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98% isn't much

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Re: 98% isn't much

#131

Post by nchmy »

Its hard to find these stats now (need to use Android Studio), but about 10% of android users are on Android v9 and below. Android 9 support was recently discontinued by Chromium, such that they cannot update past Chromium 138.

So, 10% of android users dont have web features beyond, at best, June 2025.

caniuse.com does not track this - they lump all Chrome for android together in the latest version.

This is painful as someone who wants to make use of some very useful, powerful new features, but is targeting people who are most likely to have old, slow, not-updated devices...

Re: 98% isn't much

#132

Post by epolanski »

egorfine wrote: post #121
epolanski wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the revenue they bring vs the cost of serving them. It's highly dependent on market/business/company. Often you simply don't offer the feature. E.g 3d rendered previews may not be available but product configuration and cart keeps working on a shop selling custom showers (you fallback to dynamic static images). In real estate a page displaying fancy maps with price statistics by area/neighborhood might be…

> Depends on the revenue they bring Fifteen years! Unless it's a government agency what's the point even in doing business with a company that uses 15 y.o. browser? They will pay you in silver coins according to 2011 prices.

The people that work there are the customer, not the company itself.

And they mostly check your website when they are bored at work. Not when they leave it and have kids, hobbies or a household to care for.

In travel sector users predominantly navigate in office hours from their work devices. You go meet them where they are. 4% of 6 million daily users is 240'000 potential customers. Converting 3% of them means millions at the end of the year.

Maybe some like airbnb have (or at least used to have) a unique catalogue and they can play a different game and afford to lose some money.

Most e-commerces play differently, at different scales and enjoy different moats and different shareholders/owners expectations.

Re: 98% isn't much

#134

Post by boelboel »

steego wrote: post #83
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…

I’ll go even further. Sometimes you want to give certain people an incentive to not be your customers because your company would be entirely better off if they were someone else’s customer.

This is why discounts are often a bad way to get customers, you don't want the customers who (only) go for discounts, they're often worse (and not just their sensitivity to prices).

Re: 98% isn't much

#135

Post by groundzeros2015 »

MatekCopatek wrote: post #32

While I agree with the general sentiment, the problem here isn't developers not being familiar with statistics, it's the simple fact all of this is profit driven most of the time. I tried to purchase tickets for an event last week. I had to go through Ticketmaster as it was the only official way. They forced me to verify my account using a phone number, but whoever they were using for messages wasn't able to deliver…

I think when you say “profit motivated” the underlying principle is actually utilitarianism; doing the most good for the most people, for which profit Is merely an imperfect proxy.

Re: 98% isn't much

#136

Post by degamad »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #41

I usually go by CanIUse's global percentage when deciding if I can utilize a new browser feature, and right now it's 90.81% ( https://caniuse.com/css-nesting ) That's a bit lower than I would be comfortable with, however not that bad, we have been even considering switching all our images to AVIF: https://caniuse.com/?search=AVIF And google uses Webp all over the place and that's sitting at 96% https://caniuse.com/we…

The author doesn't say you can't use features with 98% (or even less) support.

What they say is that you have to ensure that your site still works for the remaining users, through graceful degradation.

If people have new fancy browsers, use their features to make the interface jazzy. If they don't, ensure that the site still offers its core functionality to them without the fancy features.

Re: 98% isn't much

#137

Post by carlosjobim »

egorfine wrote: post #84
carlosjobim wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? There are no features which aren't supported by 10 year old browsers which can bring more sales or improve the user experience. So who are these new features good for?

My development comfort is worth more than the service for users with vastly outdated browser.

That spells lost sales if you're doing it as a job. Or at least lack of access for people with older devices if you're doing it as a hobby. Then it's of course your call.

Re: 98% isn't much

#138

Post by account42 »

igsomething wrote: post #119
itake wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately some business are critical where is not an option or very expensive for someone to not use it. For example, Uber, a Visa immigration website, low cost air carrier booking site, etc.

For public services you can tell people to use another device, or provide a way to schedule an appointment in-person that is accessible using old browsers.

You you can make a law that requires such businesses to use perfectly good technology standards that are widely supported instead of whatever EEE crap the latest Chrome comes with.

Re: 98% isn't much

#139

Post by lukasbm »

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.

I am an expert and half the internet does not work. That's just the way things are

Re: 98% isn't much

#140

Post by ryan_n »

phailhaus wrote: post #115

The broader point is that percentages can be misleading, and are often because of that. It makes things sound better. But usually, the more accurate thing to do is use odds-notation ("1 in 50" instead of 98%). Percentages have a kind of singularity at the edges, where small numerical changes have massive real effects. Going from a success rate of 98% to 99% doesn't sound like much, but that's failing 1 in 50 vs 1 in…

Isn't this pretty much the entire point of the article.
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