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Startup Skips IE Support, Claims $100,000 Savings
darthcamaro writes "Guess what — you don't have to support Microsoft's IE web browser any more to build a successful website. In fact, you might just be able to save yourself a pile of cash if you avoid IE altogether." (Here's the story, from a few days back, in Canada's National Post, about the frugal financing of social startup Huddlers.) Evidently, no one complained about the lack of IE support either. I'd like to read more details about what $100,000 worth of IE-specific development would buy, though; not being dependent on IE sounds great, but loses some sparkle if it means requiring Chrome or Firefox.
They support all browsers when not editing content(the way most people use this site)... this article is also rather old
I'd like to read more details about what $100,000 worth of IE-specific development would buy, though
Boring pixel perfect rendering to make the artists happy. Blah. At least I know they're putting most of their effort into how it looks; I will have no use for it, and can avoid it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yes on (a) no on (b).
IE, with the possible exception of the waning days of netscape, has been a pox on the internet. However, that said, any flavor of 'BEST IF VIEWED ON', be it IE6, or something technically superior, is the real pox upon the internet...
I haven't had any issues with IE8 or IE9 that isn't present in any of the other major browsers. Even IE7 was decent when it first came out. It's not my browser of choice, but it competes with Chrome for the #2 spot. No browser is "superior in every single way" - each one has its strengths and weaknesses. I prefer Opera for the bulk of my day-to-day browsing, IE for certain types of interactive content and Chrome for speed on media-heavy sites (mostly Netflix and Pandora). I only have Firefox and Safari installed for testing my websites and they get no use otherwise.
I'd like to complain that /. does not work well (hides part of comments) in IE. /. will probably claim that no one is complaining but here I am. So are you going to fix it now?
I would target the latest version of webkit.
IE:
1) Developer tools
2) Server software
3) Desktop Software
4) Virus Checking your updates from Microsoft/MSDN
5) Specific time for setup, maintain IE development environment. (Server, Desktop, Tools)
6) Debug time for IE specific stuff and Development
And of course all the licensing BS costs.
I can see lots of reason to dump IE altogether and just target webkit.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
You obviously haven't spent much time on Slashdot or Facebook.
....ah sod it, I'm calling BS on this. Back in the days of IE6 & 7, maintaining cross-browser compatability was a nightmare. Now not really - IE renders as well as any other browser, and there's not a single one that doesn't have it's own quirks in some form or other.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Sounds more like they are either making shit up to try and get new bites for advertising (my bet) or they suck at design.
While you do encounter some differences with browsers, you don't encounter the level of differences that would require $100k of work to fix unless you either suck or are doing something supremely stupid with your design.
Certainly a mark against your product if I'm evaluating it. I don't use IE, but any time you are telling me that I have to use browser X or can't use browser Y all I can think is you suck at design work. The stuff I use works fine in everything. No, it doesn't always look 100% the same, but it works. My web host has a fairly involved backend for all their various management features and it'll work in all browsers.
Part of it is just not getting too stupid with HTML 5. Yes it is neat and all however it doesn't all work. All the browsers have issues with it in one form or another so maybe leave off all the crazy features for a bit. My favourite example is the HTML5 Angry Birds. It says works best in Chrome, which isn't a good sign that it should matter. It does run well in Chrome, but seems to blow Chrome up from time to time. IE is stable with it and all the features work but the rendering is a little slower. Can't seem to maintain a solid 60fps. Firefox has fast rendering and doesn't seem to have stability issues, but has no sound.
With a bit of smarts about the design, supporting all browsers is not a herculean feat. Our web guy (there's only one) manages it just fine.
First of all, the summary has it wrong. The company is 4ormat, not Huddles. And read this article for an explanation of how this claim is just a publicity stunt. It works just fine in IE (ironically, the only browser it doesn't work in is Opera).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Although not $100k in IE-specific development; They saved $100k in advertising for their PR stunt, because now they get tons of free PR from all over.
To be honest, I'd not have a big problem with Webkit becoming the reference implementation for HTML. For one it's trying pretty hard to stick to the standard and if all else fails you can look at the code to see what the hell it's doing. Comparing that to IEs black box layout where I've been doing pixel-by-pixel adjustments waiting for the one pixel to turn my entire layout into monkey barf isn't even on the same planet. As long as they don't fall into the "yeah this is wrong but we can't fix it because that'd break too many sites" crap. Fix it and the crappy web developers who've relied on buggy and incorrect behavior will have to fix their shit, I don't have a problem with that.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
TFS talks about the "huddlers" website, which was absolutely nothing to do with this topic. TFA mentions (briefly) that the artist-portfolio site 4ormat skipped IE support. What the hell? Do the editors here not even bother to skim the articles they post?
Anyway, it ain't a business app. If you create web apps for the "enterprise market", you absolutely positively need to support IE. Often back to IE6, yes, even today. I don't like it, but that's just the way it works in big business. Platform shift is veeery slow when a business has tens of millions of customers, partners, and employees who rely on a particular application.
Anyway I don't understand the $100K savings. Come on, what startup is dumb enough to write directly to the browser in HTML & CSS? There are tons of AJAX/DHTML libraries that hide all of the differences across browsers and browser versions. smartclient.com and extjs come to bind as a couple of systems with extreme breadth & depth.
Here's an example of what they are telling their customers:
So it implies that IE manages to display most of their content, but thet don't really bother fixing IE-related problems.
hemi
If you write the code correctly in the first place and w3c compliant.. you dont have to worry about supporting ie.. it just works right.
I'll give them IE6 and IE7. I'd give an awful lot to not have to support IE8, even. But there really isn't any reason to not support IE9, unless you need WebGL for something. A lot can be said about Microsoft's past shenanigans in the browser space, and none of it is good, but they pretty much cleaned up their act with IE9, and that should be acknowledged and encouraged.
Though I'm still suspicious of their WebGL stance. That sounds, much like the NPAPI plugin thing in the past, more like a simple attempt at lock-in than an actual security concern.
I think this is pretty debatable. Most sites for general public use should probably work in some form for ie7 and ie8. For most, there is probably still enough market share there to justify the effort.
I think the only people left using the dreaded IE 6 are orgs who built webapps hardcoded to it and maybe a few people with very ancient computers. The first group is not really relevant to the kind of site the startup is making ( and they likely have modern machines where other modern browsers are likely installed ).
We've got a front end dev in our web shop with rendering patches accepted into Gecko. It's a rare sight, and it takes the right kind of developer, but it's not unheard of
Personally, I think we should just let MS go its own proprietary way while the rest of the world goes with open software and languages. Any company that takes a standard and reworks it for its own proprietary purposes does not deserve a loyal customer base.
I understand not taking hours to troubleshoot problems on IE 6 and 7, but Windows XP won't run any IE newer than 8.
We have a small (tiny) startup with a local community membership, and I'm the sole developer. Members are able to edit their own content. After a couple of rounds of broken IE (even 9) and the hassle of even keeping a Windows test platform usable we dropped IE support for members in favor of Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari. So far, no members have complained and we've been able to turn back on features that just didn't work in IE and will soon have removed every special case in the CSS and javascript. Frankly if we are loosing some hypothetical customers who insist on IE, we're better off without them.
Visitors to the site can still use IE, but we'll be working to discourage even that in our small part of the world.
We also support some of our members who are less computer savvy and for the last couple of years when we get a request for help with their local machines, we suggest switching to Linux. So far we've had close to 100% success, with users being really impressed with the live Ubuntu CD demo and having very few questions or issues after switching over. Months later we still hear about how much better their experience has been. I've heard several variations on "I thought I was stupid and didn't understand computers, but this is just easy."
And then Unity came along.... I'll save the rant for another post, but I'm really worried that this is not just annoying for experienced users, but after trying to show people how to use it, it's a real step backward for new users too.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
I'm developing a web app so there's some personal frontline experience here. Supporting IE is still a bitch, it sucks badly and it's a punishment. If my target audience were private individuals, I'd say "fuck IE", plug a big "IE not supported" button on the homepage and be done with it. Unfortunately, my target audience is in the corporate environment.
The main problem is that IE does everything differently from everyone else and from version to version. In CSS, for example, sure, other vendors have their prefixes, but writing out half a dozen essentially identical statements for advanced CSS stuff is tedious, but not troublesome. Finding the five different ways the IE wants it done, that are totally incompatible with anything else is just horrible. Google up how IE does CSS gradients vs. how everyone else does it for an example.
For JS, fortunately we have stuff like jQuery or Prototype, and yet plugins to these still list compatability with various browser - and large everyone else is either supported or unsupported and then there's IE. It is very, very, very rare to find a plugin that works on Firefox, but not Chrome, or on Safari, but not Opera. It's a lot more common to find something that works everywhere except IE.
Basically, you can write a web app that runs fine and looks nearly the same on all recent versions of all major browsers, and breaks completely on IE. You would have to consciously try to do the same with any other major browser.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org