

Older versions of IE show a much stronger dropoff in usage over the weekend - ericwaller
http://bl.ocks.org/erwaller/6511564

======
davidjgraph
And from a startup point of view, legacy IE means Enterprises, Enterprise
means big price tags:

1) Because they are Enterprises.

2) Because nobody wants to support those browsers.

If you think it's a declining market that'll be dead in 18 months, we have
contracts to support IE 6 until 2019, not to mention 7 and 8.

~~~
melling
What business are you in? If you're going to support IE6 until 2019, which
probably runs Javascript 200 times slower than IE10, your software is going to
be very limited.

Once your competitions builds a better mousetrap, sends in their sales team
then explains that all your customers need to do is install Chrome, it might
get a little ugly.

~~~
mgkimsal
they might have multiple versions, with modern faster versions and a scaled
back IE6/XP version.

~~~
davidjgraph
It's a myth that IE 6 is devoid of functionality, we have no loss of
functionality. The big problem is that it does everything differently and
nothing is documented :).

------
JoshGlazebrook
The title needs an asterisk. Because I unfortunately have the privilege of
knowing an older gentleman that purposely uses IE6 on Windows XP. He calls the
concept of tabs useless rubbish. And I'm not talking a regular consumer, I'm
talking someone who develops actual software.

~~~
jere
Bollocks. It doesn't need an asterisk. It has a graph that proves your point!
The graph doesn't show IE8/9 use going to 0% on the weekends.

In fact, it clearly shows about _35%_ of IE users still cling onto older
versions during the weekends.

~~~
ytjohn
Or.. 35% of IE users work during the weekend.

------
perpetuated
As a non-choice user of IE6, I can confirm that this is annoying.

Especially when articles about old versions of IE don't render in the browser.

~~~
jackgavigan
Same in IE7.

"Error: 'd3' is undefined"

~~~
autonomy77
The irony is heavy, isn't it? :)

------
jere
Please retitle to "30-40% of IE users use older versions of Internet Explorer
by choice."

[derp. updated the numbers because I was being stupid, but the point still
stands]

~~~
randlet
It won't account for the whole 30-40% but some people work on weekends. I work
at a hospital where there are probably thousands of people using IE8 every
weekend.

------
raverbashing
It would be so fun if there's some leak mentioning the role of "legacy
software" in facilitating information acquisition by government agencies (or
other interested parties).

Like using LM Hashes for "backwards compatibility" or older, more easily
exploitable browsers.

~~~
thecosas
It would be funnier if there was something documenting dropping support for
snooping on anything <= IE6 because it had so little reach/useful intel :o)

------
tambourine_man
_IE 8 is the last version to support Windows XP_

See, browsers have become so important that they now support the OS, not the
other way around.

~~~
Zelphyr
Hm. Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.. release a new version multiple times a year.
Microsoft ties IE to OS releases which happen every 5(+/-) years _.

Dear Microsoft: I'd love to hear that cosmic resonating pop of you pulling
your head out of your ass.

_ I recognize that the latest version of IE finally has auto-update. It taking
Microsoft this long to do what Firefox and Chrome have been doing for years
doesn't do anything more than certify that Microsoft Actively makes my job 50%
more difficult on a daily basis.

------
stephen_g
I think a lot of people just don't know enough to upgrade their browser - I
see people using IE9 at work even though we are allowed to install whatever
software we want...

IE really needs silent auto-update, and to actually release more often...

~~~
JPKab
If you think this, then you don't understand enterprises. The vast majority of
users you will encounter, even in their 60's, are aware, through friends,
kids, family, etc that this "Google Chrome thing makes the internet faster".

They want it, but your typical large enterprise foces IE down their throats,
courtesy of 20+ years of rape by the legions of IT guys who, through the
cognitive dissonance inducing Microsoft certification/training/tools process
now think that everything Microsoft is magic.

If you are reading this, and 3 years ago you were telling everyone at work how
amazing Silverlight was going to be, you are part of the problem. If you were
talking about how great Sharepoint was going to be, you are part of the
problem.

FYI: Most people working in the Pentagon are forced to use IE8. Just in case
anyone here had any illusions about how deep Microsofts' shitty certificate-
holding fanboy culture has penetrated our government.

~~~
prawks
> your typical large enterprise foces IE down their throats, courtesy of 20+
> years of rape by the legions of IT guys who, through the cognitive
> dissonance inducing Microsoft certification/training/tools process now think
> that everything Microsoft is magic

I can't speak for every company, but in my experience there's much more to it
than that.

A large part of the problem is that many of the tools leveraged by Enterprises
(which are purchased from vendors) to develop web applications are extremely
brittle and sensitive to the user's browser. When you talk about pushing a new
version of IE, every web tool in the company (easily dozens) needs to be
examined to determine the impact and cost related to making sure it works with
the new version. This often means pushing new versions of these vendor
packages as well, and the costs associated with that planning (think of the
management effort required) and implementation.

In many Enterprises, this is infrastructure overhead and is largely avoided
(it's a huge headache/cost) until absolutely necessary. "Absolutely necessary"
means when the vendor (MSoft) stops supporting that browser version. Which
doesn't happen until it is well past obsolete.

Of course, management gets many of these concepts from those Microsoft
Certified developers, but that's not the whole story.

~~~
yuhong
_In many Enterprises, this is infrastructure overhead and is largely avoided
(it 's a huge headache/cost) until absolutely necessary. "Absolutely
necessary" means when the vendor (MSoft) stops supporting that browser
version. Which doesn't happen until it is well past obsolete._

And by then the Windows version will have ended support too.

------
RougeFemme
I once worked for an organization that had a handful of small customers
holding on to older browsers and operating systems. They represented <1% of
our customer base and an even smaller % of our transaction volume.

But this was a government-contracted non-profit and it couldn't just write
them off as customers. So the organization decided it would be cheaper to help
these customers upgrade their legacy operating system, browser and enterprise
apps then to continue to try and remain reasonably compliant with their
browser.

------
herbig
The folks I know who use Internet Explorer by choice also don't really use the
Internet outside of work.

------
nacker_hews
It would be cool to further break this down by time of day. i.e. look at
people who use IE8 from 9-5 on weekdays vs. the weekends. Because I bet
nighttime weekday IE8 usage dampens the effect.

~~~
edent
Timezones are a problem there. Unless you're a hyper-local site, your
worldwide visitor numbers will skew anything on a "daily" basis.

For example, my blog is based in the UK but gets a substantial proportion of
visits from the USA - which itself has multiple timezones.

~~~
tbirdz
Couldn't you do some kind of correlation from geolocation to correct for time
zone differences?

------
olegp
We are seeing the same thing at [https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com).
We've been getting a disproportionate amount of traffic from IE gallery as a
result of being the most recently featured pinned site for the past 6 weeks in
the US:
[http://www.iegallery.com/PinnedSites](http://www.iegallery.com/PinnedSites)

There are a few other patterns we've spotted about IE users:

They're older - we can deduce this from the the fact that many include their
year of birth in their email address.

They're less tech savvy, we see people typing in in all caps, using the search
as it wasn't intended - and we've actually had a few get in touch via the
feedback form asking for tech support.

Also the conversion rate from visitor to sign up user is consistently 3x that
of Chrome.

------
ck2
I really hope IE6 is not in use in governments anywhere in the USA because it
is not FIPS compliant and therefore not hipaa legal. Which is a huge no-no and
risks very private information.

A few major lawsuits for major $$$ might solve that problem.

------
johnny_reilly
It's been my (unfortunate) experience that most enterprise / corporate
environments lock down users machines heavily in the name of security. And
with that goes the ability of the user to upgrade their browser. Oftentimes
the reason is that there are old internal web applications which don't work in
newer versions of IE / look rubbish in newer versions of IE. It's a pain. And
it looks like the death of XP won't mean the death of IE 8 as many Win 7 shops
are resisting the upgrade to IE 9 let alone 10.

~~~
mcherm
> [...] lock down users machines heavily in the name of security

And because the browsers aren't the more recent versions with more recent bug
fixes, it may actually increase vulnerabilities, making things LESS secure.

~~~
unreal37
Not necessarily. I have a client that runs IE7 on all their machines, but
those machines are completely locked down. We can't even run Webex on those
things without IT coming down to install. Their own corporate website looks
crappy on their own employee desktops, because the corporate anti-virus blocks
one of the javascript's from running. (We had them whitelist it.) I challenge
anyone to install any virus or malware on that thing.

------
lcedp
In a big corporation I used IE for all intranet sites (because those crappy
sites simply couldn't be rendered properly in any other browser) and Firefox
for the world web. Why not do like this?

------
CWIZO
I've written[1] about this trend way back in June of 2009. The drop wasn't as
dramatic as it is now, but it was certainly there. We have (fortunately) come
a long way since then.

It's also funny reading how Chrome had a 1.9% share at that time, and how I
found it amazing :)

[1] [http://hancic.info/ie6-is-dead-over-the-
weekend](http://hancic.info/ie6-is-dead-over-the-weekend)

------
clemesha
I definitely see this trend with a web app (game) of mine. Here's some
screenshots of Google Analytics that show exactly this behavior:
[http://www.clemesha.org/blog/You-must-use-Internet-
Explorer-...](http://www.clemesha.org/blog/You-must-use-Internet-Explorer-at-
work/)

------
chris_mahan
We're on IE7, and XP sp3 (though some have moved to win7). Large bank with
250,000+ employees.

~~~
crazygringo
Is it Citibank?

I went in to open a business account the other day, they wanted to take a look
at the business website, and it looked like complete crap. Took a look and it
was IE7. It was like stepping into a time machine...

~~~
chris_mahan
Not Citibank. I have had an account at Citibank for over 20 years, and they've
never, ever, made a single mistake. Highly recommended. I work for one of
their bigger competitors.

~~~
crazygringo
Funny. I've had an account for 10+ years, but the new business I account I
opened two weeks ago got "corrupted" and none of their systems can access it.
They had to open a new one for me, because they didn't know what else to do!
(But besides that, I've never had any issues with them.)

------
jackgavigan
The words "older", "versions" and "of" are superfluous.

~~~
unreal37
I don't understand when geeks insult other people who like Microsoft Windows
or IE. I get it if you don't like the browser, I get it if you HATE the
browser, but to actually insult the users of that browser is just ignorant.

~~~
idProQuo
Sure we don't have to use IE if we don't want to, but we still have to design
for it. IE6 has a broken box model and more recent versions have been slow to
keep up with new web standards.

If it was just a case of sites looking "less beautiful" in IE, that would be
fine too, except that IE often breaks websites by not supporting certain CSS
properties or Javascript functions.

The amount of work that goes into IE-proofing websites (which could've gone
into more productive things) is huge. It's not just "hipsterism", a lot of
these people are angry for a reason.

------
drill_sarge
Can't wait when Windows XP finally gets dumped by MS. I suspect a nightmare
for a lot of companies and lots of crying towards MS. I hope they don't change
their decision to drop XP next year.

------
hef19898
Have to agree with conclusion, right now I'm using IE8 and not voluntarily!
What's really interessting are the multiple "you are using an old browser"
messages you get.

------
fro
This isn't just a corporate phenomenon, state and local governments use IE 8
almost exclusively. There are a lot of bored government workers browsing the
web on IE 8 during the week.

------
6d0debc071
I wonder whether the total numbers are significantly lower on the weekends -
i.e. if there's a selection bias going on for people who choose to use the
internet.

~~~
anonymfus
Yes. Ever mobile browsers people use less on weekends in absolute numbers (but
more in relative).

