia electronics shopping site would be 0.0000000001% of Kogan's total user base.
- marshray 14y agoI suspect your estimate is off by a few orders of magnitude. Unless Kogan's user base is larger than the total population of Earth (I know you're out there), then even one of them from the DoD would represent 0.000000014%.
- TheCount 14y ago>most of the DOD is still on IE6, as an example that is something like 2 million daily users. Do you have any evidence for that? From what I've seen, which is admittedly not comprehensive, this is false.
- trebor 14y agoFor one of our clients they had 100k+ hits from IE6/7 alone in the last 30 days. It's not that uncommon a browser, no matter how much it should be.
- lukejduncan 14y agoFord Motor Company as of a year ago was 100% IE 6. There was talk of change, but all the internal apps only work in IE 6.
- gringomorcego 14y agoTrue enough. But how many hours of life has ie sucked from developers? I mean ms purposefully held back the development of multiple internet standards, they deserve what they get imho, ideals or not.
- paul9290 14y agoIf you are a good front developer then fixing ie7 issues shouldn't be an issue or take you long to fix! For html5 use the html5 boiler plate and ensure your code validates. Also do not use floats to position everything, only elements that need to flow with the contents of the document. Use position absolute for elements that are static and of course in the block that holds said elements add position relative. Using too many floats is bound to make you hating ie7 even more.
- Zak 14y agoI think you're missing the point. We're all tired of making one version for normal browsers and a bunch of special fixes for six year old browsers nobody should be using anymore. We're all tired of having to constrain the development techniques we use to make it easy to support six year old browsers nobody should be using anymore. We're all tired of thinking about six year old browsers nobody should be using anymore.
- alttab 14y agoThis. it also makes doing things that were not thought of in 2000 nearly impossible. popovers , css3, JavaScript, And animAtion libraries all have problems. its not just a bunch of zoom 1 fixes anymore. the web has moved on. display bugs are not the only problem
- andrewf 14y agoI work for a site which gets a lot of traffic from mainstream Australia (ie we're not in the tech space). We still get a significant amount of traffic from IE7.
- nadam 14y agoI did not even open the post, and did not know what Kogan is: I just looked at the title of the post on HN and said to myself: What a great PR idea!
- recycleme 14y agoIt's about converting one IE7 user at a time. Either way, I bet the developers had fun with this feature.
- grimtrigger 14y agoAs a developer supporting IE7, I definitely see this feature as a powerful release valve for frustrated developer. A little way of management to say to the dev team, "we understand your pain"
- nollidge 14y agoCan't it be both?