We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by scott_w » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:37 AM UTC

maggit wrote: post #91

nardi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. There are two very major problems with this idea: 1. Your reputation suffers when users encounter issues while using the browser that you don't support. 2. The support cost of "letting users try anyway" is non-zero, and probably significant.

As a counterexample, let's consider Google's blocking of Opera. Google routinely blocks Opera when rolling out new stuff. I kind of get it, because of your point 1. However, they sometimes offer a "try anyway"-link and sometimes not. The times that I can not easily "try anyway" makes me dislike Google much more than the times that I "try anyway" and it ends up broken in funky ways. Bottom line; Yes, your reputation s…

I think there are some differences here:

Google are trying to keep existing users happy with the "try anyway" link. This is a new business, and they have decided they don't want to support IE.

At worst, this annoys die-hard IE users, but they're not your customers anyway.

The danger of adding a try anyway link is that people will click it, then still call and complain that your site doesn't work even if you place a huge disclaimer telling them IE is unsupported.

Finally, your website may do things that not only break in IE, but can cause your users to lose data when it does break. Yes, standard backups, never deleting data rules apply. But there is time spent either recovering, or explaining to users why you won't recover data for them.

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

#102

Post by jamesflorentino » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:41 AM UTC

Sadly a lot of folks are still stuck with Internet explorer. I still make it to a point to make my web app work at least in IE8 and above and make it seamless as possible.

What I would do is that I'd give users with old browsers a plain version of the site. E.g. No transitions, animations, etc.

Supporting Internet explorer is a pain in the back, but a good developer and designer will do his best to provide availability. That's what I learned so far in the past 6 months.

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

#103

Post by drewmclellan » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:42 AM UTC

The web, like anything, has costs and benefits. A big benefit is that you and develop and deploy an app once, centrally, and anyone can access it from anywhere, on any sort of web device. The cost of that is that you can't control how they're accessing it. To have the benefit, you have to accept the cost.

By shirking the cost of providing even some level of support for IE, you're ditching the benefits afforded to the part-time copywriter who needs to stay at her desk and work her lunch hour during the office job she keeps to make ends meet. You're ditching the benefits afforded to the business owner on the road whose laptop won't join the hotel wifi and has to use the hotel's "business center" to issue the invoice needed to meet his mortgage payment. You're ditching the benefit of a happy customer evangelising the product to a colleague, and wanting to give them a quick demo by logging in on whichever laptop is currently hooked up to the meeting-room projector.

The times when a user doesn't have control over their environment are the times when they need a product to come through for them the most. Especially when that product is their means of getting paid.

Not being able to offer "amazing things with canvas" to IE (or any browser) is okay. Not offering support to be able to log in and perform a set of basic key tasks from any browser whatsoever is, to my mind, throwing away one of the biggest benefits the web can offer as a platform.

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

#104

Post by andys627 » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:55 AM UTC

I like to stay on the horn for a few seconds when people do extra stupid things while driving... that's kinda what you're doing to people using IE. Good job

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

#105

Post by gildas » Tue, May 08, 2012, 9:57 AM UTC

Apparently, they don't really know what they're doing...

    function cj() {
        try {
            return new a.ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
        } catch (b) {
        }
    }

I guess this JS code is not for IE support...

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

#106

Post by ticks » Tue, May 08, 2012, 10:36 AM UTC

scott_w wrote: post #101

maggit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterexample, let's consider Google's blocking of Opera. Google routinely blocks Opera when rolling out new stuff. I kind of get it, because of your point 1. However, they sometimes offer a "try anyway"-link and sometimes not. The times that I can not easily "try anyway" makes me dislike Google much more than the times that I "try anyway" and it ends up broken in funky ways. Bottom line; Yes, your reputation s…

I think there are some differences here: Google are trying to keep existing users happy with the "try anyway" link. This is a new business, and they have decided they don't want to support IE. At worst, this annoys die-hard IE users, but they're not your customers anyway. The danger of adding a try anyway link is that people will click it, then still call and complain that your site doesn't work even if you place a h…

One thing to bear in mind is that Opera employs "web openers" who will lobby and actively help Google to support the browser (so that "try me" link may not be as superficial as it looks). That said, blocking IE is silly.

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

#107

Post by hankejh » Tue, May 08, 2012, 10:44 AM UTC

Hmm -- never heard of them -- neither has Quantcast or Compete. Alexa knows who they are -- says their users spend a whopping 86 seconds on the site.

Tweet from dbushell // David Bushell hipster apple developers @paydirtapp block IE. Every sentence in this article I reply with "You're Doing It Wrong." paydirtapp.com/blog/we-dont-s…

F o l l o w e d

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

#108

Post by steelaz » Tue, May 08, 2012, 11:24 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #68

> I've spent literally hundreds of hours trying to get sites to render pixel-perfect across various versions of various browsers Why? This is a sub-optimal approach. The same machine with the same OS and the same version of the same browser can render very different looks just because they user has different settings. How do you know that your user even has a visual display? Does it matter to you if they have a portr…

I can answer second one. 60 counts for -webkit, 58 counts for -moz, 17 counts for -khtml.

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

#109

Post by jaffathecake » Tue, May 08, 2012, 11:47 AM UTC

kaolinite wrote: post #88

Achshar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with you. But there may be some kind of security issues with IE. Some vulnerability to site's authentication system or something? not impossible, you see.

The security of the application should never rely on the client-side. If you're using Javascript or similar for authentication, you're doing it wrong.

Not strictly true, most sites rely on the client's cross-domain policy for security. Without it, this site would be able to read your Gmail & facebook pages. If a useragent came out that had a major x-domain hole, I'd expect data-sensitive sites to block it.

Not that IE fails in this way (and blocking IE in this case it wrong).

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

#110

Post by brudgers » Tue, May 08, 2012, 11:51 AM UTC

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.

If it is 1.6% of people clicking the call to action, then something meaningful may be concluded. If it is total traffic on the site (my understanding), it is a less meaningful number because the non-customer IE visits are being measured against recurring customer visits, i.e. first time visits are being compared to heavy users.