Thoughts on the trend to make web sites that do not work with IE ?

recently I have seen a few more sites that are doing this:

if you go to them with IE even with IE9 they just tell you to use another browser.

while i totally undertstand the need to stop dealing with IE6 and get folks to update i personally think that some sites are going a bit too far....

and i wonder what they are doing that works in safari / chrome / firefox that is so broke with IE9 ?

for example:

http://www.asana.com/

if you try to use the web app it's broken in IE9

or

http://www.lauckstreetshipyard.com/

has all kinds of issues with IE9

if this keeps up will anyone use IE outside of some corp intranet soon ?

I almost wonder if some folks have made templates that deliberately will not work in IE?

@figuerres: I think this is just the prejudices of the individual developers leaking through -- and I don't think it's very professional at all.

Herbie

I think part of it is the move to devices. I have several sites I use that aren't business related that don't work with IE or warn me that there may be problems. I hit most of these on my tablet or phone.

Let's hope that IE 10 can win some of that back. In part that may have to do with the success of W8, WP8, Xbox, and to some degree SmartGlass. If Microsoft can get people interested in their ecosystem then IE's use may increase -- especially if SmartGlass takes off. If they were smart they'd do a SmartGlass business implementation for Windows that would allow you to extend your work onto devices like they show in their concept videos like this one. I bring up SmartGlass because it's HTML5/JS and am assuming that at least on Microsoft devices it will run [better] in the IE engine.

@Dr Herbie: Indeed. It's not like they don't have to do browser-specific tweaks to begin with. Firefox is different than everybody else, and each version of WebKit (of which there are hundreds) could potentially be slightly different. There's no way you can get exactly the same experience on every device. It's just elitism.

Unfortunately Internet/WWW has always been like this. Earlier times it was just opposite - you had to have IE. It's unprofessional for sure and trying to make web sites pixel-perfect for every browser is impossible anyway.

It could be worse for Windows users though. As a Linux user Silverlight gives similar problems way too often and I can't solve it just by switching the browser.

@Dr Herbie: Agreed. Apart from the questionable practice of telling your users that they suck, I find it baffling that so many website builders are under the assumption that everybody can just choose what browser they use.

I'd be okay saying "Hey, you're using IE6, it's time to upgrade", but to completely ban IE altogether is extremely unprofessional and cutting off a good portion of your potential customers.

Same with AT&T. I could not buy Lumia 920 on IE10 until I use Win7 and IE9. the worst one is that NASA site that uses tables in ugly ways and tell people IE cannot do it.

9 minutes ago, spivonious wrote

I'd be okay saying "Hey, you're using IE6, it's time to upgrade", but to completely ban IE altogether is extremely unprofessional and cutting off a good portion of your potential customers.

If you're going to do that for any browser, phrase it apologetically (sorry that my website sucks on IE6) or encouragingly (upgrade to get better features!), never aggressively ("upgrade from IE because IE sucks!")

And Never, Ever, use an alert message. If you're using an alert message, it's because your website is rubbish. Good websites give feedback inline.

IE6 might be a pile of crud, but your customers probably already know that. Nobody uses it out of choice.

Your website is there to help users. If you're going to punish them for visiting, they won't come back.

13 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

If you're going to do that for any browser, phrase it apologetically (sorry that my website sucks on IE6) or encouragingly (upgrade to get better features!), never aggressively ("upgrade from IE because IE sucks!")

And Never, Ever, use an alert message. If you're using an alert message, it's because your website is rubbish. Good websites give feedback inline.

IE6 might be a pile of crud, but your customers probably already know that. Nobody uses it out of choice.

Your website is there to help users. If you're going to punish them for visiting, they won't come back.

I would agree with your "not by choice" statement, but I've seen many computers that still have IE6 because the users are still on XP SP1 and never run Windows Update (or have so much malware that IE no longer runs, so they've switched to Firefox 2).

The site I've developed for work says

<url> is tested in the following browsers:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8+
• Mozilla Firefox 4+
• Google Chrome 9+
• Apple Safari 5+

While other browsers may work, you may experience display or functional issues. It is highly recommended that you upgrade your browser to the latest available version.

I don't exclude anyone, but the site does start looking pretty funky in IE6 and Opera.

@figuerres:Wow, http://www.lauckstreetshipyard.com/ is slow and trying to do some fancy stuff that's probably totally unnecessary.
Ridiculously serious warning messages just make them sound like snobs too.

http://www.fm8tutorials.com/ http://www.massivesynth.com/ and http://www.nireaktor.com don't display readable text for me in IE9 but I think hey work fine for other people using the same browser.
I have to set Style to No Style.

My attitude is that if the customer is paying me, then it's my job to provide them a site that supports their target user-base... and if that means supporting IE6 (common for intranets) then so be it.

I always start with developing for the current standards, and then implement additional browser support as required, either by usage stats or customer specs.

To reverse it, if I were the customer, and the developer blocked IE access with some arrogant demand they they use another browser, I'd simply refuse to pay them.

On Intranet we only test with Firefox because it is on everyone's computers. I'd at least support IE8 and above for a public website, using CSS3 PIE, because I refuse to use ghetto images layouts to do stuff CSS handles fine.

Anyway, this really feels like feels a bit like poetic justice for all the times "unprofessional" developers use/used non-standard IE features or proprietary browser plugins like Silverlight that "punish" users for daring to use non-Microsoft software. Welcome to the club. Cheers.

@figuerres:If their website use HTML5, they're right for banning IE9 or below.

That means if their user use Win7 or lower version of Windows, it's easier to tell them to install a different browser.

If you have a site that depends on the browser having access to sqlite, then you have no choice as to make it a no-internet-explorer-zone. But for anything else, most of the other features can be shimmed in.

-Josh

if you do anything with wordpress - you get used to "please use a modern browser to view this page" errors

If you were to deliberately use features that excluded Chrome or Firefox or made life difficult for them, you'd be the bad guy.

@figuerres: looks like that second site you listed just removed the silly message box (just commented it out, so we can still admire its awesomeness).

I guess someone in marketing just found out they were turning away 50% of their potential customers and I guess they weren't amused.

Good job