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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

#71

Post by middus »

kristianp wrote: post #69

There could be somewhat of a chicken-and-egg thing happening here with their low IE take-up. On IE 9 the slideshow on the home-page doesn't work, it just says "... loading fancy-pants slideshow ...". If I came across that as an IE user, I wouldn't be signing up. There is also the demographic for their product, which is the more-likely reason for low IE rates. I wouldn't be surprised if the big Mac-OS screen shot on t…

In fact, they don't want you to sign up if you are an IE user. You can't even.

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

#72

Post by prodigal_erik »

My personal web projects always start with standard-conforming HTML with forms and links. They're fully interoperable contributions to the world-wide web and should be usable by every browser and robot written in the last sixteen years. I call that a feature, and I'm disappointed that so many devs set their sights lower.

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

#73

Post by Achshar »

ars wrote: post #67

There is not supporting IE, and there is blocking IE. You are blocking IE - I know because I changed my user agent on my firefox browser and you blocked me, and that is not cool! You don't even offer an option to let me try anyway! Use feature detection if you must, ignore IE completely in testing if you wish, but do not actively block it or you are just as bad as those who only support IE.

I completely agree with you. But there may be some kind of security issues with IE. Some vulnerability to site's authentication system or something? not impossible, you see.

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

#74

Post by doctorwho »

Ignoring almost 30% of the internet and calling it a "feature" doesn't make it the right thing to do, or the smartest thing to do.

As you grow and (hopefully) become more successful you may start running into friction from IE users who want to use your service but can't.

Once you've saturated the market of other browser users, how will you continue to grow?

When you get there I think you might regret not investing in IE support today.

What about your application is SO compelling and SO difficult to support in IE that you can afford to ignore that entire market segment?

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

#75

Post by paulirish »

Regardless of paydirt's decision, IE's tw0-year release cycle isn't doing any help to stem this sort of perception. IE10 will be awesome, but it has to ship and MSFT has to transition all users of IE6-9 onto IE10 or another browser that will stay current. If users stay abandoned in IE8, the greatness of IE10 doesn't count for much.

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

#77

Post by nardi »

ars wrote: post #67

There is not supporting IE, and there is blocking IE. You are blocking IE - I know because I changed my user agent on my firefox browser and you blocked me, and that is not cool! You don't even offer an option to let me try anyway! Use feature detection if you must, ignore IE completely in testing if you wish, but do not actively block it or you are just as bad as those who only support IE.

Completely disagree. There are two very major problems with this idea:

1. Your reputation suffers when users encounter issues while using the browser that you don't support.

2. The support cost of "letting users try anyway" is non-zero, and probably significant.

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

#78

Post by nardi »

benihana wrote: post #7

This would have been interesting news in 2007 when ~70% of the internet was using IE and the versions that people used were hard to support. Now, it just seems like silly bragging. I can understand silently not supporting IE because of the features that aren't present, but shouting that you don't support IE in 2012 and calling it a feature just comes off as arrogant. My first reaction is, "so what?"

You seem to be missing the point. That we have come so far in the browser wars that IE can be unsupported as a valid business strategy is a pretty big deal.

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

#79

Post by Chris_Newton »

barumrho wrote: post #44
Chris_Newton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rotate an iPad from portrait to landscape, for example, then the default behaviour in Safari is to show the same page layout as you had before, but scale it up to the new width. That's far from ideal if your site uses a responsive design that could adapt quite happily to use the extra width in a landscape orientation.

Can't you disable zooming to solve that problem?

Yes, but that workaround has accessibility problems of its own.

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

#80

Post by kaichanvong »

mixonic wrote: post #10

Aw man. As a bootstrapping web business guy, I can say I've had way more problems with supporting iPads and iPhones than IE. IE costs me $0 to support, and I don't even bother (nobody asks!). Supporting hip and popular Apple browsers can run me a grand in a fast minute. Pleasing early adopters without working really well on the iPad3 is a tough sell. I think startups fighting to support I'm not crazy about getting an…

This is where things like 320 and up: https://github.com/malarkey/320andup and future GUI libraries (Twitter bootstrap as a single example), will start to change everything.

The main problem with what you've mentioned is the size issue. So for startups that are dire in need of building fast and getting things right but not looking stunningly beautiful - this is an option.

The people with too much money to know what to do with it, can then build things in a crazy way with agencies for the logo, different agency for web design and then a 3rd agency for build etc.

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