Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

lifehacker.com.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 151 posts

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#81

Post by jamespcole2 »

mkmcdonald wrote: post #61

Ah; browser elitism continues to pervade the web platform. Perhaps one day developers will realize how to develop working pages for static, decade-old browsers. It's not as hard as bloggers evangelize it to be. HTML and CSS gracefully degrade. Host objects (DOM, etc.) require some care, but can degrade as well. On an open platform with open software, we continue to punish and castigate users for their choice (or lack…

It's not browser elitism, it's just the facts. No reasonable person is arguing that IE7 is the best browser - it's old, out of date and works poorly and there are plenty of good free browsers to choose from so why not just use one of them.

Also, where does it end? Should we still support Netscape or IE6 just because users have the right to choose to use old browsers? There has to be a limit to the support for older technology and IE7 has reached that limit.

It cuts both ways, sure you can choose to use IE7 but also I can choose not to support it, if that loses customers then so be it, if it gets them to upgrade it has done both them and the internet a service.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#82

Post by nasmorn »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #73
epmatsw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's equally ridiculous. Not upgrading your browser is a choice, being disabled is not.

Not really. Most people using IE7 probably didn't choose it, their IT department chose for them.

True but if there was some department disabling people, we would look very differently at disabilities I guess.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#84

Post by itsboring »

Zak wrote: post #76
mkmcdonald wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that a certain line must be drawn. However, a large subset of browsers can still be supported. I've found that I can support scripted pages until IE 4, wherein `throw` and `try/catch` are not supported. Niceties such as `Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty` and `Function.prototype.call` were introduced in IE 6⁰, so I can accept complaints about IE 5. A SyntaxError followed by a termination of script seem accept…

We just don't work hard enough. There are 24 hours in a day, and some smaller number usable for working. What percentage of them should I spend making cool stuff, and what percentage should I spend making sure that cool stuff works in six (IE7), eleven (IE6) or twelve (Opera 5) year old browsers that only a tiny percentage of potential users use?

100% cool stuff, 0% old browsers!

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#85

Post by altrego99 »

> Microsoft itself has worked hard to persuade users to upgrade as part of general system patches, and as we’ve noted recently, the current Internet Explorer 9 release performs much better than you might think.

Is IE9 available for Windows XP? Most of the corporates still rely on Windows XP machines. I can't help thinking Microsoft's persuading people to get IE9 is just another try to get them out of Windows XP. And while there's ample reason to move on from IE7, there isn't any so many for upgrading from Windows XP, really.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#87

Post by chris_wot »

_wp3r wrote: post #32
ceol wrote: post #12

I doubt their userbase using IE7 is large enough for this to be a big deal. This tax's real goal is PR for Kogan.

Maybe not for Kogan, but most of the DOD is still on IE6, as an example that is something like 2 million daily users. Uber large business and government is were the users are hiding. The reason the numbers are still off is because those same users are using chrome at there house in the evening. There should be a business only metric for browser usage. That would be very interesting.

I would imagine the proportion of DOD users going to an Australia electronics shopping site would be 0.0000000001% of Kogan's total user base.

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#88

Post by chris_wot »

gte910h wrote: post #52
icambron wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the relationship between "assistive technology" and "old browser"? It would surprise me if that tech was only available for IE7.

The apps they use probably have a web browser embedded in them. They may not have 5k for a brand new version

I'd be very curious as to which apps these are. Eventually, they'll be left in the cold regardless. In at least two years time there will hopefully be nobody supporting IE6!

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#89

Post by Devilboy »

planetguy wrote: post #9
litek wrote: 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…

4. All sarcastic comments get -5 starting karma

Re: Kogan imposes a tax on IE7 shoppers

#90

Post by AndrewDucker »

beedogs wrote: post #55
sliverstorm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not part of the DoD, but as I understand it a lot of entrenched usage of IE6 these days is usually internal apps. So, perhaps they use IE6 for private networks, and use IE8, Firefox, et al for public-facing workstations.

But IE6 won't even run on new versions of Windows. You'd need to run up a VM on a user's machine with a copy of XP. What's the refresh cycle at DoD? Two decades?

If you have thousands of machines running an OS that works perfectly well for your purposes, then you only upgrade when support lapses, which is 2014 in this case.
Post reply on HN