

Tech/Startup focused product? Don't support IE - robbiehudson
http://playnice.ly/blog/2010/10/19/techstartup-focused-product-dont-support-ie/

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wccrawford
'Tech' is just too broad. If you're developing for KDE, then ignoring IE is
very safe. If you're developing an addon for Visual Studio, then I'd probably
not ignore IE.

For a generic 'tech' answer, I'd make sure the basic functionality works on
IE, if ugly, and concentrate on Firefox and Chrome. (And if you do, Opera and
Safari usually work without changes.)

~~~
paulirish
If you're making the decision to unsupported IE completely (or just IE6, etc),
it's wise to offer the Chrome Frame plugin to any IE users that come along:
[http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-
gett...](http://www.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/chrome-frame-getting-
started#TOC-Detecting-Google-Chrome-Frame-and-P)

Within the last two weeks code was checked in to allow non-admin level
installs, so when that debuts everyone that gets prompted can actually install
it.

~~~
miketaylr
And for users who choose not to install it, do they get a modal prompt for
every page load?

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StavrosK
I can tell you this is also true for historious, Chrome is at 46%, Firefox
27%, Safari 20% and IE 3%. Opera is 1.8%, but that's probably all me :(

We can't really justify much effort (it's usually large, too) to accommodate
2% of users. Hell, until very recently, our bookmarklet didn't work with IE
(some XSS security settings? We never figured it out), but now it eschews the
nice overlay it uses for other browsers and just bookmarks stuff. It's ugly,
but it works, if our users want a better experience we recommend switching to
a better browser.

~~~
BrandonM
> We can't really justify much effort (it's usually large, too) to accommodate
> 2% of users.

I totally understand and agree with this sentiment. I do find it rather
ironic, however, that developers today are using the same arguments for
ignoring IE that were used for ignoring Firefox users 5+ years ago. Firefox
users made a huge fuss about sites that were IE-only, and now many of those
same users are returning the favor.

~~~
StavrosK
I can understand that, given that effort is finite. When Firefox users were
enough to support, it made sense for apps to do so.

We're not trying to be mean, we'd love to support everyone, but when it comes
to spending a day trying to find and fix an IE-only bug that affects 2% of
your userbase (sure, it might be a bit higher if we didn't have the bug in the
first place) or write a feature that will improve the service for 100% of the
userbase, the latter takes priority...

------
citricsquid
Minecraft forum and wiki have 60m page views a month, 13% are Internet
Explorer: <http://i.imgur.com/m1WVO.jpg>

I figured this might be interesting for some of you, although we're less
technology...

~~~
aberkowitz
My theory is that people browse Minecraft wiki / forum during work hours, in
lieu of playing Minecraft, leading to a 13% share. Is there any way you could
provide a browser by time of day graph that would support or refute my theory?

Sorry if I'm asking too much; it's really great when people post "private"
statistics.

~~~
citricsquid
We use google analytics, if you know of a way for me to do that I'd be happy
to, it does sound like an interesting idea!

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primigenus
We did this for our app, quplo, which is still in public beta as we figure out
payment (like these guys describe). Our app involves some complicated
javascript for a syntax highlighted, code completion-supporting HTML editor.
Common sense indicated it wouldn't be a good idea to invest lots of time
making things work in IE when a) Analytics showed less than 2% IE visitors, b)
our target audience is web designers and developers who by and large don't use
IE as their preferred browser, and c) the app is an enclosed environment where
it's okay to say "use these browsers for the app".

So what to take away from this? If you're a startup, you should be
prioritising, not obsessing. And high on the list is making money, not making
a marginal number of users happy, handling politics, or premature optimisation
(eg. writing code that works across all browsers).

One thing we messed up on: not creating a kick-ass UX on Mac from day 1. We
fixed it in the meantime, but we're developers using Windows, and a
significant portion of our userbase is designers on Macs. So Safari, Firefox,
Chrome and especially things like Mac font rendering and UI controls needed to
be lickety-split.

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nkassis
I made the decision to go ahead and use tech IE doesn't yet support in my app.
I'll see how it works out in the end but currently I have users all over the
world and none of them complained about this. In fact to be able to use some
of the features they have to install a webgl enable browser which hasn't been
an issue for my users either.

My users are scientist and researchers, but not all of them are completely
computer literate. I hand hold them a little bit with the setup.

~~~
revorad
The problem might be that a lot of users silently drop out if you don't
support IE properly.

Part of my user base is also scientists and researchers, so I'm curious what
your app or website is.

~~~
nkassis
It's a 3D visualization app for a neuroimaging dataset(can't say much more,
should be public soon). We wanted to make that dataset available online to a
lot of users and provide a good interface to use it. I started building it
with O3D which provided a plugin for IE and really good performance but now
that Google moved O3d to WebGL I followed. I'd love to support IE but that's
not possible with the current tech and WebGL has served us well so I we won't
abandon it just for IE.

~~~
revorad
That sounds really interesting. For a niche app like that, I guess you would
need to run with the best technology available. Hopefully, your users will see
the value and not mind switching browsers.

~~~
nkassis
I think that even with something for a general audience, sometimes to choose
between spending time trying to support everyone or spend the time building
something really good for most people. At least that how I see it.

Thanks for finding it interesting.I'd like to show this app around cause it's
so much fun even with no knowledge of the science. A few things need to be
resolved before the data set is completely open.

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spanktheuser
It depends on your target market. My start-up, <http://www.MORExchange.com>,
targets mortgage borrowers. Real estate agents are an important referral
channel.

We're currently in an invite-only beta. But among our few hundred users, we're
definitely seeing a skew towards Firefox / Webkit and away from IE. That said,
the combined versions of IE are still 40% of our traffic. And I'm fairly
convinced that IE share will grow as our product enters open registration.

That said, we decided to abandon IE 6 support during development. Metrics so
far indicate that this was the right decision. We're only seeing 2% of our
requests coming from that abomination.

We're also not doing anything special for IE 7 & 8\. They get the uglified
version of the UI sans opacity, drop shadows, gradients, rounded corners, etc.
I'm setting up analytics right now to see if browser version affects our
conversion rate. I'm betting it doesn't.

Of course, we're not doing anything terribly unusual. We have no burning need
for the canvas element, for example. So supporting IE 7 & 8 hasn't been
terrible for us. I'd imagine that's a significant limitation for other start-
ups.

We're also a traditionally funded company. So we have the luxury of being a
bit more ambitious with our initial product. If we were bootstrapping and
attempting to find customer fit, I'd probably just target the latest Firefox /
Webkit.

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whouweling
I think if you use a modern javascript framework (i.e jQuery), and test
regularly, it shouldn't be that difficult / time costly anymore to support IE7
and IE8.

In my experience jQuery abstracts away most of the incompatibilities.

~~~
thenduks
It's mostly style that's the problem. IE8 is better but you don't get any
niceties (rounded corners, etc). IE9 looks like it will be marginally better
(eg, you now get rounded corners, but not much else).

~~~
tomjen3
Why is it that people should expect home pages to be the same pixel-for-pixel
between different browsers? As long as the functionality is there, why do a
few rounded corners matter?

~~~
thenduks
Well, it's not _only_ about style. IE9 adds rounded corners but still skips a
_lot_ of modern features in HTML5 that simply can't be used reliably by
_anyone_ due to IE not supporting them. IE is like a over-turned transport
truck across 3 lanes of the highway to a better web. They cleaned up some of
the spillage, but... well we're still not going anywhere :)

Styling is the most obvious issue, but it's just the surface of the problem.

------
jbyers
The inverse is sadly still true. 49.61% of our visitors used IE in the last 30
days. 10M+ uniques, predominantly users in schools.

~~~
patio11
My customers also remain committed to the "blue Googles."

There are blue Googles and green Googles. The blue Googles and green Googles
can't talk to each other. This is why you need to use only your school website
number to sign into BCC when you're on the blue Googles but you should use
your AOL website number to sign in when you're on the green Googles.

Technical support in non-technical markets often involves very interesting
forensic reconstruction of customer mental models.

~~~
nailer
Could you elaborate? are these googles browsers, or something else? what cant
they talk to each other? Thanks.

~~~
tomjen3
A guess (until Patric comes back): the blue Googles is the internet explorer
icon, which is used to start Google (really go Googles website). The green
Googles is what ever the hell people use to sign into AOL with, they can't
talk to each other because the computers are behind different nats.

I am hoping that the "website number" is not the http adresse, but the number
they have to dial to connect to the internet (yes dial like it was 1995 and
you could still go on a plane with a bottle of water) because it would be
disturbing if the teachers called "www.bingocardcreater.com" a "website
number".

~~~
rmc
I would guess "website number" _does_ mean the web address. My 50 year old
landlady gave me her "email number".

I'd also saw Patrick is talking about 2 different browsers on the same
computer. "don't talk to each other" probably means they don't share cookies.
If the user logs into one website with one browser, then the other browser
doesn't become aware of each other. Clearly the 2 browsers don't talk to each
other.

~~~
chc
I think "website number" must be a username or password of some kind. You
wouldn't use a different address to get to BCC depending on your ISP.

------
rythie
15% IE on friendbinder (half are IE8). The user base is fairly early adoptor.
Pretty much everything works in IE except some of the rounded corners.

If your site doesn't work in IE, then you will show fewer IE users as a
result.

------
kevinpet
I'm reminded of statistics showing X website doesn't support mobile because
only Y% of their traffic comes from mobile. Guess what? If the site doesn't
work on a given browser, you're biasing you sample size. I think it was in
Coupland's Microserfs that there was the story of corporate waiting until all
the soda was gone to restock the fridge -- how can you know what people
actually want if you articifically restrict their choices.

Now, the premise seems plausible, but you can't back up that premise with data
that I know a priori is skewed to support that premise.

------
catshirt
Some more anecdotal evidence, my company (not _mine_ ; <http://getglue.com>)
actually originally launched solely as a Firefox extension (primarily
distributed through Firefox AMO).

This actually played some role in my decision in taking the job- this was
still in 2008, when ignoring IE was essentially almost never an option.
Better, was that the extension views were developed in CSS- so I was free to
explore CSS3 much earlier in live projects.

More timely, even as a website we still have very little focus on supporting
IE users.

IE makes up for < 7% of our total visitors, and IE6 only 4% of _that_. More
interestingly, a lot of our visitors now come through consumer markets like
HBO and Fox. I think the numbers are surprisingly low for IE already; but
considering our market is no longer a techie market (quite the opposite), the
numbers are somewhat more interesting.

That all said, I think this speaks true to the title of the article. It's just
a careful decision you need to make- but fortunately not one that is
impossible to solve quickly, should you make the wrong one.

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jpcx01
At least add chrome frame. So IE users have a valid option to use your site.

------
bobds
Here are some better places to get real stats on browser usage:

<http://marketshare.hitslink.com/>

<http://gs.statcounter.com/>

<http://getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/>

Your own browser stats are skewed at this moment, I wouldn't base any
important decisions on them.

One interesting tidbit from Statcounter:

In Europe FF usage has caught up to IE, they are both around 40%.

In North America IE has double the usage of FF, with IE at ~50%.

~~~
StavrosK
What's a better place to get real stats on usage than your own analytics?

~~~
bobds
Do you think Chrome usage at 40% is not bogus?

I agree that your own stats are the best source, but not when you've only been
public for less than a month and half your audience is coming from the likes
of HN and Techcrunch.

~~~
catshirt
As a blog directed towards programmers, I have to ask what your visitor
browser breakdown is; I don't know why you'd think 40% is bogus for this type
of audience.

~~~
bobds
If you mean my personal blog, Chrome is at ~15%, less than IE. It's only been
up for 2 months though, so I wouldn't put much trust in my stats.

I think it's bogus because global Chrome usage is around 10%, according to the
sources I linked to above. The fact that 40% of their visitors use Chrome now,
does not mean that their potential future visitors will match that statistic.

Discounting a lot of future users that use IE based on one month's worth of
analytics is madness.

~~~
catshirt
It's not just a statistics problem, it's also a logic problem. I don't think
it's in poor judgement to assume their audience, given their function and
distribution channels, are largely Chrome and Firefox.

The key part of this post is that it is directed to startups. They're not
suggesting they should dismiss IE users forever, but like many comments say it
is about delegating resources properly where they matter.

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eli
That's a ridiculous overgeneralization. You need metrics for your own site,
you need to know the expectations of your users, you need to judge how much
time and effort supporting IE will take for your app, etc.

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lwhi
If the majority of people used IE, would that be a good reason to forget about
supporting other browsers?

I'd say it wouldn't; I reckon content produced for the web should always allow
people the freedom to choose how they view it.

Not supporting IE6 is something I could maybe understand - but forgetting
about IE7 and IE8, because of time constraints, is a maybe bit lazy.

It's not that difficult to use principles of progressive enhancement and a CSS
resets script to iron out inconsistencies.

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smithbits
When launching a new version of our website earlier this year we ran the
numbers for the previous six months and found that 10% of our sales were not
only IE, but IE 6. We're a small manufacturer that sells direct to customers
and that 10% more than covered the extra time developing and testing for IE6.
There was nothing sexy about the task, but none of use were willing to walk
away from 10% of our sales.

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zmmmmm
If your product is futuristic and really needs stuff IE doesn't support (say,
advanced HTML5 stuff) - OK. But if you're just doing it out of laziness then
it's a bit silly. All the major CSS and JS frameworks pretty much eliminate
the cost of supporting IE. These days the cost of supporting IE7/IE8 for me in
a standard web site is fairly negligible. IE6 is another matter.

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shimonamit
It all depends on your market. You can't ignore IE if your customers are on
locked down, corporate workstations with guerrilla IT departments dictating IE
only. Know your market, then decide accordingly.

~~~
jaspero
I agree, but the author says they build for 'tech' companies and they want the
product out the door fast. In that case, I would care less about IE when the
market is around 2%. IMO you can gracefully decrease your support for IE when
the traffic is below 10%. The amount of work you do to make your sites work of
IE does not justify for the 10%. Just my opinion.

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code_duck
I haven't found supporting IE7/8 to be difficult at all. I suppose I'm quite
conservative about using the new functionality supported in webkit or firefox,
however.

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dvorak
I hate working on IE, everytime I have to work a lot on CSS for IE. I wasted a
lot of time on it. Should be considered illegal.

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ez77
Once again, _the customer is always right_. Jusk ask them to telnet to port
80. Geez...

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savoy11
The sample of visits is probably too small and misleading. Developers (e.g.
you and guys on the team developing the product) tend to use FireFox and now,
Chrome, whereas most users will use the stock browser they have by default -
IE.

I am running a company in a similar sector (tech related util software), and
IE visits are more than 60%. Not to mention, that most corporate users have as
a rigid requirement and you are effectively killing a lot of revenue
potential.

So no - my advice is do not do it, support IE.

~~~
daleharvey
I run some fairly popular tech focused sites, I have IE running at 15% on the
most popular, down to 3% on the least popular.

At the very least the advice is to take your audience into account, and if you
are in this particular sector not supporting ie is a doable tradeoff.

if anyone gives an absolute statement that you should support ie, or you
shouldnt support ie, unless they understand both the exact demographics you
are targeting, and the internal structure of your company as well as the
technical details of your product, they are wrong.

~~~
savoy11
This is correct, demographics/industry specifics should be taken into account.
What I was trying to say is that we also had something similar (IE stats very
low)when we developed our product/service - when you are in Beta, your team
and the early adopters are typically more tech savvy and do not use IE.

However, once you launch, IE visitors become the majority - at least in my
particular case (in a sector that seems similar to what the blog post says).
Even if the purchasing decision makers are not using IE, in my particular case
many of the licensed users will be just corporate/normal job types, and IE is
the majority there.

Just my $0.02, your case may be different.

