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Comment by gcb0 | Hacker News Reader

>not a big deal

Browser still has more users than Firefox had some years ago when we started talking about supporting all browsers. Unfortunately.

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According to stats, only 0.8% of users are using IE6-7. Is there any logical reason to spend quite a lot of time to adjust your css to work properly for 0.8% of your users? And if you are building a premium product - I don't really think this 0.8% are the one who are going to purchase it...

You should look at your own stats to decide that. IE7 accounts for 4% of our users, so we do make some concessions for them.

around 2% here... but by far some of the best paying ones (corporates).

wow, that's just.... painful.

Why the heck would a company stick to IE7? It's not like the compatibility modes of later IE's don't work or something...

in this particular case, the company is global and has a fixed load set for their computers/notebooks. the last version was compiled together around 5 years ago.

when you have to support multiple thousands employees, having a stable environment is key. upgrading becomes an expensive and slow process.

the next load set at that company is currently in testing for the last 9 months (!) and will upgrade to ie9 and office 2010 - both will be around for a few years to come, their extended support periods end in 2020.

Inability to work out how to deploy later versions of IE and push out compatibility view lists using group policy (I'm no windows networking expert but this has to be possible right?)

It's funny how so many web devs just ignore older browsers out of a sense of superiority towards users of those browsers. I've even heard some of these guys say "they're not my target audience, so why should I care?" They are, of course, inevitably, Apple fanbois. Fortunately, they are not usually in charge of making business decisions at any significant companies.

I'm ignoring older browser because it's the difference between a lot of pain and a modicum of joy. (Also, most of the actually cool stuff these days? "Sorry, must be this modern to ride")

Also, if you keep supporting older browser, people will keep using them. If they keep using them, they will likely have vulnerabilities. So in a sense, dropping support for old browsers is like tough love.. it's not an easy choice for anyone to lose out on however small a fraction of visitors/users, but sometimes you just have to do it, "for the greater good".

I just woke up from a nap in 2009. I hope. Gonna go invent chatroulette now.

Is it considered ignoring them if I go down to the shooting range, put the IE6 logo on the target, and let loose on a weekly basis?

Its funny how many people spend so much time supporting old browsers out of a sense of superiority towards web devs who ignore them. I've even heard some of these guys call us "Apple fanbois".

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