10 ms·

I don't work on jQuery any more but I (and I know many others on the jQuery team) all build web sites as part of their day jobs (and, thus, need to continuing s

by jeresig 14y ago

I don't work on jQuery any more but I (and I know many others on the jQuery team) all build web sites as part of their day jobs (and, thus, need to continuing supporting IE 8). It's going to be a very long time before support for the 1.x branch is dropped. But hopefully soon, death of IE 8 willing.

angersock 14y ago
Is there any list of companies that currently require old versions of IE? I know a lot of hospitals do, and people handwave banks and whatnot. If there was a big list of "These people still use old versions of IE", then we could: A. Properly shame/advertise for attack/avoid getting work from these people. B. Expose a dedicated market audience for compatibility-minded dev shops Either of these would seem to be a Good Thing (tm), and would help remove a lot of the FUD in the ecosystem.
- ismarc 14y ago
  You're missing an important part of this. There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. The company I'm with has embedded video players on a large number of web retailer's pages (we're hiring a javascript+flash developer in Austin, TX right now, particularly around video players. If you're interested, drop me a line) and a significant portion of them have requirements to support IE6 or IE7 with analytics that back up the need based on percentage of their traffic and conversions from those users. However, I (not speaking for the company, just me personally) strongly disagree with the focus on "identical experience" amongst browsers. Instead, I prefer the route of graceful degradation where not all features may be available for all browsers, but it's fully functional and aesthetically pleasing (not necessarily identical) in all browsers. That being said, not all companies have the same browser support requirements...it's entirely based around what the site's individual traffic and conversion rates are.
  - angersock 14y ago
    There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. Like who? Honest question. I know that not all users currently have modern browsers (which is total bullshit, by the way--with free, open-source browsers as well as Chrome and the like, there is no excuse for this) but this isn't something we should treat as anything but detestable and fixable. As for "identical experience", I will have to disagree. I have no problem with gracefully degrading sites due to screen size or compute power, but there is no reason that desktop browsers should be permitted to render things differently from one another (and if the spec is ambiguous, we should fix the damn spec). Developers are lazy, or shortsighted, or both, and given the option of "Hey, works on my machine/browser/whatever", we should expect only annoying fragmentation.
    - silverbax88 14y ago
      There are thousands of users in major banks and financial institutions which still use IE and have NO plans on moving forward anytime soon. None. I don't mean the users. I mean the companies. You really think the banks that LITERALLY control the world's economy are somehow going to be 'shamed' into upgrading their internet browsers? You might as well try shaming the moon into changing color. I don't mean to sound condescending, but there's no other way to put this...the comments about browser support on this board show just how inexperienced many developers really are. We are not talking about installing Firefox or Chrome on a few PCs. We are talking about MASSIVE companies with BILLIONS (with a 'B') of dollars flowing through WORKING systems that have been tested into infinity and are the backbone of our economy. Should they upgrade? Sure. Will they? No. not until they've stretched the technology they are already running until it collapses. This move by JQuery devs, I get it, but it's quickly pushing itself out of the realm of 'awesome' to 'annoyance', only suitable for small projects. I hope not, but that's what it looks like. Even 1.9.x deprecated some features that should have been left alone - we had to code them back in.
      - angersock 14y ago
        Which companies? Give us some names--that's why I'm proposing this list. We always, always hear the same threadbare stories about mythical magical enterprise customers that can't/won't upgrade, and the little tail wags the dog, and the life for the rest of us is made harder. All this for a use case which is basically hearsay and rumors. As for inexperienced developers--I'll go and say that the experience I've had of watching bad compilers and system headers and christ only knows what else force native code to get uglier and uglier and less maintainable are what motivate me to try and discourage the same mistakes in Happy Web Land. The web is barely twenty years old, arguably much younger--let's at least try and avoid sins we don't have to commit. Edit: Or, you know, downvote me without explanation. That's pretty cool too.
- reeses 14y ago
  Go into a local small business with about [$|€|£]2-5m in turnover per year. A moderately successful veterinary practice comes to mind. They have applications that need to be managed by what is undoubtedly an outsourced IT service, very likely related to some other system (practice management, diagnostic hardware, goofy industry-specific file formats, accounting, back-office, etc.). They will stay on XP for ages because it works with everything they bought when they last "modernized" their practice ten years ago. Upgrading will be prohibitively expensive, on the order of making the decision to hire one junior staff member for a year. The same upgrade will cost the same in a year, or five years, so there's no business purpose to upgrade until they need to migrate to another platform, either due to lack of support for modern hardware as the existing gear ends its lifecycle, or because of a strategically imperative application that requires an upgrade. They may need enough "modernity" in their web browser for industry sites and (increasingly) wikipedia, but most uses of web 2.0 will be shrugged off as inessential, whether it's Facebook or Highrise/Salesforce/whatever. Bigger companies have to refresh hardware due to failure at a higher rate. As a result, they can retain a permanent staff of people who manage OS images and upgrade on a next-to-last type cycle. Smaller companies are often using "personal" grade equipment and will take the accelerated depreciation when they need to buy one new laptop because the old one is too slow.
  - angersock 14y ago
    I understand the issues with small businesses--believe me. I also understand that in those environments, getting Firefox installed doesn't magically break everything. The purpose of having a list like this is to record the service providers who do have products out there that break using modern browsers--because they're ripe opportunities for "doing it righter and cheaper". Do people not see how hard they are making the lives of future developers (or even their own lives down the road) by continuing to coddle these people? Your vet example would be happy to switch to a cheaper service (cheaper because the devs were cheaper, because the tech is more modern and less finicky) if it were available, and a hitlist of companies ripe for displacement (due to running old platforms) would help the vet as much as help the devs. This is so frustrating.
    - 14y ago
- epmatsw 14y ago
  You'd be surprised about hospitals. At a hospital with modern software, a lot of the browser based stuff they use actually runs through Citrix or something similar, so they're using IE9/10 or Chrome for the most part.
  - skue 14y ago
    > At a hospital with modern software... That's one helluva qualifier when talking about hospitals. Our company creates web-based software for hospitals, and we have yet to talk to a customer who doesn't need IE7 support. (We draw the line at IE6.)
    - epmatsw 14y ago
      Interesting. We do software for larger hospitals that has some web-based elements and require IE 9+ or Chrome. I guess we're targeting different audiences.
- dspillett 14y ago
  > and people handwave banks and whatnot RBS. Aviva. NABG. And that is just the larger ones I have experience of. Those are pretty big hands to wave. If we say "sorry, our products might not work as well in IE8" they'll say "sorry, we can't use your products any more". And it isn't just that they demand IE8 support in case their customers need it, their desktop builds used for all their internal uses have nothing but IE8. "Maybe they'll upgrade soon" we hope, "or perhaps given their users one of ff/chrome/other as an alternative along side IE8", but given they only upgraded to IE8 from IE6 over the last two years (the last of our clients to move from IE6 completed that transition about three months ago) I doubt I'll be seeing them use anything better internally for a good few years.
- rgbrgb 14y ago
  You can shame Amazon/whoever all you like for supporting IE but I don't think they're just going to shut down their store for even .5% of their userbase.

by jeresig 14y ago

angersock 14y ago

Is there any list of companies that currently require old versions of IE? I know a lot of hospitals do, and people handwave banks and whatnot. If there was a big list of "These people still use old versions of IE", then we could: A. Properly shame/advertise for attack/avoid getting work from these people. B. Expose a dedicated market audience for compatibility-minded dev shops Either of these would seem to be a Good Thing (tm), and would help remove a lot of the FUD in the ecosystem.

ismarc 14y ago
You're missing an important part of this. There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. The company I'm with has embedded video players on a large number of web retailer's pages (we're hiring a javascript+flash developer in Austin, TX right now, particularly around video players. If you're interested, drop me a line) and a significant portion of them have requirements to support IE6 or IE7 with analytics that back up the need based on percentage of their traffic and conversions from those users. However, I (not speaking for the company, just me personally) strongly disagree with the focus on "identical experience" amongst browsers. Instead, I prefer the route of graceful degradation where not all features may be available for all browsers, but it's fully functional and aesthetically pleasing (not necessarily identical) in all browsers. That being said, not all companies have the same browser support requirements...it's entirely based around what the site's individual traffic and conversion rates are.
- angersock 14y ago
  There's a large number of companies whose web capabilities need to support people who use their website while working at the companies that have older versions of IE. Like who? Honest question. I know that not all users currently have modern browsers (which is total bullshit, by the way--with free, open-source browsers as well as Chrome and the like, there is no excuse for this) but this isn't something we should treat as anything but detestable and fixable. As for "identical experience", I will have to disagree. I have no problem with gracefully degrading sites due to screen size or compute power, but there is no reason that desktop browsers should be permitted to render things differently from one another (and if the spec is ambiguous, we should fix the damn spec). Developers are lazy, or shortsighted, or both, and given the option of "Hey, works on my machine/browser/whatever", we should expect only annoying fragmentation.
  - silverbax88 14y ago
    There are thousands of users in major banks and financial institutions which still use IE and have NO plans on moving forward anytime soon. None. I don't mean the users. I mean the companies. You really think the banks that LITERALLY control the world's economy are somehow going to be 'shamed' into upgrading their internet browsers? You might as well try shaming the moon into changing color. I don't mean to sound condescending, but there's no other way to put this...the comments about browser support on this board show just how inexperienced many developers really are. We are not talking about installing Firefox or Chrome on a few PCs. We are talking about MASSIVE companies with BILLIONS (with a 'B') of dollars flowing through WORKING systems that have been tested into infinity and are the backbone of our economy. Should they upgrade? Sure. Will they? No. not until they've stretched the technology they are already running until it collapses. This move by JQuery devs, I get it, but it's quickly pushing itself out of the realm of 'awesome' to 'annoyance', only suitable for small projects. I hope not, but that's what it looks like. Even 1.9.x deprecated some features that should have been left alone - we had to code them back in.
    - angersock 14y ago
      Which companies? Give us some names--that's why I'm proposing this list. We always, always hear the same threadbare stories about mythical magical enterprise customers that can't/won't upgrade, and the little tail wags the dog, and the life for the rest of us is made harder. All this for a use case which is basically hearsay and rumors. As for inexperienced developers--I'll go and say that the experience I've had of watching bad compilers and system headers and christ only knows what else force native code to get uglier and uglier and less maintainable are what motivate me to try and discourage the same mistakes in Happy Web Land. The web is barely twenty years old, arguably much younger--let's at least try and avoid sins we don't have to commit. Edit: Or, you know, downvote me without explanation. That's pretty cool too.
reeses 14y ago
Go into a local small business with about [$|€|£]2-5m in turnover per year. A moderately successful veterinary practice comes to mind. They have applications that need to be managed by what is undoubtedly an outsourced IT service, very likely related to some other system (practice management, diagnostic hardware, goofy industry-specific file formats, accounting, back-office, etc.). They will stay on XP for ages because it works with everything they bought when they last "modernized" their practice ten years ago. Upgrading will be prohibitively expensive, on the order of making the decision to hire one junior staff member for a year. The same upgrade will cost the same in a year, or five years, so there's no business purpose to upgrade until they need to migrate to another platform, either due to lack of support for modern hardware as the existing gear ends its lifecycle, or because of a strategically imperative application that requires an upgrade. They may need enough "modernity" in their web browser for industry sites and (increasingly) wikipedia, but most uses of web 2.0 will be shrugged off as inessential, whether it's Facebook or Highrise/Salesforce/whatever. Bigger companies have to refresh hardware due to failure at a higher rate. As a result, they can retain a permanent staff of people who manage OS images and upgrade on a next-to-last type cycle. Smaller companies are often using "personal" grade equipment and will take the accelerated depreciation when they need to buy one new laptop because the old one is too slow.
- angersock 14y ago
  I understand the issues with small businesses--believe me. I also understand that in those environments, getting Firefox installed doesn't magically break everything. The purpose of having a list like this is to record the service providers who do have products out there that break using modern browsers--because they're ripe opportunities for "doing it righter and cheaper". Do people not see how hard they are making the lives of future developers (or even their own lives down the road) by continuing to coddle these people? Your vet example would be happy to switch to a cheaper service (cheaper because the devs were cheaper, because the tech is more modern and less finicky) if it were available, and a hitlist of companies ripe for displacement (due to running old platforms) would help the vet as much as help the devs. This is so frustrating.
  - 14y ago
epmatsw 14y ago
You'd be surprised about hospitals. At a hospital with modern software, a lot of the browser based stuff they use actually runs through Citrix or something similar, so they're using IE9/10 or Chrome for the most part.
- skue 14y ago
  > At a hospital with modern software... That's one helluva qualifier when talking about hospitals. Our company creates web-based software for hospitals, and we have yet to talk to a customer who doesn't need IE7 support. (We draw the line at IE6.)
  - epmatsw 14y ago
    Interesting. We do software for larger hospitals that has some web-based elements and require IE 9+ or Chrome. I guess we're targeting different audiences.
dspillett 14y ago
> and people handwave banks and whatnot RBS. Aviva. NABG. And that is just the larger ones I have experience of. Those are pretty big hands to wave. If we say "sorry, our products might not work as well in IE8" they'll say "sorry, we can't use your products any more". And it isn't just that they demand IE8 support in case their customers need it, their desktop builds used for all their internal uses have nothing but IE8. "Maybe they'll upgrade soon" we hope, "or perhaps given their users one of ff/chrome/other as an alternative along side IE8", but given they only upgraded to IE8 from IE6 over the last two years (the last of our clients to move from IE6 completed that transition about three months ago) I doubt I'll be seeing them use anything better internally for a good few years.
rgbrgb 14y ago
You can shame Amazon/whoever all you like for supporting IE but I don't think they're just going to shut down their store for even .5% of their userbase.