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Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

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Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#11
post #3

This is terrific link bait. They've probably checked their stats and figured the exposure is well worth the few missed sales they might encounter.

Yeah, it's a way to flatter the rest of your customer base, who now get to feel superior for using a different browser. "Hey everybody, I use Chrome, aren't I wonderful?" Further suggestions to let us elite middle-class types feel superior to others: 1. Extra 25% surcharge for anyone who shows up at your cafe wearing Crocs 2. Anyone driving up to your hotel in a Pontiac Aztek has to pay a fifty-dollar uglification fe…

I guess the major economic difference is all those suggestions would lose you money, whereas this will probably help their sales while slightly cutting their costs.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#16

At Lexity we bounced everybody who wasn't using IE8 or better to a page that showed them how to upgrade, and specifically encouraged Chrome Frame for those who were stuck with IE6 or IE7. This was very simple to do; all it took was a few conditional comments: http://blog.lexity.com/blog/2011/12/27/browser-not-supported...

I can understand why you make the requirements for your app very clear.

I cannot understand why you'd chose to bounce potential customers from your website based on their browser. Isn't this just you failing to provide information to people who have made an effort to contact you and ask for it?

I ask this next question gently: Have you checked you're not bouncing people using assistive technology?

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#17

I think it's cute but it's hard to get over the sense that it's the moral equivalent of "This site best viewed with frames at 1024x768 screen resolution with Netscape Navigator 2.0."

now that the world has moved on from the two-browser days, and we actually have some standards in place, there's a huge difference between "only this idiosyncratic browser" and "anything but this noncompliant browser".

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#18

I think it's cute but it's hard to get over the sense that it's the moral equivalent of "This site best viewed with frames at 1024x768 screen resolution with Netscape Navigator 2.0."

I think asking the user to use tech that is less than 5 years old is more reasonable then specifying 1 version and resolution. And in those days there barely was a browser that was over 5 years old.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#19
post #17

I think it's cute but it's hard to get over the sense that it's the moral equivalent of "This site best viewed with frames at 1024x768 screen resolution with Netscape Navigator 2.0."

now that the world has moved on from the two-browser days, and we actually have some standards in place, there's a huge difference between "only this idiosyncratic browser" and "anything but this noncompliant browser".

So then just design and test with the compliant browsers and let IE users figure it out for themselves. If just a fraction of the sites had done that back during the browser wars then IE would have become a compliant browser.
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