7 ms·

You know what? At this point I'm not sure it's worth catering to people who "don't even know what a browser is." They've had nearly 20 years to hop on the ban

You know what? At this point I'm not sure it's worth catering to people who "don't even know what a browser is." They've had nearly 20 years to hop on the bandwagon and start understanding this crazy "internet" thing, and they haven't. A person that behind the times isn't going to buy anything on the internet anyway.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
You shouldn't assume that everyone with money or education shares all of the same interests as you.
trafficlight 14y ago
I can't imagine the internet is very useful or fun for those people either. Every other site must be broken in some way. And that's still not enough for them to ask someone about it.
- DougWebb 14y ago
  That's what they call "The Internet". They may wonder why everyone else likes it so much, or they like it well enough as they see it that they're not even aware of what they're missing. I'm not much of a car guy, but I like my car just fine. Someone who's really into cars and has test-driven hundreds of them could probably point out dozens of deficiencies in my car and the way I drive it that I'm totally oblivious to. He might not like my car at all, but I'm happy with it and see no reason to 'upgrade' it. Same goes for any other product field, hobby, interest, etc. People who are more interested are better acquainted with what's available and the way to get the best experience, and people who are less interested are happy enough with their point of view and oblivious to any short-comings.
mgkimsal 14y ago
it's not always just about buying. having information accessible to people is... generally... a good goal to have.
eli 14y ago
That works fine for your blog, but what percentage of customers are you willing to turn away from your web business?
- gnaritas 14y ago
  I the cost of maintaining apps exceeds their value as customers, then they're going to lose support. Don't forget supporting these old broweres isn't free, cheap, or easy.
  - gilini 14y ago
    That's so much BS. Like supporting old browsers is that hard/expensive. Everyone keeps saying that, but I have never ever seen numbers to back it up. Letting it all blow up in the user's face is not an option to me. And I do business with publicity agencies, they don't give a fuck about this stuff, as far as they know everyone owns the latest macbook.
    - alttab 14y ago
      I'll tell you the numbers. We spend way too much effort trying to make our sophisticated web app work with ie7. The industry demands innovation in ux but it's nearly impossible to provide it when you are writing for 4 browsers. In a lot of cases we struggle for hours on one problem and end up writing a separate implementation for that feature that doesn't perform as well. Now we have segmentation in experience, help documentation, and support. It's expensive as fuck.
      - untog 14y ago
        FYI: you didn't mention any numbers like you promised.
        alttab 14y ago
        Sorry - you are right. 1) 90% of our visual front-end bugs come from IE, sometimes only showing up in certain versions of IE7. 2) Our mac developers either need a license for VMware fusion or multiple boxes/VMs to test IE 7/8/9 which of course behave very differently. Maintaining these boxes, Windows licenses, and VMware licenses adds additional stress to IT, and the context switching for our developers is expensive. 3) For the ones that do run a VM, we've had to upgrade their RAM so they could run the app and the VM at the same time. RAM is cheap, but its still money for each new mac-based frontend developer we have. 4) A lot of our distributed application message passing is actually done through the browser via client-side javascript. This makes it even more of a pain to test since automating this is difficult and expensive (more setup code, and capybara tests), and needs to be run in each supported browser.
tambourine_man 14y ago
A person that behind the times isn't going to buy anything on the internet anyway I just had my largest ever budget approved by someone who uses IE8 at home in 1024x768 resolution. Not that this proves anything, but only goes to show that money is not always where you think it is. Besides, visitors may interest you in ways other than making a sell.
nowarninglabel 14y ago
>A person that behind the times isn't going to buy anything on the internet anyway. Do you actually have some data to back that up? Because all the data I've seen says the exact opposite to what you are saying.
- notJim 14y ago
  Looots of people shopping at work using the corporate-standard browser.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    Not for long: http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-explorer-7-tax/ http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-explorer-7-tax/
    - recursive 14y ago
      1. You can buy things even if they're taxed. 2. You can buy things from places that are not kogan.
      - anthonyb 14y ago
        And when more places start doing this, or quietly dropping support for IE6, 7 and 8? People are going to start clamoring to be able to install a decent browser.
        notJim 14y ago
        I am extremely skeptical that more places will start imposing an IE tax. It's simply too unfriendly toward customers. And rational people drop browser support based on usage stats, because it's a cost-benefit decision, which means that this clamoring will never happen.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

You shouldn't assume that everyone with money or education shares all of the same interests as you.

trafficlight 14y ago

I can't imagine the internet is very useful or fun for those people either. Every other site must be broken in some way. And that's still not enough for them to ask someone about it.

DougWebb 14y ago
That's what they call "The Internet". They may wonder why everyone else likes it so much, or they like it well enough as they see it that they're not even aware of what they're missing. I'm not much of a car guy, but I like my car just fine. Someone who's really into cars and has test-driven hundreds of them could probably point out dozens of deficiencies in my car and the way I drive it that I'm totally oblivious to. He might not like my car at all, but I'm happy with it and see no reason to 'upgrade' it. Same goes for any other product field, hobby, interest, etc. People who are more interested are better acquainted with what's available and the way to get the best experience, and people who are less interested are happy enough with their point of view and oblivious to any short-comings.

mgkimsal 14y ago

it's not always just about buying. having information accessible to people is... generally... a good goal to have.

eli 14y ago

That works fine for your blog, but what percentage of customers are you willing to turn away from your web business?

gnaritas 14y ago
I the cost of maintaining apps exceeds their value as customers, then they're going to lose support. Don't forget supporting these old broweres isn't free, cheap, or easy.
- gilini 14y ago
  That's so much BS. Like supporting old browsers is that hard/expensive. Everyone keeps saying that, but I have never ever seen numbers to back it up. Letting it all blow up in the user's face is not an option to me. And I do business with publicity agencies, they don't give a fuck about this stuff, as far as they know everyone owns the latest macbook.
  - alttab 14y ago
    I'll tell you the numbers. We spend way too much effort trying to make our sophisticated web app work with ie7. The industry demands innovation in ux but it's nearly impossible to provide it when you are writing for 4 browsers. In a lot of cases we struggle for hours on one problem and end up writing a separate implementation for that feature that doesn't perform as well. Now we have segmentation in experience, help documentation, and support. It's expensive as fuck.
    - untog 14y ago
      FYI: you didn't mention any numbers like you promised.
      - alttab 14y ago
        Sorry - you are right. 1) 90% of our visual front-end bugs come from IE, sometimes only showing up in certain versions of IE7. 2) Our mac developers either need a license for VMware fusion or multiple boxes/VMs to test IE 7/8/9 which of course behave very differently. Maintaining these boxes, Windows licenses, and VMware licenses adds additional stress to IT, and the context switching for our developers is expensive. 3) For the ones that do run a VM, we've had to upgrade their RAM so they could run the app and the VM at the same time. RAM is cheap, but its still money for each new mac-based frontend developer we have. 4) A lot of our distributed application message passing is actually done through the browser via client-side javascript. This makes it even more of a pain to test since automating this is difficult and expensive (more setup code, and capybara tests), and needs to be run in each supported browser.

tambourine_man 14y ago

A person that behind the times isn't going to buy anything on the internet anyway I just had my largest ever budget approved by someone who uses IE8 at home in 1024x768 resolution. Not that this proves anything, but only goes to show that money is not always where you think it is. Besides, visitors may interest you in ways other than making a sell.

nowarninglabel 14y ago

>A person that behind the times isn't going to buy anything on the internet anyway. Do you actually have some data to back that up? Because all the data I've seen says the exact opposite to what you are saying.

notJim 14y ago
Looots of people shopping at work using the corporate-standard browser.
- anthonyb 14y ago
  Not for long: http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-explorer-7-tax/ http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-explorer-7-tax/
  - recursive 14y ago
    1. You can buy things even if they're taxed. 2. You can buy things from places that are not kogan.
    - anthonyb 14y ago
      And when more places start doing this, or quietly dropping support for IE6, 7 and 8? People are going to start clamoring to be able to install a decent browser.
      - notJim 14y ago
        I am extremely skeptical that more places will start imposing an IE tax. It's simply too unfriendly toward customers. And rational people drop browser support based on usage stats, because it's a cost-benefit decision, which means that this clamoring will never happen.