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We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

paydirtapp.com

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Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#31

Post by bdunn »

I target a similar audience (freelancers). If anything, a feature would be supporting IE, especially when your app does a lot with CSS3 and bleeding edge HTML5 stuff.

And features need to be justified. Planscope (http://planscope.io) gets less than 2% of all traffic from IE (chart: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2205912/iestats.png), and for actual accounts there's only been one person with IE - and that was a client that one of my customers invited in. 5 minutes later, Chrome Frame was added and everyone was happy.

I've also recently built a social network for amateur gardeners. The average age was probably 50. Did I ensure IE was fully supported? You bet.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#32

Post by Chris_Newton »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #28
Chris_Newton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely oddities about how iOS Safari does things. Handling orientation changes and using high-resolution images for the devices with Retina displays are repeat offenders.

Well, adding support for Retina displays is definitely an iOS-specific thing (at least right now). But orientation changes? Is that not a general "mobile issue" for you? Or is (are) the WebKit build(s) in iOS doing something specifically bad compared to (say) Android?

If you rotate an iPad from portrait to landscape, for example, then the default behaviour in Safari is to show the same page layout as you had before, but scale it up to the new width. That's far from ideal if your site uses a responsive design that could adapt quite happily to use the extra width in a landscape orientation.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#33

Post by vibrunazo »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #30
mixonic wrote: post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

I'm confused why you believe you need hardware for testing? iOS simulator should be plenty sufficient in any standard dev environment...

Buying a mac to run the simulator on is much more expensive than buying an ipad.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#34

Post by fritzy »

mixonic wrote: post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

So very amused by this!

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#36

Post by brudgers »

>"In reality we've received exactly zero requests for IE support, angry or otherwise."

Why would someone bother contacting you when it appears that your site is broken? In other words, the call to action doesn't display technical competence - indeed it implies a level of technical incompetence which probably is not justified.

"We're really sorry, but Paydirt isn't playing nice with your browser" doesn't inspire confidence in the product - it doesn't suggest a high level of customer service, either. Would I really want to trust something as critical as invoicing to this company?

Furthermore, not supporting IE doesn't scale well. At 10,000 users 1.6% is $1600 a month in revenue. At 100,000 it's nearly $200,000 a year in potential revenue - all for what is mostly a one time expense.

Finally, where does this leave room for expanding services such as letting my customer's see their project in real time?

I don't see a business case for it. I'm not saying that there isn't one - just that it hasn't be made.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#38

Post by toast76 »

brudgers wrote: post #36

> "In reality we've received exactly zero requests for IE support, angry or otherwise." Why would someone bother contacting you when it appears that your site is broken? In other words, the call to action doesn't display technical competence - indeed it implies a level of technical incompetence which probably is not justified. "We're really sorry, but Paydirt isn't playing nice with your browser" doesn't inspire conf…

1.6% is 1.6% no matter how big the number is...

Personally, if my app were making 12 MILLION DOLLARS a year I'd either a) not care about that $200k a year or b) I'd then have the resources to do something about it

If I were these guys I'd support Spanish and French long before I'd bother chasing that 1.6%, but no one is being critical of them not doing that.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#39

Post by josephcooney »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #22
mixonic wrote: post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

Is there something intrinsic to the WebKit versions on iOS products, or are your problems more general, i.e. learning how to support "limited" devices again (relatively small CPU, GPU, memory)? What is it about the iPad 1 & 2 that is giving you so many more problems compared to the iPad 3? I found I was spending way more time on IE bugs with Web app I recently did (~1000 users/month) than any other browser by far.

What percentage of your users were on IE?

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#40

Post by doctororange »

brudgers wrote: post #36

> "In reality we've received exactly zero requests for IE support, angry or otherwise." Why would someone bother contacting you when it appears that your site is broken? In other words, the call to action doesn't display technical competence - indeed it implies a level of technical incompetence which probably is not justified. "We're really sorry, but Paydirt isn't playing nice with your browser" doesn't inspire conf…

That's good point. Taken on board, and we'll improve the page to encourage IE users to let us know. It's very true that things might change which would require us to change our tack, but as a bootstrapped startup with a hundred things requiring attention, IE support has taken a back seat.
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