7 ms·

> IE7 users make up 1.22% of our traffic right now, and this will decline as more computers are upgraded and can use modern browsers. No computer exists that i

by pilif 13y ago

> IE7 users make up 1.22% of our traffic right now, and this will decline as more computers are upgraded and can use modern browsers. No computer exists that is able to run IE7 but not IE8. And because IE7 came out way past the "optimized for IE" age, I doubt there is software around that requires 7 and doesn't work with 8. This is in contrast to 6 which is what IE was stuck in for years, so software began depending on that. If you could upgrade from 6 to 7, then you can upgrade from 7 to 8. Even more so considering that IE8 has an IE7 compatibility mode built in that can be enabled without having to touch the site itself (by setting the HTTP header in the server). The same is true for local software embedding the IE control, but there you need to set some registry flag to do it. There is no excuse for sticking with 7 and 8 is so much better to develop for. It's 2014. I would stop caring about 7. People still using 7 are used to sites not quite looking right anyways (as the majority of sites stopped caring) and in all likelyhood, they might not even notice the odd rendering glitch.

ralish 13y ago
IE7 shipped with Vista. I've seen a few organisations that started deploying Vista and updated their XP systems to IE7 so all their workstations are running the same IE version. Admittedly, there aren't many of these companies given most gave Vista a miss in favour of 7 or something else entirely, but they do exist, and it is a plausible reason that IE7 is still around for some.
lmm 13y ago
IE8 in IE7-compatibility mode does not always render the same as IE7 - I know because it broke a site I worked on. So it's not that simple.
- timje1 13y ago
  Worse than that, IE8 in IE7 compatibility mode has some regression bugs that you won't have seen since IE5.
davedx 13y ago
I am pretty sure that these IE7 users (users of NursingJobs.us) are probably browsing from a hospital, where I know for a fact IT policies can be just as bad, if not worse, than at large corporations. I don't think the users have a choice here (besides using a different computer at the hospital or surfing from home).
- iopq 13y ago
  Or, you know, opening the site in their phone.
Erwin 13y ago
Note that the compat mode may mean that you are miscounting IE8 users in IE7 compat mode as IE7 if you are doing a naive user-agent detection (I only mention it because I did and started blocking IE8 users!) Both will emit "MSIE 7.0" in the user-agent, but IE8 will have Trident/4 while IE7 lacks any such token. MSIE 11 does away with "MSIE" in the user-agent altogether. There's a X-UA-Compatible header (and meta variable) you can emit to ask for no compat checks.
- felickz2 13y ago
  IE11 in compatibility mode does indeed keep the MSIE value... here is mine: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
jiggy2011 13y ago
My guess is either. Super conservative IT department. Lots of users only need a handful of websites to do their job, as long as those work why bother changing anything? Some 3rd party application which might work on IE8 but only "supports" IE7 People who turned off automatic updates years ago because they slowed their computer down.
csmithuk 13y ago
Actually no, you are completely wrong. It might be a popular opinion but it's wrong. Some facts: 1. Firstly, there are a couple of COM APIs that were broken with IE8 which mean that some horrible "intranet applications" that use ActiveX won't work with IE8 properly. They worked fine with IE6 and IE7. These are now no longer supported by the vendors with no upgrade path so people are stuck with IE7 whilst applications are rewritten or disposed of. This can take years. In fact I know a company that has taken 4 years to rewrite an ERP system away from this model. The compatibility flag deals with some rendering issues but it doesn't change the script engine or the ActiveX hosting situation. 2. No they can't install another browser side by side and just keep that for legacy. Chrome has a poor privacy and configuration support. The GPO side of it really is crappy. Firefox ESR is impossible to configure using GPO. Not only that users don't want to browser-juggle. Most of them don't actually give a shit about any of this as long as it works. 3. Also, IE7 was released in 2006. I personally maintain software that was written in 1988. People are very quick to hang software, particularly the non-engineering background trendy startup pushing culture. IE7 isn't going away until April 11, 2017. To be fair, I'm recommending people away from the web and the cloud for business critical applications these days. The churn, culture and attitude (as your post outlines so readily) is very negative and a realistic 10 year cycle isn't possible any more. People need stuff to work undisturbed for years for their investment to be recouped.
- Nilzor 13y ago
  I can respect your advice in this context with regards to the cloud, but I'm not so sure about web technology in general, if by web you mean HTML5/JS/CSS3. If you download Firefox 26 today along with your favourite OS and store it on a USB stick, you can restore it in 10 years an run the exact same web applications. That's not really technologically different from storing .NET Framework 4.0 or Java8 on USB stick, to ensure that you can run your that-other-compiled-LOB-program in 10 years. You may need an isolated virtual machine running, but you may need that for the other software as well. Anyone tried running a 16-bit VB6 app lately?
  - csmithuk 13y ago
    Yes by web I mean HTML5, JS and CSS3, REST and HTTP/SPDY. Yes I can snapshot everything if I want but the problem with the web is that it is a general purpose tool. It should be a single portal into everything both local and remote sites and applications. Unfortunately, the rate of change is incredibly large for Internet-facing applications. Intranet-facing applications are left behind. As browsers evolve, which they do rapidly, unpredictably and without compromise[1] a disparity grows until you need two browsers. This is not a situation an enterprise wants to or can afford to maintain, simply because it's below the watermark of concern for 99% of users. This is my point. The difference between the CLR/JVM and a web browser is that they have a predictable shelf-life and can be maintained separately as they are separate portals into each world. To be fair (I exclude the CLR from this as it's too integrated into the OS), I can ship a JVM with a Java app and it'll run quite happily for another 15-20 years. And yes I have tried running a 16-bit VB4 (!!) app lately - one of our clients uses one. On 32-bit Windows 8.1, it still works absolutely perfectly (Windows Vista 64-bit+ has no 16-bit subsystem). [1] Apart from IE.

by pilif 13y ago

ralish 13y ago

IE7 shipped with Vista. I've seen a few organisations that started deploying Vista and updated their XP systems to IE7 so all their workstations are running the same IE version. Admittedly, there aren't many of these companies given most gave Vista a miss in favour of 7 or something else entirely, but they do exist, and it is a plausible reason that IE7 is still around for some.

lmm 13y ago

IE8 in IE7-compatibility mode does not always render the same as IE7 - I know because it broke a site I worked on. So it's not that simple.

timje1 13y ago
Worse than that, IE8 in IE7 compatibility mode has some regression bugs that you won't have seen since IE5.

davedx 13y ago

I am pretty sure that these IE7 users (users of NursingJobs.us) are probably browsing from a hospital, where I know for a fact IT policies can be just as bad, if not worse, than at large corporations. I don't think the users have a choice here (besides using a different computer at the hospital or surfing from home).

iopq 13y ago
Or, you know, opening the site in their phone.

Erwin 13y ago

Note that the compat mode may mean that you are miscounting IE8 users in IE7 compat mode as IE7 if you are doing a naive user-agent detection (I only mention it because I did and started blocking IE8 users!) Both will emit "MSIE 7.0" in the user-agent, but IE8 will have Trident/4 while IE7 lacks any such token. MSIE 11 does away with "MSIE" in the user-agent altogether. There's a X-UA-Compatible header (and meta variable) you can emit to ask for no compat checks.

felickz2 13y ago
IE11 in compatibility mode does indeed keep the MSIE value... here is mine: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)

jiggy2011 13y ago

My guess is either. Super conservative IT department. Lots of users only need a handful of websites to do their job, as long as those work why bother changing anything? Some 3rd party application which might work on IE8 but only "supports" IE7 People who turned off automatic updates years ago because they slowed their computer down.

csmithuk 13y ago

Actually no, you are completely wrong. It might be a popular opinion but it's wrong. Some facts: 1. Firstly, there are a couple of COM APIs that were broken with IE8 which mean that some horrible "intranet applications" that use ActiveX won't work with IE8 properly. They worked fine with IE6 and IE7. These are now no longer supported by the vendors with no upgrade path so people are stuck with IE7 whilst applications are rewritten or disposed of. This can take years. In fact I know a company that has taken 4 years to rewrite an ERP system away from this model. The compatibility flag deals with some rendering issues but it doesn't change the script engine or the ActiveX hosting situation. 2. No they can't install another browser side by side and just keep that for legacy. Chrome has a poor privacy and configuration support. The GPO side of it really is crappy. Firefox ESR is impossible to configure using GPO. Not only that users don't want to browser-juggle. Most of them don't actually give a shit about any of this as long as it works. 3. Also, IE7 was released in 2006. I personally maintain software that was written in 1988. People are very quick to hang software, particularly the non-engineering background trendy startup pushing culture. IE7 isn't going away until April 11, 2017. To be fair, I'm recommending people away from the web and the cloud for business critical applications these days. The churn, culture and attitude (as your post outlines so readily) is very negative and a realistic 10 year cycle isn't possible any more. People need stuff to work undisturbed for years for their investment to be recouped.

Nilzor 13y ago
I can respect your advice in this context with regards to the cloud, but I'm not so sure about web technology in general, if by web you mean HTML5/JS/CSS3. If you download Firefox 26 today along with your favourite OS and store it on a USB stick, you can restore it in 10 years an run the exact same web applications. That's not really technologically different from storing .NET Framework 4.0 or Java8 on USB stick, to ensure that you can run your that-other-compiled-LOB-program in 10 years. You may need an isolated virtual machine running, but you may need that for the other software as well. Anyone tried running a 16-bit VB6 app lately?
- csmithuk 13y ago
  Yes by web I mean HTML5, JS and CSS3, REST and HTTP/SPDY. Yes I can snapshot everything if I want but the problem with the web is that it is a general purpose tool. It should be a single portal into everything both local and remote sites and applications. Unfortunately, the rate of change is incredibly large for Internet-facing applications. Intranet-facing applications are left behind. As browsers evolve, which they do rapidly, unpredictably and without compromise[1] a disparity grows until you need two browsers. This is not a situation an enterprise wants to or can afford to maintain, simply because it's below the watermark of concern for 99% of users. This is my point. The difference between the CLR/JVM and a web browser is that they have a predictable shelf-life and can be maintained separately as they are separate portals into each world. To be fair (I exclude the CLR from this as it's too integrated into the OS), I can ship a JVM with a Java app and it'll run quite happily for another 15-20 years. And yes I have tried running a 16-bit VB4 (!!) app lately - one of our clients uses one. On 32-bit Windows 8.1, it still works absolutely perfectly (Windows Vista 64-bit+ has no 16-bit subsystem). [1] Apart from IE.