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Google Analytics to Drop IE8 Support at the End of 2013

65 points by NewsFlash 13y ago

buckbova 13y ago
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/09/supporting-modern-browsing-experience.html http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/09/supporting-modern-brow... "As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to your website." That's all I need google. Thanks.
LandoCalrissian 13y ago
This is of course only a good thing, making huge parts of the web essentially unusable for people that are still stuck on ancient browsers is probably one of the only ways to get them to upgrade.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - driverdan 13y ago
    This has nothing to do with tracking, it's the dashboard that won't support IE8.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  This only makes the Google Analytics dashboard unusable. It's not going to break sites that just use GA's tracking code.
  - jordanthoms 13y ago
    Although, maybe breaking almost every site on the web for IE lte 9 isn't such a bad idea...
everettForth 13y ago
For those who aren't aware, IE8 doesn't support ECMAscript 5, which includes useful functions, such as: Array.prototype.map and Object.keys. The alternative to this is to use something like jquery's implementation of map. Anyway, this is why IE8 in particular is a cutoff for compatibility. A lot of startups are not building their sites to be compatible with IE8.
- jeremiep 13y ago
  Why not just use underscore.js then? It uses Array.prototype.map for _.map if present and fallback to its own implementation otherwise.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    It is far from the only example (my favorite is the lack of XHTML support).
    - alanh 13y ago
      > lack of XHTML support I believed IE8 reads XHTML just fine — are you referring to its inability to handle HTML content delivered with an `application/xml+xhtml` Content-Type header (IIRC)?
      - yuhong 13y ago
        Yes.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dmethvin 13y ago
  Unfortunately, Android 2.3 is not fully ES5 compatible either. Since that's about one-third of all Android I doubt that ES5 compat was the driving force for this move. More likely it was the non-W3C event model and general non-use of IE8 for the reporting interface.
jonknee 13y ago
Google Analytics' reporting interface... Your visitors who haven't upgraded their browser will see have their page views collected and reported on.
- joshstrange 13y ago
  This is the most important comment, the title is slightly misleading > "As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to your website."
- EnderMB 13y ago
  While this is an important distinction to make, I think that it doesn't understate the importance of this change. I've worked for quite a few enterprise clients, and many of them are in offices working on old hardware and old software. The lucky ones get Windows 7, but I know plenty of people that are stuck on XP and IE8 (if they are lucky). Many of these users would love to use this Chrome or Firefox browser that every external company suggests, but their IT department won't let them install anything. Now, if they can't view their Analytics reports without a modern browser, we'll start to see some changes. It's a huge move, and should go a long way to getting these pesky users away from their legacy browsers and OS.
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
Praised be lord of all code and such. I am not against IE8 - qualitatively it dwarfed IE6/7, but there are still way to many issues with supporting it. I am speaking from experience - I developed somewhat simple portal with a lot of AJAX/interactive elements. Getting all features to work on Chrome/Firefox was a charm, IE8 was harder. In the end I only managed to support IE9 and above.
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
This is interesting, because according the analytics I have access to, large institutions in my field (which is large in itself) seem to have standardized on IE8. I guess a lot of these shops went from IE6 to IE8, skipping 7 entirely. Its funny how long IE8 is sticking around and I wonder if its going to be the new "IE6" for some time.
- giovannibajo1 13y ago
  XP extended support will end on April 2014. Antivirus will also cease support (most of them). This means that the day after, there will be a dozen of 0-days (currently being held) exploited in the wild. I hope those organizations you cite have a plan for April. If they run XP, they must update. If they run Vista+, they can switch to a newer IE and use GPO to force IE8-mode for the intranet (if they wish so).
  - grumps 13y ago
    I have a client to deploys IE in IE7 mode...
  - drzaiusapelord 13y ago
    Most of these IE8 users seem to be Win7. IE8 runs on Win7, no problem. I also imagine these shops skipping 9 and jumping to 10 or 11 in the next year or so.
factorialboy 13y ago
I'm fairly confident this is because of IE8's lack of support for SVG which is used heavily for data visualization, mapping etc. IE9+ has some sort of support for SVG while IE7 and IE8 implement VML. :-/
CWIZO 13y ago
"That last point is very important, given that IE8 is still the world’s most popular browser." Note that this is really not true. If you look at various[1] global browsers stats pages, you'll notice that NetApplications (where the author is getting his's numbers from) is the only one that puts IE at the top. If you look at the other, and based on my own stats, this just isnn't the case, and IE8 is not the most popular browser in the world, not by far. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...
- camus 13y ago
  I trust what google says about browser usage over any other stat counter.If they still think IE8 is popular it must be, even if it pisses off webdevs.
  - CWIZO 13y ago
    Where did Google say that IE8 is popular still?
pippy 13y ago
Why do people still use NetApplications as a source? It's obviously incredibly inaccurate.
zmmmmm 13y ago
I wonder what the corporate adoption of Win7+ is at this point? Abandoning IE8 for various services will slowly start to hurt Microsoft as it forces people into using (probably) Chrome, or if not, FireFox. Especially once you are using Chrome, the lure of Google's ecosystem starts to become irresistable, and as Chrome use itself grows, Chrome as a platform becomes more and more attractive. Of course this move in itself is irrelevant to that because it only affects such a tiny percentage of people. But as you add up a lot of niche services it will start to have a significant impact, I think.
alanh 13y ago
This is not really newsworthy. As jonknee helpfully pointed out, this is only the admin interface. And anyone still using MSIE8 honestly has no business in your Google Analytics! Now, if this were Gmail, this would be news

65 points by NewsFlash 13y ago

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/09/supporting-modern-browsing-experience.html http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/09/supporting-modern-brow... "As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to your website." That's all I need google. Thanks.

LandoCalrissian 13y ago

This is of course only a good thing, making huge parts of the web essentially unusable for people that are still stuck on ancient browsers is probably one of the only ways to get them to upgrade.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- driverdan 13y ago
  This has nothing to do with tracking, it's the dashboard that won't support IE8.
ceejayoz 13y ago
This only makes the Google Analytics dashboard unusable. It's not going to break sites that just use GA's tracking code.
- jordanthoms 13y ago
  Although, maybe breaking almost every site on the web for IE lte 9 isn't such a bad idea...

everettForth 13y ago

For those who aren't aware, IE8 doesn't support ECMAscript 5, which includes useful functions, such as: Array.prototype.map and Object.keys. The alternative to this is to use something like jquery's implementation of map. Anyway, this is why IE8 in particular is a cutoff for compatibility. A lot of startups are not building their sites to be compatible with IE8.

jeremiep 13y ago
Why not just use underscore.js then? It uses Array.prototype.map for _.map if present and fallback to its own implementation otherwise.
- yuhong 13y ago
  It is far from the only example (my favorite is the lack of XHTML support).
  - alanh 13y ago
    > lack of XHTML support I believed IE8 reads XHTML just fine — are you referring to its inability to handle HTML content delivered with an `application/xml+xhtml` Content-Type header (IIRC)?
    - yuhong 13y ago
      Yes.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dmethvin 13y ago
Unfortunately, Android 2.3 is not fully ES5 compatible either. Since that's about one-third of all Android I doubt that ES5 compat was the driving force for this move. More likely it was the non-W3C event model and general non-use of IE8 for the reporting interface.

jonknee 13y ago

Google Analytics' reporting interface... Your visitors who haven't upgraded their browser will see have their page views collected and reported on.

joshstrange 13y ago
This is the most important comment, the title is slightly misleading > "As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to your website."
EnderMB 13y ago
While this is an important distinction to make, I think that it doesn't understate the importance of this change. I've worked for quite a few enterprise clients, and many of them are in offices working on old hardware and old software. The lucky ones get Windows 7, but I know plenty of people that are stuck on XP and IE8 (if they are lucky). Many of these users would love to use this Chrome or Firefox browser that every external company suggests, but their IT department won't let them install anything. Now, if they can't view their Analytics reports without a modern browser, we'll start to see some changes. It's a huge move, and should go a long way to getting these pesky users away from their legacy browsers and OS.

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

Praised be lord of all code and such. I am not against IE8 - qualitatively it dwarfed IE6/7, but there are still way to many issues with supporting it. I am speaking from experience - I developed somewhat simple portal with a lot of AJAX/interactive elements. Getting all features to work on Chrome/Firefox was a charm, IE8 was harder. In the end I only managed to support IE9 and above.

drzaiusapelord 13y ago

This is interesting, because according the analytics I have access to, large institutions in my field (which is large in itself) seem to have standardized on IE8. I guess a lot of these shops went from IE6 to IE8, skipping 7 entirely. Its funny how long IE8 is sticking around and I wonder if its going to be the new "IE6" for some time.

giovannibajo1 13y ago
XP extended support will end on April 2014. Antivirus will also cease support (most of them). This means that the day after, there will be a dozen of 0-days (currently being held) exploited in the wild. I hope those organizations you cite have a plan for April. If they run XP, they must update. If they run Vista+, they can switch to a newer IE and use GPO to force IE8-mode for the intranet (if they wish so).
- grumps 13y ago
  I have a client to deploys IE in IE7 mode...
- drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  Most of these IE8 users seem to be Win7. IE8 runs on Win7, no problem. I also imagine these shops skipping 9 and jumping to 10 or 11 in the next year or so.

factorialboy 13y ago

I'm fairly confident this is because of IE8's lack of support for SVG which is used heavily for data visualization, mapping etc. IE9+ has some sort of support for SVG while IE7 and IE8 implement VML. :-/

CWIZO 13y ago

"That last point is very important, given that IE8 is still the world’s most popular browser." Note that this is really not true. If you look at various[1] global browsers stats pages, you'll notice that NetApplications (where the author is getting his's numbers from) is the only one that puts IE at the top. If you look at the other, and based on my own stats, this just isnn't the case, and IE8 is not the most popular browser in the world, not by far. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...

camus 13y ago
I trust what google says about browser usage over any other stat counter.If they still think IE8 is popular it must be, even if it pisses off webdevs.
- CWIZO 13y ago
  Where did Google say that IE8 is popular still?

pippy 13y ago

Why do people still use NetApplications as a source? It's obviously incredibly inaccurate.

zmmmmm 13y ago

I wonder what the corporate adoption of Win7+ is at this point? Abandoning IE8 for various services will slowly start to hurt Microsoft as it forces people into using (probably) Chrome, or if not, FireFox. Especially once you are using Chrome, the lure of Google's ecosystem starts to become irresistable, and as Chrome use itself grows, Chrome as a platform becomes more and more attractive. Of course this move in itself is irrelevant to that because it only affects such a tiny percentage of people. But as you add up a lot of niche services it will start to have a significant impact, I think.

alanh 13y ago

This is not really newsworthy. As jonknee helpfully pointed out, this is only the admin interface. And anyone still using MSIE8 honestly has no business in your Google Analytics! Now, if this were Gmail, this would be news