Well, there you go.
Anyone but Google making this call would seem premature but because they have such a large user base it will no doubt move more people to ie9.
That’s fantastic! It’s good to see them using their power for good and working on ridding the internet of those old browsers that are a pain to support!
The majority of people using IE8 won’t be able to upgrade to IE9 because they’re on Windows XP (which accounts for 15% of all visitors on my site logs). No, Google isn’t trying to get people to upgrade to IE9, it’s trying to force them into switching to Chrome, which will run on XP. Sneaky and underhand, if you ask me…
[FONT=verdana]They ought to tell us exactly what they mean by “not supporting IE8”. Are they going to lock IE8 users out completely? Or are they merely saying they won’t test their application under IE8?
What they do say is that visitors “will see a message recommending that they upgrade their browser.” My emphasis on the word “recommending”.
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I disagree, the web must win.
We need to be able to flush out old and busted to make way for the new hotness.
Google is in a position to do that and people will benefit from it.
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I don’t think many people will see it that way.
You say that “we” need to flush out the old. Who is “we” in this context? Who are the people who will dictate what software the rest of the world will use? The people who, just because they want the new “hotness”*, insist that everyone must follow? Would you say that Google in particular should have that power?
The fact is that there is a vast number of computer users out there who don’t have any choice in the matter. Many of the people who use IE8 do so because of company restrictions on updating, or because of the limitations of the operating system. Anyway, IE8 isn’t all that old. There must be millions of people still using IE6.
In fact, I’d bet that the majority of IE8 users haven’t got a clue as to what browser they are using, or what version it’s at. Many probably don’t even know what a browser is. If they see a message saying IE8 is not longer supported, it will be just a bit more technical gobbledegook to them. Even if they did understand the issue, the chances are they wouldn’t know what to do about it.
If Google cared about their customers, they would go out of their way to support them. What they are doing is removing that support, apparently for an arbitrary reason that offers no benefit to the customers concerned.
Mike
* Mark, despite this negative comment, I have to say that I like the word “hotness”.
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I do understand the side that Mikl StevieD bring up – and they are valid points. However, I would argue that prompting website visitors to newer versions is in the user’s best interest – there are security reasons for upgrading, as well as continuing to improve on web technology, which makes a better experience for us all, including those users who will upgrade. I think we all agree that the improvements to browsers over the years have had a positive effect on user experience.
I guess to counter StevieD’s comment – if Microsoft was worried about supporting their users, they would make later versions of IE work on windows XP – I don’t think we can really fault Google making a superior product that works on all Windows platforms. They may be exploiting this lack of support on IE’s part, but I can’t really blame them for promoting a better browser that will work on their existing operating system.
While this is good for web developers drive towards modern browsers, I agree with Mikl, this isn’t good customer service for their apps customers when many are still on xp. This also won’t help them propagate their apps suite within enterprise - enterprise generally being conservative to update both browsers and OS, and reticent towards service providers that dictate to them with some ‘hipster’ decision.
e.g I know companies who are investigating moving their IT provision to cloud services, with me recommending google apps as a contender, but as soon as it’s a no go for the bosses old xp laptop, then the decision to play it safe with office 365 is an easy one.
We, as people who build the internet and want to see it prosper.
I think the web will continue to be the dominant application for some time, but there are other competing proprietary systems like iOS that could replace it if the web stagnates. No, Google shouldn’t have that power alone, it should be a free market where any browser that does what people need from it can be used.
Without IE8 web applications will be less dependent on libraries to fill the gap, cheaper to build and higher quality.
These companies need to change as well.
These people need schooling.
They care about the web and are moving it forward. If people change from IE8 to Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera or IE9/10 they will benefit.
Back when the bogey browser was IE6 and then IE7 I could entirely sympathise with websites that stopped supporting them, because they were so far behind the curve - both in terms of the features they didn’t support and the amount of hacking that was needed to get them to behave and display a similar layout to what other browsers were correctly displaying without any hacks at all.
But we’ve moved on since then, and while IE8 isn’t perfect, it’s a lot closer than its predecessors. The features not supported by IE8 are more commonly those that enhance the visual appearance rather than affecting critical functionality. While there are some features that will break IE8, they are less essential, and there is les need for people to abandon IE8 than there was IE6, so I do consider it unreasonable to make a site that will not work for 15% of people, when they are using a browser that is perfectly good enough in most respects.
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These people need schooling. … These companies need to change as well.
Sorry, Mark, but that’s bordering on arrogance. And don’t forget that “these people” are our potential customers. If they are using the “wrong” browser, for whatever reason, good or bad, our job is to cater for that as best we can (within the limits of what’s economically feasible, of course). Trying to convince them they’re wrong is a bad strategy. By all means, try to point out the advantages of upgrading, but don’t abandon them if they decline to do so.
Also, I agree with Stevie that supporting IE8 isn’t such a big deal. Personally, I have a bigger problem supporting IE6. But that’s not the point.
Mike
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