Browser compatability

Jazajay

Jazajay

Active Member
Last month I made the decision that the developers would no longer support IE7 as its way below 10%. The differance in development times is quite a lot and allows more CSS3 based sites. I'm hoping to be able to tell everyone to ditch IE8 with in 6 months, when it is realistic to do so. In the last 6 months IE7 and IE8 have dropped like a lead ballon, and IE9 acceptance is pretty high.

We support now.

IE8, IE9, Firefox and Chrome. Everything else is a minority browser and thus not free to develop for. Any development work is thus £45/hour based on half hour rates.

The thing is most of our clients don't care, its in the pack they get so they are aware, the ones that do when given the option chose to upgrade to a newer version themselves. I think in the last year we have only had 1 client who cared enough to pay for it, but we are saving hours of development time cutting out all the minority ones and allowing far better CSS3 based designs, which would then have to be recoded up in images/repositioned etc... and we are up front about it etc.. so no ones getting ripped off, and TBH no one cares.

But my question is this.
How many people still support the lot, and waste hours of development time in the process?
IE6,IE7,IE8,IE9, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari?
And which version of Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari will you cater for?
Any why do it for free, if you do?
 
How do you define supports?

My standard policy on this is that support for an old browser means the site will work and is fully functional but may not look exactly as intended and may be missing certain functional or aesthetic enhancements; this covers most browsers right down to ie6.

The really important bit is what makes the cut to be fully supported (better term needed); here, the site will look as intended and function consistently across all fully supported browsers. In this case, the cut is ie8+ and all modern standards compliant browsers.

This allows us to use progressive enhancement (or graceful degradation, if you prefer) to ensure that modern browsers get optimum front-end code which isn't compromised by the needs of minority outdated browsers that still have to be supported.

I find that most ie6 (full) support requirements are for internal corporate projects, and development costs are higher. If they really counted the cost - and risk - of sticking with ie6, they would surely do something about it, but that's a whole new argument...
 
Fully supported then. As the other browsers/version will still work, its just not tested in them, Safari tends to be covered 99.9% of the time anyway due to Chrome. :)

I think what changed for us, in regards to IE7 is we had this corporate client, who the marketing department had the design done by a 3rd company as they had worked with them before, yeah that didn't go south fast with everyone blaming, well us, for the project going over the deadline by a while. I mean it wasn't down to us getting 14 design templates that we then had to work into 5 sites a week before the deadline, we had no information of how many we where going to get I may add, I pestered like mad as well, and having 2 days scheduled in due to us not having any info and other clients because their project manager was a total....:mad:

Sorry where was I?
O yeah they all upgraded to IE8, only stopping short of IE9 due to some problem with their IT department and an internal program I believe. But I honestly think, from my experience of corporate life, that IE6 which I believe is only around 1% share anyway now is not that high to justify the additional hours at no extra cost, lack of PNG transparency JavaScript and dev tools support etc....

My personal projects I wont cater for it, may do for IE7 that is something I am still debating on internally, depends on the design. I know one of my current projects I wont be offering full support/check it in. Which the client is aware of and more than happy with.

TBH I told them that in IE8 the design will be fully supported but blocky due to the lack of CSS3 support for rounded corners, didn't over techy it made the point in a non techy way so they understood fully and they didn't even care. I even gave them stats the works so they could push the issue if the wanted to...so.

I think IE8 is going to be a different kettle of fish though due to Microsoft's decision not to include IE9 or IE10 for anyone on XP, bad move in my eyes and may see it hanging around for a while. :down:

Here's hoping not, anyway. :)
 
Nice to see a sensible browser support policy.

Sounds like you had a nightmare project there. I guess the best you could do (with the benefit of hindsight) would be to set out timelines and deliverables so everyone's responsibilities are clear and when someone messes up, at least there is some accountability. Or maybe you did?

What do you reckon went wrong? Poor comms, bad project management, under-speccing, scope creep? I find it useful to de-brief projects, identify what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again. Unfortunately, most (regular) clients can't be bothered so the same problems keep on surfacing.

Do you use a team/collaboration system like Basecamp to centralise comms, manage tasks, timings, etc.?

As for ie6 - I worked on a project this year that was 99% ie6 and the designers came up with something that featured rounded corners and scrolling content panels. Of course we still had to code the front-end to modern standards to keep it future-proof. Fun? Not.
 
ie6 shouldn't be that high on the percentages now as xp supports ie8 (Jaz - ie8 will not be going anywhere soon due to this) so unless the it department/owner is lazy or someones running an illegal xp they should have updated by now. All newer versions of windows supports ie9 or higher

If someone has a pc running less than xp, they're not likely to be the sort of person you'd need to attract if I'm honest.

Personally I'll be supporting for my own site:
Firefox - 4 (note we're now on 7)
Chrome - latest version
Safari - latest windows version
Opera - latest version
IE8
Android/iPhone Mobile browsers

Mind you if I follow good web practice it should work on pretty much all browsers :)
 
@guru24
What went wrong was the design company had no idea how to work with Joomla and built the sites for wordpress thinking. Even towards the end he didn't get the concept that everything was editable, but in a different way.

Where to start tbh.
He, their designated project manager, third party company told us 1 thing, contradicted himself and then we got over ruled by the client multiple times. One of the things he picked up on was that the textarea tags had dragable corners in Chrome, dear lord that's a browser feature, but our company problem to deal with.

Another one, prime one was I asked how many templates we where going to get he said I can't tell you then sent me 14 a week before the deadline. A rough estimate of 10 or more would have meant I could have freed up the time nesercary to work on it when we where expecting 2.

His terminology was all over the place, everything was Jquery this, Jquery that for example when we used JavaScript not Jquery. Thats just one example as he didn't have a proper understanding.

Another one was he made the left hand 1px border a ever so slightly darker shade of the border and said just copy the design I sent through. When he picked that up I had to zoom into around 160% to see any noticeable difference.

We had to go over each design image via scope each one took between 2.5-3 hours, I crap you not. x that by 14 a week before the deadline with no clue how many we had, plus other work on.

There was paper work he didn't send through. Basically he saw how south it was going to go and thus covered his arse from the start. My boss sent out an email he change one word and sent out the same email to everybody. In the end every one in the office refused to work with him as he was a total...., everything to the letter had to be done in writing and we had a daily pool going on to how many mistakes he was going to make that day so....yeah, our fault, lol.

He then went in the system added 20 modules all with the same name then realized he didn't know what he was doing so then finding the right module was a nightmare.
He then went into the code screwed it up and then sent through a new job list with this ERROR on and our responsibility to resolve it. He did one 5 times for dear lord, but it was all ways our fault.

But ouch that project sounds nasty. :(

@Levi,
I know it sucks I reckon it will be as well. Last 6 months it's dropped by 5% so here's hoping it will get to below 10% at least.

I have to admit good web practice is great if the project pays well, if you have to count for the overal cost and work in cost effectiveness of a project then well. IMO it's more down to educating the client about what will and why, they tend not to care if you are honest up front.

Also I totally agree there is a massive difference in support and full support.

You don't include IE9 in that list?
I think there is a clear difference between a minority browser going out and minority browser that will become a majority browser in 6 months. :)
 
if it works in ie8 it will work in ie9, plus ie9/10/11 are supposed to have better support for html standards so if it works on firefox/safari/chrome it will work in ie - supposedly :)
 
Yeah the odd time there is the minor fix but overal I do like it that there isn't that many to make at all TBH. In the last year or 2 hasn't web development really turned a corner, I mean so much has happend in the last 2 years in comparison to the last 5 before it
 
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