Is it just me or IE8 is just not considered by web startups anymore ? Sorry to deviate a little but every time I try to look at a "Show HN" in IE8 (work computer), it fails for about 85% of the time. I could understand that some startups heavily depend on latest browsers but what about others ?
If you have an analytics software that doesn't work in IE8. You lost analytics for 20-30% of your users.
And since array.prototype.slice.call is not supported in IE8, this analytics software is about 80-70% useful. And maybe even less if you have a large IE clientele.
Seems strange to me that one would limit themselves that much.
Perhaps in some markets.
For one of the sites I write for, it's less than 5% over a large sample.
No, its really not, its a huge pain in the ass to support unless you handcuff yourself to its limitations.
> and also somewhere between 20-30% of your users.
Those numbers are wildly skewed by market segment. IE8 is a relic that mostly only exists on corporate controlled laptops at this point. If they aren't your target user, you can pretty much ignore them. None of the sites I work on see over 5% IE8 usage.
Around here IE8 is at < 7% market share; if your product is slightly related to tech that's more like 0%.
Sure it doesn't support a lot of HTML5/CSS3. But if you build a site using 100% HTML5/CSS3 then why do you even care what it looks like in anything but WebKit. Why spend 15 hours getting it to work in IE8. Let IE8 look like IE8, and the rest look like the rest. That's how it's suppose to be done.
IE8 is old, if you want to support it. You use older technologies. That's the point. If you want to use the newest and greatest you lose old support.
But to call it terrible is wrong, it is/was a solid browser.
For Heap, it would be a bit unwise to ignore IE < 9 still since they're limiting themselves from the start.
A lot of new projects on the front page lately don't work on IE9 either. I lost count of the number of shiny new things (usually involving HTML5) that just show a plain black (/white/gray/blue etc...) screen on IE9 and I'd need to fire up Firefox or Chrome just to look at it.
To be fair, not all of these are catering to IE based browsers (and I dread to think how some of these would look on a Nokia mobile... or, heaven forbid, a BlackBerry), but they're effectively ignoring a very, very, very large percentage of users worldwide -- of not just IE -- to be first out of the gate. BlackBerry in particular is still very popular in Latin America and Southeast Asia.
That foot in the door is all important, I suppose, since the buzz will help sustain at least an initial signup for whatever it is.
The web applications in particular are exactly that. Because they're applications they're crafted to a very select set of platforms since they're executed. For better or for worse, a lot of new projects are already going in the direction of the browser as the OS.
I presume backwards compatibility will be tacked on later and maybe removed as those browsers fall further behind.
Chartbeat has never supported IE, which as you say sounds like cutting off a major part of your market. Even moreso when you consider our customers which include pretty much every major publisher in the US. However what we've learned is that if your product provides enough value, people have no problem installing Chrome or Firefox or whatever.
To this day we receive pretty much no requests for IE support at all, which enabled us to build a product with heavy HTML5 (mostly canvas) and CSS3 usage.
Also people need to realize that client-side library support is different from what the product's website itself supports. Chartbeat, and every analytics provider I know of supports IE for their tracking library.
Oh technology...
http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/111206-c...
Full article:
http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/12/06/comparing-chrome-and-fir...
I mention this because it looks like Heap devs are monitoring this thread--Heap addresses real problem for me that I'm willing to pay money to solve. Codegeek's post literally stopped the sale.
So no I'm not trolling, I'm being 100% honest.