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98% isn't much

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Re: 98% isn't much

#231

Post by pverheggen »

epolanski wrote: post #65
eknkc wrote: post #8

I agree the general premise but do not agree when it comes to browser support. I feel like we should be building for the 98% or even 95% and force the remaining to upgrade their browsers. I've built for the IE6 - IE11 era for a painful and long time. I do not give a shit if you want to use a 3 year old browser at this point. Go look at a blank screen.

What you describe is not feasible in competitive mature markets like good part of e-commerce. As of 2024 at one of my clients we were still supporting IE8 and as of 2026 I still have significant traffic at some clients from IE9 and 11 or ancient firefox/chrome versions. The reason is quite simple when you analyze the data: it's concentrated between 8.30 and 5.30 pm. Those are people sitting at their desk in a bank or…

I get that some companies mandate IE11, they may have IE-first internal sites, custom browser plugins, MDM configs - actual systems that would need to be updated. And MS still supports it and releases security patches for it.

But being forced to use ancient Chrome/Edge versions? You are exposing your users to half a dozen sandbox escapes, and there's no big blocker from upgrading. Is their IT department asleep at the wheel?

Re: 98% isn't much

#232

Post by drdeca »

anoneng wrote: post #191
ryandrake wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully: To me these just sound like excuses. I can write a web page that works correctly on all browsers. We all can. That web page won't do much of anything, but it's possible. So, there is a baseline "target subset of HTML/CSS" that gives you 100% coverage. From there, it's purely developer choice: When you add something, are you choosing technology that is widely available and supported, or are you choosing…

This goes to show you’ve never been anywhere near the actual development cycle of a real-world front-end web application. “So, there is a baseline "target subset of HTML/CSS" that gives you 100% coverage.” Oh really? Which subset? Which “HTML/CSS?” And 100%? Absolutely laughable.

Do you know any browsers which don’t support https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ (if you remove the google traffic tracking js that’s iirc tacked on at the end of the page (or maybe I’m thinking of better mfing website (which adds a tiny bit of css)? Idr.)) ?

I get that asking a commercial website to be as basic/supported as that website is a big ask. I don’t think the other commenter was saying that such websites should reach 100%, only that they should start from there and sacrifice only as much as is necessary.

Re: 98% isn't much

#233

Post by londons_explore »

swiftcoder wrote: post #221
mattmatheus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Usually you get a guy at the mall to swap in a new battery for $10.

For $50 you can buy a whole new phone (refurb that is 4 yrs old from some other country)

Re: 98% isn't much

#234

Post by Macha »

londons_explore wrote: post #72
bradleybuda wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Eventually you are making things worse for your vast majority of users when you have to e.g. make them install a native app for a video call or use a TLS version that is broken to support those Gingerbread Android phones

Re: 98% isn't much

#235

Post by dfabulich »

ryandrake wrote: post #186
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…

Respectfully: To me these just sound like excuses. I can write a web page that works correctly on all browsers. We all can. That web page won't do much of anything, but it's possible. So, there is a baseline "target subset of HTML/CSS" that gives you 100% coverage. From there, it's purely developer choice: When you add something, are you choosing technology that is widely available and supported, or are you choosing…

The inherent property of software is that the only way to be sure your software works on a particular platform is to test on that platform.

There is not a baseline target subset of HTML/CSS that reaches 100% coverage that can be statically verified. HTML tables usually work in old browsers, but there were subtle bugs in old versions of Internet Explorer, bugs that you're especially likely to hit if you're using tables for layout (because you can't use modern CSS layout features). The only way to be sure that you didn't trigger one of those subtle bugs is to test your web app on ancient browsers.

The cost of reaching the last 0.N% of users rises with each platform you add to your test matrix. It costs money to test your web app on Internet Explorer. It costs even more money to fix bugs that only affect Internet Explorer.

I think you can't deny that doing that work is expensive. The question then has to be whether that work will repay itself somehow. But the last 0.N% of users will only provide ~0.N% increases to your revenue. Unless your revenue is astronomical, you can't afford even one full-time engineer to test and fix bugs on 0.N% of browsers.

Re: 98% isn't much

#236

Post by christina97 »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #90
Certhas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infrastructure should not be (purely) profit driven. To improve profits for train operators, the simple option is to cut lines serving small and rural communities. The economics are much worse than serving large cities. Same for cell coverage and broadband internet. Most profitable is to just not cover a few percent of the population. There is a point where technology becomes foundational for participating in society…

> the simple option is to cut lines serving small and rural communities We don’t see this in practice to though. Three examples: 1. In the airline industry big airlines don’t go everywhere for this reasons but small local airlines fill the gap due to market opportunity. 2. Changes in technology enable big companies to operate more efficiently. See starlink. 3. Big companies know that ubiquity is important for their b…

The airline industry gets huge subsidies in most countries to operate more rural/less profitable routes. Most of the passenger airports in the US for instance would not be viable without subsidies (most flights go to a few profitable hubs, but the long tail or airports forms the majority by count).

Amazon delivers everywhere because USPS subsidizes package delivery to unprofitable areas. You don’t get next day prime except in a relatively small proportion of the country (by area).

Re: 98% isn't much

#237

Post by BeetleB »

> Can you imagine a venue refusing entry to former clients 2% of the time just because they’ve “improved their experience”?

The web has been doing this since, when, the 90's?

I use Firefox. In the last year, suddenly quite a few web sites have just stopped working on it for me. Firefox is over 2% market share.

Re: 98% isn't much

#238

Post by pavon »

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 is neglecting network effects. Less than 10% of the US population is vegetarian, but if a restaurant doesn't have any vegetarian options they lose business not just from that 10% but from any party that has a single vegetarian. Likewise, if a website has any social network effect, disregarding a portion of the population will decrease use from a much larger percentage than those directly affected.

Furthermore, even if your site functionality has no social networking component itself, all business are subject to the network effects of word of mouth. People are much more likely to share negative experiences that positive ones, so if 1/50 of people find your site to be broken, then a considerable amount of feedback online will be negative and will harm your reputation for the entire market, not just that 2%.

Finally, in business you have to work hard to win over even a small portion of your total addressable market. Artificially decreasing your TAM can be fine if it is an intentional strategic decision to focus on a specific market, but pointless to exclude people without good reason. Not having vegetarian options at BBQ restaurant in Texas is harmless - no one goes there for that, but if you are running a more general restaurant it would be foolish not to have a few vegetarian options. Excluding people because your web developers are too lazy to use approaches that have worked fine for the last 20 years and need to use the new shiny is even more foolish.

Re: 98% isn't much

#239

Post by [deleted] »

Eridrus wrote: post #201
throwaway173738 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but the guy writing the article seems to be bad at math and thinking. Can I imagine a venue kicking out 2% of their former clients on some criteria? Absolutely yes. Kicking out 2% of website visitors may still be totally reasonable if the cost to serve them is meaningful, or if they are less than 2% of revenue. His defense for 98% being bad is that some CSS thing people were arguing about only had 70% coverage…

[deleted]

Re: 98% isn't much

#240

Post by mrhottakes »

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…

Plenty for who/what? I think you've assumed a bunch of facts that aren't true for every situation.
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