Quote:
Originally Posted by jjshabado
No, no support. You don't need a smart ass message for an Enterprise site but a professional "Upgrade to: X" or "Contact your ..." or whatever.
No it's not. There is almost a zero percent chance that >20% of your customers are using IE6 (unless you're totally centered in China). You have some statistic that says 4% of your users are using IE6 (which I'd guess is probably a stale statistic since usage is dropping rapidly). So you're saying 80% of your websites traffic is internal and non-IE6 usage and only 20% of your website traffic is from paying customers?
It's also unlikely you're going to lose significant market share. Most people actually will upgrade - including your entreprise customers. I think the number of businesses that still use IE6 and also don't use any other browser is extremely low. And just as importantly the business doesn't have a lot of options when shopping for new IE6 supporting software. So if the option is upgrading their browser or upgrading to some whole new software - which one do you think they're going to choose?
Not to mention if that's the case you're selling software to a customer that clearly isn't interested in investing in technology. Seems not the greatest from a long term perspective.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The 99% of customers who ship and live in non-remote areas would still use their service because nothing has changed from their perspective. They serve those people because they make money off of them. And a better analogy for IE6 would be these companies shipping to remote Alaskan villages. And they do. For a surcharge.
One lesson I've learned from this discussion is that next time I'm interviewing for a job I'm asking what browsers they support. Seems like a really good question to ask to get a sense for how technical/smart the companies leadership is.
The data:
Go into Awstats, click on that part that directs you to browser version and filter for February 2012:
The results are clear:
IE6: 4%
IE7: 17%
Remember some crap about kindergarten math and you see this ads up to 21%.
This isn't hard.
Your assertion is that ALL of these clicks, who collectively amount to well over 10,000 hits per month, is ALL money-loss customers for my company and NONE of these customers are large clients.
The burden of proof would thus fall directly onto you, and if you are able to prove your assertion, then I would be the very first to eat my words, and believe me, I would be thrilled to eat my words. Trust me, I love being wrong, and I'm not even joking here.
Remember that you are debating this with someone who hand-codes his own HTML, CSS, and javascript, and is well aware of the irritation and frustration wrought by IE, and has, in his opinion, correctly dropped support for IE6/7 on his personal, non-corporate sites, and yes, I DO have that funky image from the IE6 countdown on my sites.
However, as much as it sickens me, when I am faced with decisions, I MUST go with what the data tells me, and yes, the statement that "Over 20% of our web-clicks derive from IE6/7 in the year 2012. February of 2012" rings plain wrong and ****ed up in my ears, and seeing that statement in quotes make my eyes burn. The thought that the words February, 1012, IE6, and many clicks all end up in a semi-cogent sentence is confounding, confusing, and yes, goes against everything my emotions tell me.
Emotions aside, I must look at the data, and with that data, I must test and model my assumptions and see if everything lines up, and if it doesn't, then I have zero choice but to set aside my emotions and adjust my decisions. You see how this process goes? This is what decision-making is all about, and from data-based decisions comes many decisions and ideas I don't particularly like implementing or showing off, because numbers are ugly, cold, and non-emotional, and those numbers have the final say in every decision that I must make.
Sometimes my interpretation of the numbers is wrong, because at best I can use Baysian inference to decide what most likely reflects reality, and with the hit-count, percentage, and knowing which companies commonly discuss products on the site with sales, I can sort of deduce who is MOST LIKELY using IE6, and even going in completely blind, there is no sane way to infer that all those hit-counts come from a large number of random companies. No, the correct inference is that all those IE6/7 hits come from a handful of companies, thus it is likely that each of these few companies are depending on our sites hundreds, and perhaps thousands of times per month, thus these are large clients. Using the logic you propose suggests that a company with few hits would likely be money losers for the company. Since IE8 and FF are the two most popular browser-click on the site and the two most popular browsers in the world, it stands to reason that each of these users are, in fact, using the site less often, thus it is MORE likely that an IE8 / FF user is a money-sink for the company, therefore I should suggest dropping support where most of the money-loss is, and that is IE8 and FF! See, you can't have logic both ways.
Your assertion that big corporations are able to just up and change their browser and user habits is dead wrong. Corporations have many concerns dealing with security, admin rights, and IT issues that must all be taken care of long before the corporation can consider a mass upgrade. This entire process can be very expensive, especially if it involves upgrading all the OS's. You also have to be certain that the corporations we would be asking to upgrade are so enamored with our company that they are willing to upgrade because we asked them to, when in reality, they will just go to whomever presents the path of least resistance and costs them the least money and time.
If we were to truly upgrade, it would be with the intention of attracting customers who cannot function without the upgrade on our end (there are situations like this) but most certainly not with the intention of abandoning perfectly swell customers.
In order for you, as a developer, to convince me that dropping all IE6/7 support is good, you must present me with actual, hard data, as I have done for you. I have shown you data from a company that actually has to consider this issue, given you analysis, and then I have tossed the gauntlet to you, but you have yet to present me with one sliver of data.
Soft: Developer will hate his life. Wow, just imagine working with someone with that attitude. You know, if you really can't suffer 1% of your total work doing something you can't stand, which would amount to creating a few stylesheets (no javascript even!) to support IE6, bless your heart if you're truly that talented and sought after that you can't spend one or two days eating **** from your job, but I'm not convinced, and why would I, as someone looking to hire, want to bother dealing with someone so stubborn, that after seeing the numbers himself, still refuses to budge? And you yet you ask me to flip-flop my opinions for you.
Yes, I DO believe a good developer should be interviewing his prospective employer or contractee as much as he is being interviewed. You know, everyone can't be happy dealing with each other, and that is perfectly fine, however, I do ask that you keep a somewhat open mind and show some negotiating prowess, and if your prospective employer is so kind as to show you data, you are show some willing to at least comprehend his argument.
