5 ms·

I'm always surprised with just how much traction IE has lost in the developer/tech community. Across the couple of open source projects I maintain, only 62 of 4

by bunkat 13y ago

I'm always surprised with just how much traction IE has lost in the developer/tech community. Across the couple of open source projects I maintain, only 62 of 4,847 visits have been from IE (mostly 9 and 10). I think everyone knows that most in this community don't use IE - but only 1% usage? That's crazy. Curious if this trend will ever change or if too many bridges have already been burned.

dylandrop 13y ago
Uh. When was the last time you had to deal with cross-browser compatibility?
- 67726e 13y ago
  I think he is speaking in terms of usage by developers. IE used to be a great browser back in the day, but now it is practically the leper browser among developers.
  - hvs 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure I never thought of IE as a "great browser" and I've been doing web development for 15 years. It is probably closer than ever before to being a standards-compliant browser that doesn't require a thousand "fixes" in order to work correctly. Unfortunately, we still have to deal with IE7, IE8, and, yes, even IE9 in the wild. IE7 is becoming much less prevalent, but it is still often required for the clients I deal with.
    - njr123 13y ago
      IE5 and 6 were great browsers, and they were much better than their Netscape equivalents at the time. The problems came when they decided to stop any more development once they had put Netscape out of business.
    - recursive 13y ago
      IMO when IE4 came out, it was the best browser.
    - 67726e 13y ago
      Admittedly, I'm a little young to remember the earlier IE versions, especially in the context of being a developer, but my older coworkers like to remind me how nice it was for its time. I guess the moral of the story is today's state of the art is tomorrow's bane of my existence.
      - hvs 13y ago
        You may be young, but in your final sentence you speak great wisdom.
azakai 13y ago
It will be hard, but I think IE can do it. 1. With WebGL support and the other new features in IE11, they are close to finally being comparable to Chrome and Firefox in terms of being a modern browser. Yes, bridges were burnt, but IE11 and things like TypeScript are making Microsoft cool in the web space again. 2. Previews appear to show IE11 is also competitive in terms of speed with other modern browsers. (IE was already fast at 2D canvas, but not much else.) 3. The tech community was disturbed by the NSA spying scandals (that involve most major browser vendors), which led to some movement to switch to alternative browsers and search engines. Even if people don't switch entirely away, they might choose to put less eggs in one basket, so prefer to not do Chrome+google.com or IE+bing. Of the other combinations of those options (there are others of course, but just considering those), IE+google.com seems more likely than Chrome+bing, so IE might gain a little there.
- darkxanthos 13y ago
  Almost... and it's still in beta. Which means theyll fall behind again as soon as the next Chrome release comes out.
  - azakai 13y ago
    Yes, unless IE switches to a fast release schedule like Chrome and Firefox, it is at risk of being quickly outclassed by them once more.
- chadzawistowski 13y ago
  Why not Firefox+DuckDuckGo? I find that more likely than a switch to IE.
- rtfeldman 13y ago
  This is what IE advocates have been saying since IE9, and it is no more true with IE11 than it was then. Inertia means IE needs to be significantly better than the alternatives to catch up. It takes time and energy to switch, so the payoff has to make it worth one's while. When Firefox came out, it offered substantial improvements over IE6. When Chrome came out, it offered substantial improvements over Firefox. IE11 continues the "hey, we're almost caught up!" tradition that has seen IE's market spiral downward for years. Until a version of IE comes out that earns the reaction "whoa, this is much better than Chrome or Firefox!", the downward spiral will continue.
sixothree 13y ago
I get the feeling Microsoft has stopped trying impress power users and developers. Their market is direct to consumer, which is something they don't seem to be very good at.
richbradshaw 13y ago
I agree, not quite as extreme, but for a CSS tutorial site over the last year from 735,000 uniques 3.4% used IE. Over the last month it's 3.1%. Chrome sits at around 60%, Firefox 25%, Safari 10%.
crazygringo 13y ago
For a lot of people I know, it coincided with the gradual migration from Windows to OSX or Linux between 3-5 years ago. So much of front-end development is done on Macs these days, and Firefox and Chrome are so fluidly cross-platform... If IE wanted to be taken seriously as a modern browser, as a platform, then they almost need to come out with a blazing-fast OSX version of it, which is obviously never going to happen.
- yread 13y ago
  > If IE wanted to be taken seriously as a modern browser, as a platform, then they almost need to come out with a blazing-fast OSX version of it, which is obviously never going to happen. You mean something as "good" as Safari on windows? > Snow Leopard and Windows users are not supported by the Safari 6 release at this time,[67] while there are over 121 vulnerabilities left unpatched on those platforms.[68] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)
  - drivebyacct2 13y ago
    What's your point? No one even mentioned Safari for Windows and it has no bearing on the discussion at hand.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    If IE wants to see usage numbers like Chrome of Firefox, then no... not like Safari. If they are content with Safari-quality usage numbers, then they could probably settle for Safari-quality cross platform-ness.
danmaz74 13y ago
So, it's not just me! I was very surprised to notice that only 3.92% of visitors of hashtagify.me use IE. Considering how much pain it was to make that website work with IE9 (IE8 was out of the question) I'm afraid I wasted quite some time.
hrktb 13y ago
The choice doesn't exist if you've moved away from Windows, and market shares of Windows are declining if I'm not mistaken. Years ago I found it painful to have a full web dev stack on windows and switched to OSX. The company I'm working for also has linux desktops as basic setup, and macs for app developpers. It's anecdotical but I use Windows only for testing, and from a VM (I used fulls VMs for each IE versions before, now it's only the test VMs that microsoft provides)
- nkerkin 13y ago
  I'm genuinely curious, why was a full web dev stack on windows so painful? And, why is OSX better?
  - hrktb 13y ago
    I should put upfront that I don't think windows in itself if not usable as a web stack, and perhaps I wouldn't mind if I was working in a 100% windows shop. But I usually work with unix/linux production servers, and that's the configuration I'd expect for most projects. So the pain points mostly come from reproducing a LAMP like environment on windows, with all the specific configurations and modules when needed. There are little things, like small changes in the config files to adjust for windows, and there are the "why am I doing this" things like trying to compile additional/specific PHP modules on cygwin, with the dependency matching games and all the cygwin idiosyncrasies and limitations to learn first. It's easier on OSX as compiling OSS projects requires minimal adjustments, the file system mostly behaves the same as other unixes/linux (except for case sensitiveness...), and all the unix tooling is available (no extra learning curve is a bonus). A separate linux/unix VM closely matching the prod environment would still be the best option, but most of the time OSX is good enough to not bother.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

by bunkat 13y ago

dylandrop 13y ago

Uh. When was the last time you had to deal with cross-browser compatibility?

67726e 13y ago
I think he is speaking in terms of usage by developers. IE used to be a great browser back in the day, but now it is practically the leper browser among developers.
- hvs 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure I never thought of IE as a "great browser" and I've been doing web development for 15 years. It is probably closer than ever before to being a standards-compliant browser that doesn't require a thousand "fixes" in order to work correctly. Unfortunately, we still have to deal with IE7, IE8, and, yes, even IE9 in the wild. IE7 is becoming much less prevalent, but it is still often required for the clients I deal with.
  - njr123 13y ago
    IE5 and 6 were great browsers, and they were much better than their Netscape equivalents at the time. The problems came when they decided to stop any more development once they had put Netscape out of business.
  - recursive 13y ago
    IMO when IE4 came out, it was the best browser.
  - 67726e 13y ago
    Admittedly, I'm a little young to remember the earlier IE versions, especially in the context of being a developer, but my older coworkers like to remind me how nice it was for its time. I guess the moral of the story is today's state of the art is tomorrow's bane of my existence.
    - hvs 13y ago
      You may be young, but in your final sentence you speak great wisdom.

azakai 13y ago

It will be hard, but I think IE can do it. 1. With WebGL support and the other new features in IE11, they are close to finally being comparable to Chrome and Firefox in terms of being a modern browser. Yes, bridges were burnt, but IE11 and things like TypeScript are making Microsoft cool in the web space again. 2. Previews appear to show IE11 is also competitive in terms of speed with other modern browsers. (IE was already fast at 2D canvas, but not much else.) 3. The tech community was disturbed by the NSA spying scandals (that involve most major browser vendors), which led to some movement to switch to alternative browsers and search engines. Even if people don't switch entirely away, they might choose to put less eggs in one basket, so prefer to not do Chrome+google.com or IE+bing. Of the other combinations of those options (there are others of course, but just considering those), IE+google.com seems more likely than Chrome+bing, so IE might gain a little there.

darkxanthos 13y ago
Almost... and it's still in beta. Which means theyll fall behind again as soon as the next Chrome release comes out.
- azakai 13y ago
  Yes, unless IE switches to a fast release schedule like Chrome and Firefox, it is at risk of being quickly outclassed by them once more.
chadzawistowski 13y ago
Why not Firefox+DuckDuckGo? I find that more likely than a switch to IE.
rtfeldman 13y ago
This is what IE advocates have been saying since IE9, and it is no more true with IE11 than it was then. Inertia means IE needs to be significantly better than the alternatives to catch up. It takes time and energy to switch, so the payoff has to make it worth one's while. When Firefox came out, it offered substantial improvements over IE6. When Chrome came out, it offered substantial improvements over Firefox. IE11 continues the "hey, we're almost caught up!" tradition that has seen IE's market spiral downward for years. Until a version of IE comes out that earns the reaction "whoa, this is much better than Chrome or Firefox!", the downward spiral will continue.

sixothree 13y ago

I get the feeling Microsoft has stopped trying impress power users and developers. Their market is direct to consumer, which is something they don't seem to be very good at.

richbradshaw 13y ago

I agree, not quite as extreme, but for a CSS tutorial site over the last year from 735,000 uniques 3.4% used IE. Over the last month it's 3.1%. Chrome sits at around 60%, Firefox 25%, Safari 10%.

crazygringo 13y ago

For a lot of people I know, it coincided with the gradual migration from Windows to OSX or Linux between 3-5 years ago. So much of front-end development is done on Macs these days, and Firefox and Chrome are so fluidly cross-platform... If IE wanted to be taken seriously as a modern browser, as a platform, then they almost need to come out with a blazing-fast OSX version of it, which is obviously never going to happen.

yread 13y ago
> If IE wanted to be taken seriously as a modern browser, as a platform, then they almost need to come out with a blazing-fast OSX version of it, which is obviously never going to happen. You mean something as "good" as Safari on windows? > Snow Leopard and Windows users are not supported by the Safari 6 release at this time,[67] while there are over 121 vulnerabilities left unpatched on those platforms.[68] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser)
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  What's your point? No one even mentioned Safari for Windows and it has no bearing on the discussion at hand.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  If IE wants to see usage numbers like Chrome of Firefox, then no... not like Safari. If they are content with Safari-quality usage numbers, then they could probably settle for Safari-quality cross platform-ness.

danmaz74 13y ago

So, it's not just me! I was very surprised to notice that only 3.92% of visitors of hashtagify.me use IE. Considering how much pain it was to make that website work with IE9 (IE8 was out of the question) I'm afraid I wasted quite some time.

hrktb 13y ago

The choice doesn't exist if you've moved away from Windows, and market shares of Windows are declining if I'm not mistaken. Years ago I found it painful to have a full web dev stack on windows and switched to OSX. The company I'm working for also has linux desktops as basic setup, and macs for app developpers. It's anecdotical but I use Windows only for testing, and from a VM (I used fulls VMs for each IE versions before, now it's only the test VMs that microsoft provides)

nkerkin 13y ago
I'm genuinely curious, why was a full web dev stack on windows so painful? And, why is OSX better?
- hrktb 13y ago
  I should put upfront that I don't think windows in itself if not usable as a web stack, and perhaps I wouldn't mind if I was working in a 100% windows shop. But I usually work with unix/linux production servers, and that's the configuration I'd expect for most projects. So the pain points mostly come from reproducing a LAMP like environment on windows, with all the specific configurations and modules when needed. There are little things, like small changes in the config files to adjust for windows, and there are the "why am I doing this" things like trying to compile additional/specific PHP modules on cygwin, with the dependency matching games and all the cygwin idiosyncrasies and limitations to learn first. It's easier on OSX as compiling OSS projects requires minimal adjustments, the file system mostly behaves the same as other unixes/linux (except for case sensitiveness...), and all the unix tooling is available (no extra learning curve is a bonus). A separate linux/unix VM closely matching the prod environment would still be the best option, but most of the time OSX is good enough to not bother.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]