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98% isn't much

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Re: 98% isn't much

#221

Post by swiftcoder »

mattmatheus wrote: post #178
londons_explore wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people with old android phones with no free disk space using ancient browsers. There are plenty of people still using windows 10 with updates turned off or wedged for whatever reason. These people just use the sites that work. They aren't computer experts, and might not even realise why half the internet doesn't work - they just think that's the way things are.

I'm not sure this is a realistic use case to try and support. A 10 year old android phone likely has a battery life measured in 10s of minutes, and really isn't something we need to worry about.

You get the guy at the mall to swap in a new battery for $50 in most parts of the world. Its cheaper to do that every few years than buy a new phone, and I have several family members who refuse to upgrade on principle, because modern phones grew too large for their hands/pockets

Re: 98% isn't much

#223

Post by s3p »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #179
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when I read the article I thought "Great, more paternalistic advice that pretends we have infinite resources/time/money." Anyone who has ever done website or mobile development knows there is a huge array of browsers and platforms, and supporting the very long tail of configurations is sometimes nearly impossible, let alone almost never cost effective. When I last ran some web apps, we'd see substantial numbers…

He wasn’t actually giving a blanket directive. The article was suggesting that you think about whether 98% is actually good in your use case by doing the math and thinking.

I mean the name was "98% isn't much" and the article made it sound like 98% isn't good enough

Re: 98% isn't much

#225

Post by Tarq0n »

wccrawford wrote: post #25

Alternatively, 98% is plenty . If your business plan requires you to capitalize on more than 98% of the market, it's already a failure. It'll never happen. As always, it's an "it depends" situation. If your userbase is largely luddites, then maybe you need to support 10+ year old browsers that can't be updated. Otherwise, you can probably just worry about people who are using computers new enough to actually update t…

That's a very mercenary attitude. If less than 2% of your (potential) users had a particular disability, would you implement accessibility features for them without being forced to? I'd argue that it's the right thing to do. Some restrictions like using an old browser may be more or less a choice, but it's still a much better look to be inclusive.

Re: 98% isn't much

#226

Post by swiftcoder »

collinmanderson wrote: post #118

Part of the problem is The US Government (and UK Government) use the "2% rule" on their websites and only officially support 98%. I mentioned 3 years ago that Firefox at 2.2% is dangerously close the being unsupported on government websites, and at this point it's now at 1.9%. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36776603 https://analytics.usa.gov/ says "There were 1.66 billion sessions in the last 30 days." - so 2%…

Yeah, this is sort of the problem with a percentage-based approach. You are better with a "pick the top 3 implementations" in most cases - that bags you Webkit, Blink, and Gecko in the browser example, and since we're ignoring the long-tail in either case, that's probably good enough

Re: 98% isn't much

#227

Post by system2 »

When I read the title, I instantly thought about these crappy Ai api status pages. People somehow are forced to accept that 98% uptime is alright.

Re: 98% isn't much

#228

Post by compiler-guy »

bradleybuda wrote: post #42
zero-sharp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how you equate 10 year old browser users with luddites?

It’s very difficult for the average person to use a ten year old browser; in fact I’d offer that the only way to use a ten year old browser is to be an expert and do so intentionally.

I support a bevy of older people with older computers, senior-citizen types. Upgrades are expensive. Monetarily, but also in retraining. These folks don't want the latest UI, they want what is familiar, and retraining is super annoying.

Computers that were EOL a few years ago, running ten-year-old browsers, are absolutely routine.

Re: 98% isn't much

#230

Post by dsjoerg »

Decisions are about tradeoffs. 2% of users staring at a broken screen is bad, of course. But what is the _cost_ of not using nested CSS? The responsible way to make a decision is to consider both sides of the tradeoff.
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