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We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

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Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#161

Post by eslachance »

tlianza wrote: post #61

You may have mis-interpreted the fact that because 1.6% of your users have IE, that means that you're in a space where those customers won't use IE. What it may mean is that you don't have very many customers. If you were mainstream, you'd have more IE users... just like the rest of the Internet. It's okay not to be mainstream... but, if time tracking is a competitive and profitable space, your competitors may be hap…

I think it's more critical than just having less IE users in that space... The thing is, 1.6% of total traffic does not equal 1.6% browser usage.

If all your IE visitors are seeing is a landing page and a message saying "sorry, we're too lazy to support for your browser", then of course they'll turn around and never come back. If they were to let IE users through, that number would most likely jump up - significantly.

I know a couple of hardcore IT guys and programmers that are really happy with IE9, and hate Firefox and Chrome with a passion. It happens!

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#162

Post by LocalPCGuy »

"trying to get sites to render pixel-perfect across various versions of various browsers" - That is a big part of the problem. Now, I have designs I have to get pixel-perfect, so I feel their pain, but when developing your own app, you can opt to not go for pixel-perfection.

I don't believe their statistics, but their target market is much more likely to have multiple browsers and is probably willing to jump into a different browser if IE isn't supported.

But I think it is a dumb move to block IE9+. There is no good reason for it. They didn't give one in their blog post, and I have yet to run into a situation where if I am using web standards that I had many issues with IE9. Nothing I've had to hack around enough that I would want to block it. Seems like either an anti-Microsoft for the sake of being anti-Microsoft or just front-end devs not worth their salt (cause a front-end dev worth their salt wouldn't use user-agent detection to block IE in the first place, they'd use feature detection at least.)

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#163

Post by LocalPCGuy »

scott_w wrote: post #101
maggit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterexample, let's consider Google's blocking of Opera. Google routinely blocks Opera when rolling out new stuff. I kind of get it, because of your point 1. However, they sometimes offer a "try anyway"-link and sometimes not. The times that I can not easily "try anyway" makes me dislike Google much more than the times that I "try anyway" and it ends up broken in funky ways. Bottom line; Yes, your reputation s…

I think there are some differences here: Google are trying to keep existing users happy with the "try anyway" link. This is a new business, and they have decided they don't want to support IE. At worst, this annoys die-hard IE users, but they're not your customers anyway. The danger of adding a try anyway link is that people will click it, then still call and complain that your site doesn't work even if you place a h…

How the blank would any front-end decisions result in the loss of data if the developer was any good? They may lose the data on the form they are entering if they encounter a crash, but I think the fears of IE are VASTLY overblown. I can understand locking out older versions, but it's been pretty well established that IE9 at least, can hang with it's counterparts.

(Don't take me for a Microsoft apologist, I still hate developing for IE7 and still have to do so daily. But the IE8+ (IE9+ if you rely on HTML5/CSS3 features as core elements) is really not that hard to work with.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#164

Post by LocalPCGuy »

givan wrote: post #60
brudgers wrote: post #36

> "In reality we've received exactly zero requests for IE support, angry or otherwise." Why would someone bother contacting you when it appears that your site is broken? In other words, the call to action doesn't display technical competence - indeed it implies a level of technical incompetence which probably is not justified. "We're really sorry, but Paydirt isn't playing nice with your browser" doesn't inspire conf…

You must also understand the costs of supporting IE, I think is bigger than the revenue of those 1.6%

Depends on if you believe that 1.6% figure is an accurate representation of how much business they are losing out on by not supporting IE. I would wager that number is generated from bad data specifically caused by their decision not to support IE.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#165

Post by yuhong »

eropple wrote: post #157
exue wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is having a Pentium III Win 7 machine covers using a Pentium 4, Athlon XP, and all those other old computers to install IE9 - covering the biggest fraction of users through backward compatability.

Correct, thank you. You can run Windows 7 on pretty much anything that will run Windows XP. "It costs money to upgrade" may prevent you from doing so, but at this point, after a decade , it's not Microsoft's problem if you're not willing to spend the money. They're not obligated, nor should they be obligated, to avoid using their new stuff (Direct2D, for example) in order to continue to target XP users.

To be more precise, not everything, but yes generally most Win2000-era and later hardware.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#166

Post by karlshea »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #156
karlshea wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the code I've seen for content images involves some JavaScript stuff that uses the device pixel ratio as well.

The server should not have to decide which image to send, based on whatever it can gather of a combination of various factors, including device display resolution capability (double-density vs regular pixel mapping) and connection quality (wireless vs broadband) or whatever else comes into play. The server should be advertising the capability of high res images and the user agent should be requesting them if it wants…

That's a great idea, but that's not currently how it works. All of the high-res website image stuff that I've seen all uses client-side JavaScript to fetch the 2x images.

Re: We don't support Internet Explorer, and we're calling that a feature

#167

Post by WiseWeasel »

karlshea wrote: post #166
WiseWeasel wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The server should not have to decide which image to send, based on whatever it can gather of a combination of various factors, including device display resolution capability (double-density vs regular pixel mapping) and connection quality (wireless vs broadband) or whatever else comes into play. The server should be advertising the capability of high res images and the user agent should be requesting them if it wants…

That's a great idea, but that's not currently how it works. All of the high-res website image stuff that I've seen all uses client-side JavaScript to fetch the 2x images.

Yeah, that's just a broken way to go about it. We need to put pressure on browser maintainers to fix it. I feel dirty doing a hack like that.
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