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

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

#41

Post by doctororange »

toast76 wrote: post #38
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.

Exactly. There are many ways to alienate potential users (missing languages, missing features, etc). In the early stages we've learned the importance of focussing on the biggest bottlenecks first.

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

#42

Post by Karunamon »

FiddlerClamp wrote: post #37

Interesting - I wonder how folks would have responded in the 1990s if someone had stated "We don't support Macs, and we're calling that a feature."

I'm unclear as to how this is even remotely relevant. Mac compatibility has been a pain in the ass for.. err...... who again?

IE compatibility has been a pain in the ass for pretty much every web developer everywhere up until very recently.

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

#43

Post by FiddlerClamp »

Karunamon wrote: post #42
FiddlerClamp wrote: post #37

Interesting - I wonder how folks would have responded in the 1990s if someone had stated "We don't support Macs, and we're calling that a feature."

I'm unclear as to how this is even remotely relevant. Mac compatibility has been a pain in the ass for.. err...... who again? IE compatibility has been a pain in the ass for pretty much every web developer everywhere up until very recently.

I'm thinking desktop apps - most companies would create PC-only versions of software in the 1990s -- or PC-first.

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

#44

Post by barumrho »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #32
shaggyfrog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can't you disable zooming to solve that problem?

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

#45

Post by doctororange »

bdunn wrote: post #31

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 tha…

Good feedback. Thanks bdunn.

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

#46

Post by aethr »

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.

Hover states are a big one. Also making call-to-action targets bigger for the less precise pointing device (ie, your users' fat fingers). Making sure you use Flash fall-forwards with HTML5 video/audio available for iPad / non-flash devices.

iPads and iPhones also have great support for CSS3 transforms (3D included with hardware acceleration), but some of the other "common" CSS3 and HTML5 technologies do bog down on the slower processor. Your average desktop may not have a dedicated video card and a browser with hardware acceleration, which creates a smaller intersection of features that will work with no brains on iPads and (generic) desktops.

The list, of course, goes on, and it will continue to grow with time. As with the well known deficiencies of IE (floating, clearing, zindex bugs, etc) however, the iPad caveats and corner cases are becoming more of a known quantity. As with IE, just takes a bit more planning.

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

#47

Post by rmATinnovafy »

shaggyfrog wrote: post #24
rmATinnovafy wrote: post #15

I support whatever my client needs. They pay, I code. End of story.

I believe HN had a story linked a few months ago where supporting IE was specified as a separate line item in the budget, forcing their clients to really contemplate the costs (in both time & money) supporting such a broken browser family. If that's what you mean, then kudos, as I think it's a great learning moment for clients.

Yes, I do mean that. I will support modern browsers, but legacy stuff is additional (though not that much really).

I consider anything older than IE8 to be legacy.

On the other hand, if I put out a product that is aimed at the enterprise market then I will support older stuff. Enterprise moves at a different pace.

Story time: I once found myself working in the banking industry only to discover they used .NET 2.0. This on 2011. They also had a bunch of Win2000 machines. My job was to make a system that ran on all.

Pulled it off, but it opened my eyes to how big business works.

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

#48

Post by eropple »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #13

Well done! I expect the contrarians to pour in screaming about not leaving anyone out and elitism and corporate users and blah blah blah... But seriously, fuck IE. if you don't have to support it then don't! More power to you! My biggest wish as a developer is for some major site to stop supporting IE. I do feel for the users but I feel it's a necessary evil to get the IE team to either ditch or fix Trident or whatev…

I have more trouble with Firefox than modern versions of IE.

I also have a Pentium III that's running Windows 7 and IE9 now (and will be able to upgrade to IE10), and if that can upgrade to IE9, it's utterly and completely disingenuous to claim that the "smallest fraction" of Windows users can upgrade to it. Instead of being rational, you come off as a sneering cheerleader and, y'know, that can entirely be your bag if you want to pick it up and run with it, but it'd help if you at least used your mouth for talking instead of parts down below.

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

#49

Post by rmATinnovafy »

Shenglong wrote: post #14

Can someone at MSFT comment? How is the IE team composed? Is it a threat at MSFT, to be placed on the IE team? "If you don't start performing, we're sending you to work on IE"?

I for one would love to work on the IE team.

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

#50

Post by bigiain »

Chris_Newton wrote: post #32
shaggyfrog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can I just mention that at least on my phone, websites that "adapt" to landscape mode often bug the hell out of me. With my getting-old-eyesight, I often rotate to landscape mode to get bigger text so I can read it more easily. When a website goes "Oh look, more horizontal pixels, I'll shrink the middle column and add some nav on the left and ads on the right!"; I'll usually just hit [back] and move on to some other site.

(Possibly interesting idea: add some analytics so that you can detect portrait/landscape orientation changes, and report on bounce rates immediately afterwards…)

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