Internet Explorer 6 is finally dying a death. It's been a really long time coming, but it seems to be widely accepted that we - as web designers - no longer support it. That's fine, but what about the rest? There's another 3 versions of IE with a fourth released as a beta. Is it time to set our sites on Internet Explorer 7?
The Browser Competition
The way Chrome is updated is fantastic. Silent updates in the background, and then installations when you restart the browser. Seamless. Firefox prompts you to update - a bit more invasive but still helpful. Internet Explorer on the other hand only seems to update with each new version of the Windows Operating System. Not great for standards or innovation. The benefits of auto updates is that they help keep the browsers ahead of the game, and increase adoption rates hugely meaning that Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are updated by users much more quickly.
Browser Stats
A common argument when discussing browser support is comparing browser share for your audience. I know that browser usage is changing rapidly at the moment but I haven't checked my own stats in a while. So, I logged into Google Analytics to check things out. Below is what I found:
| Browser | Share |
|---|---|
| Chrome | 46% |
| Firefox | 36% |
| Safari | 9.5% |
| Internet Explorer | 9.5% |
| Other | 4% |
That's right - Internet Explorer is just 9.5% of the Binary Moon visitors! Of that 9.5% over 80% are using IE 8 or IE 9. So - for my site I am definitely dropping support. Will this work for larger websites though? Or websites with less technically savvy audiences?
It definitely needs to be decided on a case by case basis, but I do think that it's approaching the end of the road for Internet Explorer 7.
One interesting approach has been an IE 7 Tax.
Government websites, or sites for non-profit social services, should probably support blasted old tech, browsers, and ridiculousness like 14k dial-up
I noticed NetZero is still pressing dial up connection CDs like it's the late 90's and Walmart is their main distributor. Shutter.
As for me and my products, IE 7 is dead.
August 30, 2012
There is a little JavaScript file [ HTML5shiv.js ] that you can include in the head of your page to allow HTML5 tag styling in versions of Internet Explorer prior to version 9. The following code will give IE < 9 some HTML5 tag styling support:
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_Shiv
August 30, 2012
Yeah - I use the html5 shiv/ shim in my sites also. It's certainly worth using.
August 30, 2012
It looks like the code chunk from the previous post commented itself out. Here it is again. Remove the backslashs between < \ !
August 30, 2012
Hum... that didn't work either. Was hoping the backslash would allow the code chunk to display. Oh well ...
Ben if you would be so kind as to remove this comment and the one previous, which contained my second attempt to add the three lines of header code to the comments of this page.
August 30, 2012