# Forget Internet Exploder....



## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

*Bootstrapped Startup Saves Over $100K By Dropping IE*



> Within a week it was painfully obvious that for every great idea we came up with *we had to create equally terrible hacks to support IE7 or even IE8*. Supporting variants of IE can easily increase design work by 30% to 100%, but complex features can easily double (or even triple) development time. It doesn’t take many developer salaries before this “IE tax” can cost you well over $100,000. But the money you lose as a start-up pales in comparison to the time and energy lost.
> 
> [SNIP] ... We decided that in order to get a viable product out the door we would simply not support IE. It was possibly the best decision 4ormat ever made.
> 
> The change was simple. Our signup form now tells IE users where they can download Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. To date, *almost three years after launching 4ormat, not a single person has ever contacted us requesting support for Internet Explorer*.


(TechCrunch)


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## WestWeb (Jul 11, 2009)

Gawd do I ever envy them. Microsloths Internet Exploder is the bane of web developers and designers everywhere. I always wonder why clients pay us more to make things that "kind of" work in IE(compared to a good browser that is). Analytics results down the road typically indicate that visitors using IE make up a small percentage of unique visitors, and especially returning visitors. 

The latest method of building websites that we call "progressive enhancement" is a fairly reasonable solution I find. Basically progressive enhancement means we build the most basic features, and content to work for older versions of IE(almost web 1.0 in some cases I've seen), and then add in lots of really nice functionality, and design features that are supported by web browsers who have developers that actually give a **** about their users. I think the IE6 funeral was one of the happiest days of my career, and I can't wait for IE7 and IE8 to die to. I despise how they hold our industry back. 

On a more positive note  I was happy to hear news somewhat recently that Microsloth has openly admitted how terrible their older browsers are, and I believe they have implemented some sort of auto upgrade system to make sure Windows users are using the most recent browser their OS can handle. If they could just get everyone using IE9, things wouldn't be so bad I think.


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## Andrew Pratt (Feb 16, 2007)

Tell me about it. It would help a great deal if XP would be allowed to run IE9 so we can get HTML5 support etc. IE is a pain in the ... to work around...esp when staff simply refuse to install a modern browser


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## zen.state (Nov 29, 2005)

IE was actually a half decent browser in the late 90's (on the Mac at least) but became covered in horrible as it aged. By about 2007 it lost all hope IMO.


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## bgw (Jan 8, 2008)

How many times have I had to explain: 'Works in everything but IE'.

How much money has been spent fixing sites for IE? A major drain for every company I've worked for for many years.

It will be a great day when IE either is truly compatible, or has such a small percent of the market that developers no longer have to worry about it.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

*Brilliant!*

*Online Retailer Imposes Tax For Internet Explorer 7 Users*












> Australian electronics retailer Kogan has started imposing a 6.8% tax on customers still using Internet Explorer 7 on account of "the amount of time required to make web pages appear correctly" with the browser.


(Geekologie)


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## Visual-Q (Dec 14, 2003)

It's a pointless rant.

Clients expect their websites to work on IE, and so they should if their customers use it. Hate it or not developing for IE is just part of the job.


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

What I find hilarious is when a web site states that one *must* use IE or the web site may not render properly.

If I then take the time to email those people that IE hasn't been available on the Mac for several years now, I sometimes get an answer back which is basically disbelief.
Usually, there is no reply - but how web developers cannot know there has not been a Mac version for IE for quite a few years now is just beyond me.

BTW - to any of the web experts here - what would make IE9 incompatible with certain forums?
I go to one where people had no trouble with IE8 but when they moved to IE9 they couldn't post and had all sorts of issues.
The solution (not sure if that worked 100%) was to use IE9 in compatibility mode.

I use Camino which is Mozilla based and never had any problems on that site, but IE users sure do, even the ones using the latest and greatest version of IE.


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## WestWeb (Jul 11, 2009)

@CubaMark:
Nice find Mark! E-commerce sites and web applications in general have even more trouble running in IE, so I think the extra tax is certainly warranted. Hopefully anyone that sees that is smart enough to download a proper web browser from the provided list.



Visual-Q said:


> Hate it or not developing for IE is just part of the job.


You're right it is part of the job. A part that I bill more and more for as older IE browsers fall further and further behind current web standards and practices.



krs said:


> BTW - to any of the web experts here - what would make IE9 incompatible with certain forums?
> I go to one where people had no trouble with IE8 but when they moved to IE9 they couldn't post and had all sorts of issues.
> The solution (not sure if that worked 100%) was to use IE9 in compatibility mode.


I've seen this crop up a few times on some people's sites that were developed before IE9 was available. My guess would be that the site has some kind of extra code added in that fixes a problem for IE browsers(would be for IE8 and lower). Then it's possible said code that fixes something in IE8 or lower, could cause something to look/operate really funky in IE9, because IE9 didn't need the fix. Kind of like how fixing something that isn't broke, tends to lead to breaking something. 

This would explain why it works in IE7 or 8, but not IE9: and, would explain why it does work when IE9 is in compatibility mode. Compatibility mode makes IE9 render the code as an old version of IE would(IE7 iirc).

Here's hoping for a "Run like a normal ****ing web browser mode". Well, that or the cruel painful death of IE8 and lower. beejacon

Edit: for grammar correction.


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## The Mailman (Jun 21, 2012)

It's terrible, it really is - but 9 has been an improvement (but still is always a thorn in our side) and 10 seems to be supporting more basic CSS3 features

unfortunately, something like 45% of our users use IE so we don't have the option of dropping supporting, but we don't care about IE7, just 8 and 9.


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

Just an FYI here, folks - a follow-up news report made it clear that although the clients' shopping cart includes the "tax", it is subtracted at check-out, so there is no real Internet Explorer tax at work here. The company is just trying to make a point and educate visitors who still use IE7.


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