In today's world, we upgrade our phones every 2 years, replace our TV's almost as fast, and eat out at a new restaurant every week (well at least some of us do). Given the fact that we are ALL generally looking for the latest and greatest, why are we still stuck supporting old tech?

 

Of course I am talking about web design and browser support. For the most part, many development firms are creating websites that look good in today's modern world but are struggling to make them work in older browsers. So why to we torture ourselves?

 

The answer mostly has to do with client expectation. Many clients think their users are using old machines. Old users must mean old machines, Right? Wrong. We should expect our users to upgrade their hardware as technology gets better, especially on a medium that has changed rapidly. 

 

Take a look at these statistics on browser usage - http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

 

In there you will see that 3% of users are using IE8 and most are using IE9/10/11. It even appears that Microsoft is finally getting users to upgrade more rapidly since IE9. 

 

So why are we still developing for IE7 and IE8?

 

I blame old news. Many users will research the web design and development process first. When researching, they will see articles that are dated that talk about backwards compatibility and designing for IE8 and even IE7. They then believe this is a common necessity and turn it into a request and in many cases a demand. 

 

The way to change this is to have some backbone. First explain the stats (something that is generally not done). Next make sure you client is using a modern browser. Since IE9, it has been a fairly easy browser to code for. 

 

Next, stop testing in older browsers just for fun. A humor blogger tweeted "those IE7 usage stats are you testing your own site in IE7". After thinking about it, the IE7 stats could very well be made up of web developers testing their sites (at least a significant portion).

 

The next generation of we is here, and we need to gently push our clients to newer browsers. If you are a designer/developer, include the data in your proposal or contract and make sure your client understands.  

 

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