What's your opinion on websites that "force" users to use modern browsers? | Hacker News Reader

What's your opinion on websites that "force" users to use modern browsers?

3 pointsergo1414 comments

I'm about to launch my first SaaS application, it is geared specifically towards webshops, or owners of big sites, in short I don't expect general audience to use my services (basicly webdevelopers) would use it.

I strongly believe that web should not be slowed by Internet Explorer, and I want to use features like canvas, css shadows and other properties - without resorting to ugly hacks or image slicing to get a pleasant effect. I know IE9 will support this functionality or other users can use chrome frame if they insist to use IE.

Would you find it acceptable to demand from my future clients to use modern web browser?

I strongly believe in open technologies and what HTML5 and CSS3 has to offer and would go in that direction.

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Why not use things that'll degrade gracefully in less-modern browsers? shadows are awesome, but whatever if they don't show up in other browsers.

For example: http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/

Now, when it comes to major functionality — if your application simply won't work in IE — you need to decide whether the tradeoff is worth it. You won't be tarred and feathered if you have a giant sign saying people need to use a different browser to use your application. You're simply going to lose users. And note, the vast majority of those users aren't going to download the browser and use your application, they're simply going to leave.

I'm perfectly fine with idea of losing 5 users out of 100 - because 95% of my target base will use modern browser(or less because someone that doesn't use a decent browser will very likely be unable to benefit from my site in first place - specifics of my target group I suppose). Anyways It's not like i'm going to block anyone - I just don't want to support hacky code just to make IE users happy.

It's not like the website will be non-functional to IE users - it will probably just be ugly, thats all ;-) Which I guess is fine because its purpose is being a tool for webdevelopers and programmers.

Also some features just don't degrade at all ;-) like canvas (unless i use something like excanvas), but this part is competly optional to use, so not a biggie.

Think like https://developer.mozilla.org - being made to work in IE ;-)

Personally, I don't mind when sites complain about my browser, as long as there is still an element of choice. Not all HTML5/CSS3 features are there in stable versions of a lot of browsers, so if your site were to use a feature only available in the latest stable version of Chrome, for example, and not Firefox, then I would consider that to be too restrictive.

However from the sounds of it, your application should work in the latest stable version of the major web browsers, which, in my opinion, is enough.

Indeed, but i would find a common denominator - I would go with features firefox 3.x, webkit, opera + ie9 support. This seems like sane compromise to me.

You're ignoring the many slow computers that are still out there in the world, but perhaps your market won't encompass those.

I have an old PC. 1.8GHz Celeron. YouTube complained all the time that I should get a "modern" browser. I was using Firefox 2.x -- which was faster for me than the latest Chrome. Also, Fox could play YT videos, while Chrome and even Safari could not. (I'd tried Fox 3.x early on, but it slowed the entire PC to a crawl and I had to rollback to 2.x!)

I forget what frustration I encountered a week ago, but it finally drove me to try Opera. Let me tell you that Opera is sooooo wicked fast on this old PC that it's as if I've had an entire hardware upgrade. I'm not connected with Opera at all, just incredibly happy in using it. Now I can visit sites I had to avoid in the past due to multiple JScript errors (Gizmodo, io9, and the like).

If people are hesitant to switch browsers, suggest they try Opera at least once. As usual, TMMV.

Well, I can only say that I don't plan to put anything resource intensive to the layout, i'd risk to say that the website should work fast for you, not sure how well it would look on 2.x, but keep in mind that YT uses flash that is main resource hog(especially on linux). I'm pretty confident that it would run fine on your pc with firefox - because my android phone can run it ;-)

That makes me think now i should install fennec on my phone and see how that works.

>>>because my android phone can run it ;-)

Sorry, but no. I've actually had to transfer some AVIs to my LifeDrive (400Mhz CPU) to play them because they'd be cloggy when using vlc on this PC! (Yes, I've scanned for malware; done plenty of officially recommended optimizing stuff -- which, btw, I should have also said I'm at XP SP2, because SP3 made this machine crawl too!)

It could also be I have the crappiest PC on earth, one of very few.

My phone has 560mhz procesor, hadly processing power of your pc. If you are having issues of this kind, maybe thermal sensor on your cpu is broken and cpu is slowing down because it things it has temperature problems, or bad drivers? That 1.8ghz celeron should be fine for majority of tasks. Maybe you could try downloading ubuntu live image and test there if the problem persists(its free)? Then you would at least know if it's not a problem with your operating system.

Funny you should mention thermal. Had to replace heatsink retention module recently. But that didn't help anything, really. It's just XP being all clogged up from years of use. Can't do clean re-install. Point of no return.

I'd be ashamed to put out something that completely failed without nice frills like CSS and canvas. Links (the browser) is good enough for Gmail, so that's the level of competence I expect of myself.

Indeed, links is awesome at showing real time charts, I agree. I'm also sure mozilla is ashamed of their new MDN site, and FB for its facebook chat.

I need clarify, i want to use it for features, not "bling".

A real-time chart is a great progressive enhancement over the raw data. But when I can't get the data even without the chart, that's broken. As for other sites out there, I never claimed my opinions are commonly held. There's a long history of shoddy work succeeding in this industry.

Shoddy is building sites that HAVE to support IE(unless there is really a good reason to do so) - i've done this for years and the only outcome of this is that we contribute to the fact that users don't change their habits and use browsers with shoddy approach to web standards. How can that be better in 21st century?

If i'd really want i could support everything, but how long should we keep this up? 10 years? 20?

It's like you would say that games should be built to work on 286pc's. Yet no one complains about that (unless it's poor optimization). You were so kind to suggest that my work is shoddy, I would say that shoddy work are websites that use hacks, or use non-semantical markup to archieve the goal of being able to work everywhere. Overall quality of code is sacrifaced for bacwards compatibility with browser that uses 9 year old rendering engine? People switch cars more often than browser versions, I fail to understand why we allow that to happen. We have good solutions to handle legacy app compatibility like chrome frame. Everyone has right to it's own opinion, but is it wrong to want users to use proper browser? Even my phone is capable of rendering charts. How can supporting everyone at all cost be better than pushing for standards? We are forced to standards everywhere in real life, why not in IT?

This is a nice quote about what happens if you support broken by design browsers forever:

"Facebook explains its decision by saying that many users have complained about unstable chat sessions, or ones that stop completely. In order to improve the way connections are established and messages are sent, however, the social networking giant must make changes that aren't supported by older browsers."

I'm not saying that everything FB does is right, but I think that legacy support sacrificing experience of everyone else is not a solution to the problem, and this is a good example.

Step one should be valid semantic HTML 4.01 (or equivalently, XHTML 1.0 served as text/html). That's still the current standard, and was carefully designed to be at least accessible on every browser we've ever had. Step two is adding CSS and JS to make the experience nicer for browsers on which it's switched on and known to work reliably. It seems to me that a lot of devs complaining about IE6 have a grudge because it reveals they routinely skip step one. They had every opportunity to build something that always works and always will and then make all the shiny variations they can handle, but they prefer the "this page optimized for arguing with customers" approach.

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