: Will not supporting IE or older browsers drive away potential visitors/users of my site? Normally a SO browser but this question doesn't fit there, hopefully it fits here. I just want to ask
Normally a SO browser but this question doesn't fit there, hopefully it fits here.
I just want to ask from web designers' point of view if it's wrong to not care about supporting Internet Explorer or older browsers.
The site I'm designing looks great in all browsers except IE9-. There are certain things that IE doesn't support or behave like other browsers; webkit stuff, some CSS styles, drop-and-drop files from OS etc etc, but it all works great in Safari, FireFox, Chrome etc.
Should I be that concerned? I know there are several people that use IE, but it's limitations have just been causing me more work by having to come up with workarounds. From what I've read, many of the issues I've been having should be solved with IE10, but not everybody keeps up to date. I know of several people who are still using IE6!
Again, I'm hoping this is the right place to ask a question like this, and if not, please point me to the right stack exchange site instead of just downvoting me.
Thanks!
EDIT: Upon further research....
So far this year, IE(all versions) and Chrome have been neck and neck as the top, with IE only squeaking by Chrome, and FireFox a close 3rd. But looking at the top 10 browsers, IE6 doesn't even show up on this list in which the lowest percentage is 1.92%.
Source : www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2012&month=7
Having a look at this other site, IE6 shows up in 11th place out of 12, just before "Other"
www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-february-2012/
This makes me a little more wary of not spending more time on IE compatibility. However, my site will not be going to a live beta until October or November, and I'm hoping that IE10 will have more features coded into it.
Currently, I've written my upload page which is a "drag-and-drop files from the OS" type to simply display "IE is not supported", leaving no other option for IE users to upload pictures because I've spent so much time writing the uploader which does many things other than just upload the files. I will be changing this kinda cold "Access Denied" to a suggestion to upgrade, or install other browsers, with download links for each.
Big thanks for the posts here and the interesting links!
More posts by @Sarah324
3 Comments
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An escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. -Mitch Hedberg
You should take a look at the concept of progressive enhancement:
Progressive enhancement uses web technologies in a layered fashion
that allows everyone to access the basic content and functionality of
a web page, using any browser or Internet connection, while also
providing an enhanced version of the page to those with more advanced
browser software or greater bandwidth.
Progressive Enhancement 2.0, a YUI Theatre talk by Nicholas Zakas (formerly of Flickr) will give you a good overview.
Of particular importance to you is the section near 15:36, the bottom line being that you do not need to have identical experiences in all browsers. I think you are right not to spend tonnes of time implementing identical extra functionality in legacy browsers: give them a good experience, but don't triple your development time to provide them an identical experience.
It's natural that your webkit styles won't work because webkit is a layout engine implemented in Chrome and Safari, while mozilla (i.e., moz-) is used in Firefox, and IE uses its own, but that doesn't matter, because nobody will notice missing rounded corners. There are polyfills that will help you, like cssFx.js .
It sounds, though, like important functionality may be broken in your IE9 implementation (why don't AJAX calls work? They're supported in IE6...).
It really depends on your intended audience. But cutting out IE entirely is a massive market share!
A commercial website should at least support IE8 (in some form) and later and degrade gracefully in older browsers. With progressive enhancement you should be able to support a fair range of browsers to some extent.
For e-commerce sites where you are getting the majority of your income via your website then it needs to "work" on everything you think visitors might be using.
This is not wrong and this is not good.
I think it really depends on people who are going to visit the website you're designed. If you can ahve this information.
For example, if you are designed a tech website (a blog, a forum or what ever), you are almost sure that 90% of people will have Chrome 20+, Firefox 14+ or Safari 5.
If you are design an ecommerce website, it could be perilous (also it depends on what you are selling), but you are going to reach people that are less techy. Browser version won't be very up to date and you will have more IE browser.
And if you build an internal website for a company, you will definitively have to focus on the main browser of the company. It could be IE 7 (argh) or Firefox 10 (as in my company).
Finally, you can still display a little overlay bar or something else if the user has an old browser version telling him its experience won't be the best.
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