6 ms·

Even IE9 is pretty old. It's over 2 years old by now. IE8 is over 4 years old. IE11 will be released soon. How many versions of IE do you intend to support?

• igravious 14y ago
  As many versions as used by the audience that they serve I suppose; how is the choice up to him?
  • jhack 14y ago
    At the speed web development is moving, I don't see much sense in coddling browsers that are more than 2-3 years old.
    • monkeynotes 14y ago
      That all changes if your client uses browsers that are more then 2-3 years old, and you are financially dependent on your client being served properly.
      • nbouscal 14y ago
        You can tell your client to use a new browser. It's all in how you phrase it. Everyone in this thread seems so damn scared of their clients. You have a way to improve their experience of using the internet and using your product. That's an opportunity to embrace, not something to run away from.
    • dave5104 14y ago
      It all depends on your end goals and your audience. I don't have #'s off the top of my head, but let's say IE8 accounted for 40% of browser usage across your visitors. But IE8 is old. Are you willing to say to 40% of your potentially paying customers "Sorry, but your browser sucks. We're not supporting you."? If you are, great. No coddling necessary. But for other people, they may not be comfortable with the percentages yet, and I think that's perfectly understandable.
      • nbouscal 14y ago
        You wouldn't say it like that, I hope. You would say, “Here's a link to a browser upgrade that will allow you to enjoy the best product we can offer you. It's completely free, and takes only a few minutes to install!” Also, IE8 accounts for less than 10% of browser usage worldwide now, so the odds of a company having it be 40% are rather slim, unless they specifically target enterprise in which case they dug their own grave and I have no sympathy for them.
        • dave5104 14y ago
          Oh no, of course not. I'm just trying to make the point that some companies may not be comfortable with whatever IE8 is at right now. I think you can substitute "IE8" for any browser, and "40%" for whatever that browser's current market share is. Coincidentally, I work in the multi-family housing industry, and one of the industry titans requires IE to use their product--which everyone uses--so we have ~82% IE share on our own product (which is supplementary to the titan). Of that, IE8 stands at ~31% of our total site traffic, which is compelling enough for our company to need to support it. (IE9 is only ~39%, with IE6/7/10 making up the remaining 12%.) So until that industry titan changes their way, we're stuck in an IE rut.
          • nbouscal 14y ago
            That's a shitty situation to be in. Sounds like a great opportunity for someone to disrupt that industry titan, though.
            • nasmorn 14y ago
              Some businesses have deeper moats than front end dev speed.
              • dave5104 14y ago
                This is exactly right for multi-family housing. I can't see any sort of startup or disruption coming in anytime soon without taking years of hard work to reach 50% feature parity to meet what the industry expects are standard features. (Or maybe I've been working here too long to get past that notion.)
    • DigitalJack 14y ago
      Naturally that depends on your target audience. I haven't checked the version, but we're stuck on an older IE at work. Possibly 9, but I think it's 8. No choice in the matter.
      • johnyuek 14y ago
        "No choice in the matter." Does someone have a gun the CEO's head stopping him? He could tell everyone to install latest Chrome or Firefox and have everyone upgraded in 10 minutes.
        • acanby 14y ago
          These decisions typically have much wider reaching ramifications, like an existing tech stack which relies on some quirk of IE6, or activeX. Yes, it's simple to upgrade a browser, but the potential impact must be evaluated, and this takes time (more than 10 mins to install a new browser).
          • r4vik 14y ago
            installing chrome or firefox doesn't magically uninstall IE
    • acanby 14y ago
      I think this really depends on your target market. Big corps such as banks are typically slow to move and I know of at least one which is only just moving from IE6 now.
    • democracy 14y ago
      So are you really going to tell your users to "back off" and upgrade?
• silverbax88 14y ago
  We have clients who still use IE 6. BIG clients - banks too big for me to name publicly. Millions of dollars in revenue and dozens of jobs' worth. Dropping them isn't an option.
  • coldtea 14y ago
    Then don't drop them. This is for modern websites/services, not enterprise catering dinos.
    • silverbax88 14y ago
      I can do both. I'm not limited to only supporting small clients.
      • coldtea 14y ago
        I don't Google caters to small clients either. Yet, it has dropped support for IE6.
• oneeyedpigeon 14y ago
  How much money can my business afford to lose on a point of principle that no-one else in the company would ascribe any value to whatsoever? Not much. The decision obviously takes into account time spent catering for older browsers, but jQuery eases the problem - at the moment. As a very rough guide, it seems sensible to cater for any browser version representing at least 1% of traffic; IE8 currently represents over 20% for us, so it's nowhere near getting dropped, unfortunately.
  • nbouscal 14y ago
    1%? That seems like an unreasonably low threshold. If 1% of your traffic requires even 5% of your development time, you're getting negative value from that time. I probably wouldn't drop it at 20% either, but I would long before 1%.