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Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

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Re: Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

#11

Post by JeffJenkins »

StavrosK wrote: post #9

I can tell you this is also true for historious, Chrome is at 46%, Firefox 27%, Safari 20% and IE 3%. Opera is 1.8%, but that's probably all me :( We can't really justify much effort (it's usually large, too) to accommodate 2% of users. Hell, until very recently, our bookmarklet didn't work with IE (some XSS security settings? We never figured it out), but now it eschews the nice overlay it uses for other browsers an…

How do you know whether it was not supporting IE and a broken bookmarklet that caused your IE numbers to be so low? If I used IE and your service had a poor experience I'd probably use another bookmarking service.

edit: also, if the service is still new, you might largely be getting early adopters and not supporting IE could inhibit growth.

Re: Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

#12

Post by benologist »

StavrosK wrote: post #8
bobds wrote: post #7

Here are some better places to get real stats on browser usage: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/ http://gs.statcounter.com/ http://getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/ Your own browser stats are skewed at this moment, I wouldn't base any important decisions on them. One interesting tidbit from Statcounter: In Europe FF usage has caught up to IE, they are both around 40%. In North America IE has double the u…

What's a better place to get real stats on usage than your own analytics?

Your own are going to be best right up until you hit a site that skews them - like "we had a few posts on Hacker News".

Re: Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

#15

Post by StavrosK »

JeffJenkins wrote: post #11
StavrosK wrote: post #9

I can tell you this is also true for historious, Chrome is at 46%, Firefox 27%, Safari 20% and IE 3%. Opera is 1.8%, but that's probably all me :( We can't really justify much effort (it's usually large, too) to accommodate 2% of users. Hell, until very recently, our bookmarklet didn't work with IE (some XSS security settings? We never figured it out), but now it eschews the nice overlay it uses for other browsers an…

How do you know whether it was not supporting IE and a broken bookmarklet that caused your IE numbers to be so low? If I used IE and your service had a poor experience I'd probably use another bookmarking service. edit: also, if the service is still new, you might largely be getting early adopters and not supporting IE could inhibit growth.

We do support IE now, so those numbers should start to stabilise, but still, the percentage is very low. It probably is early adopters we're getting, but I don't think there's a way for the bookmarklet to work with IE in the way it works with other browsers. I've tried disabling all security settings, but IE still won't allow JS access to the iframe.

Re: Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

#17

Post by catshirt »

Some more anecdotal evidence, my company (not mine; http://getglue.com) actually originally launched solely as a Firefox extension (primarily distributed through Firefox AMO).

This actually played some role in my decision in taking the job- this was still in 2008, when ignoring IE was essentially almost never an option. Better, was that the extension views were developed in CSS- so I was free to explore CSS3 much earlier in live projects.

More timely, even as a website we still have very little focus on supporting IE users.

IE makes up for that. More interestingly, a lot of our visitors now come through consumer markets like HBO and Fox. I think the numbers are surprisingly low for IE already; but considering our market is no longer a techie market (quite the opposite), the numbers are somewhat more interesting.

That all said, I think this speaks true to the title of the article. It's just a careful decision you need to make- but fortunately not one that is impossible to solve quickly, should you make the wrong one.

Re: Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

#18

Post by primigenus »

We did this for our app, quplo, which is still in public beta as we figure out payment (like these guys describe). Our app involves some complicated javascript for a syntax highlighted, code completion-supporting HTML editor. Common sense indicated it wouldn't be a good idea to invest lots of time making things work in IE when a) Analytics showed less than 2% IE visitors, b) our target audience is web designers and developers who by and large don't use IE as their preferred browser, and c) the app is an enclosed environment where it's okay to say "use these browsers for the app".

So what to take away from this? If you're a startup, you should be prioritising, not obsessing. And high on the list is making money, not making a marginal number of users happy, handling politics, or premature optimisation (eg. writing code that works across all browsers).

One thing we messed up on: not creating a kick-ass UX on Mac from day 1. We fixed it in the meantime, but we're developers using Windows, and a significant portion of our userbase is designers on Macs. So Safari, Firefox, Chrome and especially things like Mac font rendering and UI controls needed to be lickety-split.

Re: Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

#19

Post by catshirt »

bobds wrote: post #10
StavrosK wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a better place to get real stats on usage than your own analytics?

Do you think Chrome usage at 40% is not bogus? I agree that your own stats are the best source, but not when you've only been public for less than a month and half your audience is coming from the likes of HN and Techcrunch.

As a blog directed towards programmers, I have to ask what your visitor browser breakdown is; I don't know why you'd think 40% is bogus for this type of audience.

Re: Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE

#20

Post by thenduks »

whouweling wrote: post #14

I think if you use a modern javascript framework (i.e jQuery), and test regularly, it shouldn't be that difficult / time costly anymore to support IE7 and IE8. In my experience jQuery abstracts away most of the incompatibilities.

It's mostly style that's the problem. IE8 is better but you don't get any niceties (rounded corners, etc). IE9 looks like it will be marginally better (eg, you now get rounded corners, but not much else).
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