
Ask HN: Why is IE8 usage growing? - franciscop
It might not be much, and it might be slow, but the last 3 months the IE8 usage is growing at a slow rate[1]. While I expected to see it dead by now [2] from the last year&#x27;s decline, this is not the case.<p>The second part of the question is, how do we stop this or should we just ignore it? Although this is a particularly more difficult one...<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gs.statcounter.com&#x2F;#desktop+mobile+tablet-browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201501-201505<p>[2] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ux.stackexchange.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;64361&#x2F;19209
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jay-saint
Has anyone considered a tax season effect on these results? I used to work for
a computer manufacturer that also did re-seller / refurbishing of used
computers. December was always when the seasonal tax preparation companies
(Jackson Hewitt Liberty Tax), would pop up buying loads of cheap semi-reliable
used systems. These tax preparers would then rent whatever cheap strip mall
space was available, stick 20 PCs and a few used HP laser printers and connect
them all to a decent terminal server.

The small company I worked for would sell a couple hundred of these tax prep
systems a year just locally, multiply this out across the US and this could be
a correlation. Many of these systems get reloaded, updated and then pulled
back off the web to be resold after tax season. On company we sold them to
would even let people use a part of their return to buy one of the systems.

~~~
mseebach
> and connect them all to a decent terminal server

Why would those systems be running IE8?

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jeletonskelly
Windows XP

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JimA
It's because Windows 2003 support ends on July 14th, 2015, and Microsoft is
enforcing a browser upgrade to the latest available version (IE8) even for
Custom Support Agreements that take effect after that date. So in order for
any customer to continue to get 2003 OS support they have to upgrade to IE8.

On the server side, we will see some similar micro-effects as we get closer to
January 1, 2016, where IE7 will go down and IE9 will go up due to 2008 having
to upgrade, and IE9 will go down and IE11 will go up due to 2008 R2 having to
upgrade.

~~~
mahouse
How many people actually browse from server editions of Windows? I remember
that I skipped XP because I could not stand the Play-Doh interface, so I went
from 2000 to 2003.

~~~
JimA
You would hope zero, but there are many Citrix or Terminal Services
applications and virtual desktops that give remote users a limited (at least
as much as IE6/IE8 allows) browsing experience.

~~~
mobiplayer
Why would you hope zero?

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buster
You may not believe it but there are a lot of enterprises that are still
running Windows XP and just now in the process to upgrade to Windows7. IE8 is
the default browser in Windows 7.

Just a guess, but for example, i know for a fact that the german telecom is
doing this XP->Win7 migration in the coming months...

~~~
engi_nerd
Yup, my rather large workplace (in the Fortune 100) switched from XP to Win 7
just about a year ago. We have IE8 but they will also let us use an ESR
version of Firefox. Other business units than mine get to use Chrome, too.

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mixonic
IE8 is coming out of the Trough of Disillusionment and finally reaching the
Plateau of Productivity. Obviously.

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Petefine
When I follow [1], IE8's numbers are (from Jan) 2.56%, 2.61%, 2.13%, 2.19%,
2.26%. So they don't look to have grown at all.

If anything they've declined a little, although this may be within the margin
for error for the sample.

~~~
franciscop
2.13%, 2.19%, 2.26% is what worries me. They dropped dramatically in the same
period of last year. From March, they are slowly creeping up.

~~~
Rexxar
I think the most important part of Petefine comment is _" within the margin
for error the sample"_. I would be surprised if the margin of error was
inferior to 0.13%.

It's an Human bias to see patterns when there are only random events.

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noodle
IE8 is growing because people are moving off of IE5/6/7\. Soon they'll have to
move off IE8 as well, but I imagine that IE8 is the logical stopover since
apps that only ran in older IE versions don't require a lot of work to run in
IE8. Getting them up to modern browser standards, though, will take time.

Example: many many years ago I worked on a project that used XML Data Islands
as an early form of AJAX-like functionality. You could fairly easily modernize
it up to IE8 without major changes. But to go beyond that would require heavy
rewrites.

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darcyparker
It's an interesting trend that I have seen among my company's user base. It
could be real, but it could also be an increase in false positives.

A possible explanation for the false positives:

Many large companies are seeing more and more machines moving to IE11, but
have websites/tools that require IE8. Ideally each web site should explicitly
declare compatibility/standard modes they require in their HTML. But for older
enterprise software, this is not an option, so companies take the 'easy'
approach of enabling compatibility mode for all sites and/or all intranet
sites. A better approach when you can't edit the html of the web app is to use
the group policy editor and set compatibility mode on a URL by URL basis. But
many companies take the easier route. This is my theory that may explain the
false positives.

If they aren't doing so, tools that aggregate browser usage should be doing
additional analysis on the user agent string to get a better sense of the
'true' IE version. Perhaps using methods like ie-truth [1]. When I see trends
like increased IE8 usage, it doesn't make sense to me... so I have doubts that
these tools are testing the browser type accurately.

[1] [https://github.com/Gavin-Paolucci-Kleinow/ie-
truth](https://github.com/Gavin-Paolucci-Kleinow/ie-truth)

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acdha
Browser stats are noisy – if you look at a larger timescale, you'll see this
is actually somewhat lower than December:

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-
browser_version_partially...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-
browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201405-201505)

The first thing I'd do is check to see whether the apparent trend is supported
by other data sources, particularly traffic to the sites you care about. It's
worth poking around somewhere like
[http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/](http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/)
or [http://akamai.io](http://akamai.io) to see if other they're seeing the
same trend.

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peter303
Much of the corporate utilities in my company seems to only work in IE. There
is a whole ecoculture of business software that ignores any other browser. I
have bring up a VM to complete some of required paperwork.

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kellros
It must be IE gathering its numbers to face off against Spartan in the
IEpocalypse.

Another theory is that corporates/governments are switching over from XP to
Windows 7 (with Internet Explorer 8 as default) because XP was declared "dead"
(end of life on April 8, 2014 - no more security updates) and the existing PCs
aren't capable of running UEFI required for Windows 8...

Windows 7 and Windows 8 is going to get a free upgrade to Windows 10; it's not
far fetched to believe some people are installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 on
a clean machine to make use of the free upgrade.

~~~
brudgers
Windows 8 will run on anything that ran Vista and does not require UEFI.
Placing a sticker proclaiming Windows 8 certification or something like that
on a new computer requires UEFI.

~~~
kellros
Good to know :)

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mattmanser
Stats of one of my bigger clients show an almost 50% drop in IE8 in the last
year (UK traffic only).

Don't believe everything you read. Also, who actually uses statcounter?

~~~
josefresco
I picked a client at random (typical small business in the US) and see a 54%
drop in IE8 and a 32% drop in IE9 usage year over year.

IE11 represented the most traffic (for IE users) and it grew by 346%.

Sessions from IE users overall were down 15% for the same period.

Source: Google Analytics

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mchanson
IE 8 gets, for the most part, to end of life next January. So it should go
back into shrink mode as those IT departments get with the times.

~~~
Roboprog
Thanks for that info. Verified it on the MS support site and emailed the link
to work.

I am working on a project to be delivered to CA Dept of Public Health around
January. We were told to target IE 8 as our minimum browser (as well as
FF/Chrome/Safari). Seems a waste, given this news. Time to push for IE 9 or
better.

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KevanM
You can see from this there is a general trend downwards in usage, but there
are sudden, periodic, upswings in usage such as December last year.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop+mobile+tablet-
browser_ver...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop+mobile+tablet-
browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201205-201504)

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meishern
Its growing because of China and India large populations of primarily young
people whoh every 6 months add tens of millions of internet users who become
of age for middle class parents to buy them a computer, or in other cases
scrape enough money to purchase the cheapest clone (the very machine which
would have a pirated os and ie8).

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JohnTHaller
According to NetMarketShare (which has much better stats than statcounter
which excludes most corporate users, hardly any of which use Chrome), IE8 was
down to around 15% share of desktop users back in November but spiked up to
19% December through Feb. It's now trending downward again at 17% in March and
16% in April.

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taf2
It is most likely because you're including May and this month is incomplete.
In June, it's possible when you run the numbers again it will show a different
picture, similar to if you review the months past. That is what I've observed
at least when using gs.statcounter. Hopefully this is the case.

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ck2
Bots like the IE8 user agent.

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korvenadi
Many organizations, still use IE8. IT Support in those organization either
don't care to upgrade or their internal products just don't work on any new
versions.

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fideloper
No one's mentioned China yet? Perhaps they're finally updating from IE6 over
there.

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arihant
This is a pure guess - people downgrading back to Windows 7. Maybe new laptop
buyers install Windows 7 because they don't like 8.1, IE8 is default on
Windows 7.

Could be a lot of things, but it is a good chance that this has something to
do with Windows 7.

~~~
smcl
It seems unlikely to me that enough people are tech savvy enough to downgrade
a version of windows but can't (or don't want to?) switch from IE8 - which we
can probably all agree is not a particularly nice browser

~~~
smhenderson
You don't have to be technically savvy to take advantage of downgrading
though, resellers will do it for you. If you go to CDW, TigerDirect, NewEgg,
etc. they all are selling PC's now, new and referbed, with Windows 8 licenses
but with Windows 7 pre-installed. All you have to know from a technical
standpoint is that you prefer 7 over 8.

~~~
67726e
My gut feeling says that a consumer that isn't savvy enough to upgrade a
browser is most likely shopping at a big box store, or maybe Amazon.

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interdrift
That's because IE is unpredictable in every aspect ! :D

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itsbits
Probably many filing up Taxes

