
Google Analytics to Drop IE8 Support at the End of 2013 - NewsFlash
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/09/16/google-analytics-to-drop-internet-explorer-8-support-at-the-end-of-2013/
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jonknee
Google Analytics' reporting interface... Your visitors who haven't upgraded
their browser will see have their page views collected and reported on.

~~~
joshstrange
This is the most important comment, the title is slightly misleading

> "As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to
> your website."

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buckbova
[http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/09/supporting-modern-
brow...](http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/09/supporting-modern-browsing-
experience.html)

"As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to
your website."

That's all I need google. Thanks.

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everettForth
For those who aren't aware, IE8 doesn't support ECMAscript 5, which includes
useful functions, such as: Array.prototype.map and Object.keys. The
alternative to this is to use something like jquery's implementation of map.

Anyway, this is why IE8 in particular is a cutoff for compatibility. A lot of
startups are not building their sites to be compatible with IE8.

~~~
dmethvin
Unfortunately, Android 2.3 is not fully ES5 compatible either. Since that's
about one-third of all Android I doubt that ES5 compat was the driving force
for this move. More likely it was the non-W3C event model and general non-use
of IE8 for the reporting interface.

~~~
leokun
Android users ought to just avoid the Android browser and use Chrome or
Dolphin. I don't even understand why there is an Android browser. Android
browser also has trouble with updating SSL cert authority information, and
it's got issues with its touch implementation.

~~~
selectodude
Android users on Android 2.3 can't use Chrome and Dolphin uses the native
browser engine. I think Firefox Mobile would be your only option, but the
performance has to be awful.

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leokun
Dolphin switched to its own browser engine, at least on Android.

[http://dolphin.com/dolphin-browser-is-the-fastest-
html5-mobi...](http://dolphin.com/dolphin-browser-is-the-fastest-html5-mobile-
browser-try-out-our-dolphin-engine-in-beta/)

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factorialboy
I'm fairly confident this is because of IE8's lack of support for SVG which is
used heavily for data visualization, mapping etc.

IE9+ has some sort of support for SVG while IE7 and IE8 implement VML. :-/

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CWIZO
"That last point is very important, given that IE8 is still the world’s most
popular browser."

Note that this is really not true. If you look at various[1] global browsers
stats pages, you'll notice that NetApplications (where the author is getting
his's numbers from) is the only one that puts IE at the top. If you look at
the other, and based on my own stats, this just isnn't the case, and IE8 is
not the most popular browser in the world, not by far.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table)

~~~
camus
I trust what google says about browser usage over any other stat counter.If
they still think IE8 is popular it must be, even if it pisses off webdevs.

~~~
CWIZO
Where did Google say that IE8 is popular still?

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TrainedMonkey
Praised be lord of all code and such. I am not against IE8 - qualitatively it
dwarfed IE6/7, but there are still way to many issues with supporting it. I am
speaking from experience - I developed somewhat simple portal with a lot of
AJAX/interactive elements. Getting _all_ features to work on Chrome/Firefox
was a charm, IE8 was harder. In the end I only managed to support IE9 and
above.

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zmmmmm
I wonder what the corporate adoption of Win7+ is at this point?

Abandoning IE8 for various services will slowly start to hurt Microsoft as it
forces people into using (probably) Chrome, or if not, FireFox. Especially
once you are using Chrome, the lure of Google's ecosystem starts to become
irresistable, and as Chrome use itself grows, Chrome as a platform becomes
more and more attractive.

Of course this move in itself is irrelevant to that because it only affects
such a tiny percentage of people. But as you add up a lot of niche services it
will start to have a significant impact, I think.

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drzaiusapelord
This is interesting, because according the analytics I have access to, large
institutions in my field (which is large in itself) seem to have standardized
on IE8. I guess a lot of these shops went from IE6 to IE8, skipping 7
entirely. Its funny how long IE8 is sticking around and I wonder if its going
to be the new "IE6" for some time.

~~~
giovannibajo1
XP extended support will end on April 2014. Antivirus will also cease support
(most of them). This means that the day after, there will be a dozen of 0-days
(currently being held) exploited in the wild.

I hope those organizations you cite have a plan for April. If they run XP,
they must update. If they run Vista+, they can switch to a newer IE and use
GPO to force IE8-mode for the intranet (if they wish so).

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Most of these IE8 users seem to be Win7. IE8 runs on Win7, no problem. I also
imagine these shops skipping 9 and jumping to 10 or 11 in the next year or so.

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alanh
This is not really newsworthy. As jonknee helpfully pointed out, this is only
the admin interface. And anyone still using MSIE8 honestly has no business in
your Google Analytics!

Now, if this were Gmail, this would be news

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pippy
Why do people still use NetApplications as a source? It's obviously incredibly
inaccurate.

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LandoCalrissian
This is of course only a good thing, making huge parts of the web essentially
unusable for people that are still stuck on ancient browsers is probably one
of the only ways to get them to upgrade.

~~~
ceejayoz
This only makes the Google Analytics dashboard unusable. It's not going to
break sites that just use GA's tracking code.

~~~
jordanthoms
Although, maybe breaking almost every site on the web for IE lte 9 isn't such
a bad idea...

