If you were writing HTML documents would it really matter which browsers people were using?
This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
61–70 of 177 posts
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#62IE9 support is already in a sad state. Many new websites already look in IE9 as bad as in IE6. Chrome should spawns less processes (hold some more tabs in one process). IE spawns less processes than Chrome and therefor is less of a memory hog. Firefox finally needs a proper multi-process implementation. Even the latest Developer edition just uses two processes (firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe) - I just tried it…
I'm kind of sick of hearing complaints about Chrome's multiple processes being somehow a bad thing. You want fewer processes in Chrome, then you go on to complain about Firefox's crashed tabs. Do you understand that's one of the benefits of having multiple processes? If one process crashes, it very rarely effects the performance of any other processes. It's not keeping all of your eggs in one basket. It provides bett…
Are you answering my comment? You wrote your own unrelated rant.
I only wrote about it would be great if you could configure Chrome's process spawning logic. IE does it in an more intelligent way to consume less memory by spawning a bit less processes (a trade off, as if one tab crashes more tabs have to be reloaded). But giving a power user (who have 100+ tabs open) a choice would be great.
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was a developer, I'd carefully look at my referer logs and if only 15% of my user community was using IE 8-10, I'd just develop for IE 10. I would NOT warn the end users about needing to upgrade, I'd just let script errors occur and not release any compatibility fixes. I'd respond to support tickets explaining that there are bugs in their old version of IE and suggest they upgrade, or install Chrome or Firefox.…
And then when your clients don't renew, your revenue is significantly affected, you have to lay off staff, you have a realization that this works in an ideal world, but we don't live in one.
i don't know...
how much is the cost to develop an application to cover 100% of the available desktop browsers? maybe use that value to improve mobile target make more sense at this point?!
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they can. IE's (since IE5) is not your usual standalone browser application - it's an operating system component, that's used in a lot of places, starting right from the desktop. Tighter integration and mutual OS-browser dependence means it's not as easy as saying "ok, let's allow IE10 to run on Vista".
I remember that installing an older version of IE on Windows 95 enabled some features like the Quick Launch bar in the task bar. Previously, I believed that this was a feature exclusive to the newer Windows 98 but that IE installation backported a lot of the visible Windows 98 changes into the Windows 95 Explorer.
That was Internet Explorer 4. It was however an optional part of the installation and if you installed IE5 without installing IE4 before, you couldn't get it.
Messy.
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard that, but no one is forcing them to program it that way. They could do the equivalent of static linking and include the necessary components in the browser instead of the OS. That's more or less what the Utilu IE Collection does I think.
It's the other way round: programs include the browser as a COM component. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752040%28VS.85%29... So on the older operating systems, programs that shipped with the OS will be embedding the browser as a COM component, usually for help purposes. If they're rendering local HTML (or generated HTML!) then they require that to keep working. So that particular interface has to be mai…
Embedded rendering of local HTML doesn't need security updates, so that's not a major problem. You can leave it alone while you update the actual browser.
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was a developer, I'd carefully look at my referer logs and if only 15% of my user community was using IE 8-10, I'd just develop for IE 10. I would NOT warn the end users about needing to upgrade, I'd just let script errors occur and not release any compatibility fixes. I'd respond to support tickets explaining that there are bugs in their old version of IE and suggest they upgrade, or install Chrome or Firefox.…
Why this, specifically? > I would NOT warn the end users about needing to upgrade People using your product are discussing it on review sites, on social media, with friends/family, etc.. If you silently give some of them a broken product, a few will contact support; but I imagine most will assume your product is just low quality. So that's the word they'll spread. For corporate users: well, you'd need to talk with yo…
> but I imagine most will assume your product is just low quality
And they would be right.
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#67Oh poor, deluded TNW. Software only dies in the way developers care about when users stop using it. Well beside its actual expiry (which seems to be 2020), people STILL use XP with an ancient versions of IE6 and IE7. Many Vista users stick on IE7. So calm yourself and put flexbox back down. You've got a few years before that's supported enough.
If I was a developer, I'd carefully look at my referer logs and if only 15% of my user community was using IE 8-10, I'd just develop for IE 10. I would NOT warn the end users about needing to upgrade, I'd just let script errors occur and not release any compatibility fixes. I'd respond to support tickets explaining that there are bugs in their old version of IE and suggest they upgrade, or install Chrome or Firefox.…
That's not a very good way to run a commercial entity. And it is also why developers should not be making the call about which browser to support and which not.
The reason why is that the fixed cost of a business are that: fixed. The profit is usually over-represented in the last few percentage points of the people using the service or buying the products so if you lop off some arbitrary percentage at the top that 15% of your users might be 80% of your profits. That's a very quick way to die.
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to say this stuff, less easy to implement in a business. It depends on your demographic and your content. Take B2B sales or B2B SaaS. Enterprise users are THE main reason for crappy old browsers in my experience, so the real question becomes... Are you really willing to take a 10% hit on sales? You can announce EOLs until the cows come home (Microsoft has and look how well it has done them). If your product…
It's the 80/20 rule for me. Think about the type of client (individual user/corporation) that is still using Entities who use legacy software have more problems than their browser. It's symptomatic of a much larger issue, and I love being able to filter them out!
> It's the 80/20 rule for me. Think about the type of client (individual user/corporation) that is still using At an entity level, they may be difficult to deal with, but at the level of an individual in the organisation they know their company has problems. These people move around, and personal relationships are really important long term. This is my main motivating factor.
As long as the client pays (20% of revenue...) and there are no other risks, I'm happy to employ a front end developer who has probably has years of experience making IE6/7 degrade somewhat gracefully. If it were my own product, my own time, my own cost, absolutely not, but if sales were assured with this type of customer, sure.
This is a personal opinion. No one client is the same. I find it interesting to contrast 2 clients I work with who are in differing fields of the same space: (massive names in) financial services: One does QA on only the latest stable version of major browsers (down to Opera, my personal favourite) browser on Windows and Mac; The other does QA on any browser or platform with 2% visitor share (measured by visitors to their website), and also accommodates customers who may be on something obscure but the customer demands it. The former's approach sounds pretty aggressive r.e. serving, or not serving, the customer, but the latter's caused them to avoid abandoning a really backward platform for 5+ years for all customers. Swings and roundabouts. Interesting how we take varying judgments.
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#69Aren't old android browsers more of a problem nowadays?
Depends who you're developing for. If you're selling SaaS and your customers are large public or private sector organizations whose staff work at their desks, old versions of IE are still your biggest headache.
Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard that, but no one is forcing them to program it that way. They could do the equivalent of static linking and include the necessary components in the browser instead of the OS. That's more or less what the Utilu IE Collection does I think.
It's the other way round: programs include the browser as a COM component. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752040%28VS.85%29... So on the older operating systems, programs that shipped with the OS will be embedding the browser as a COM component, usually for help purposes. If they're rendering local HTML (or generated HTML!) then they require that to keep working. So that particular interface has to be mai…
> Microsoft were kind of correct in the "browser choice" lawsuit that they'd used the browser as an OS component, and everyone else was correct that this was kind of a bad idea.
Unfortunately, Microsoft signed a consent decree with the DoJ in 1995 which allowed them to add features to the operating system but meant they couldn't tie a separate program to the operating system. Therefore the browser had to be an added feature.
This was only a tiny part of a much broader decree. None the less, you can thank Janet Reno and the US government for the problems this has caused ever since ;-)