Drop IE8 support - Githubissues

alrra commented 10 years ago

Microsoft is ending the extended support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. Since IE8 is mostly a Windows XP browser, and it's market share is slowly but steadily going down¹ , I think we should start the discussion on dropping IE8 support.

¹ Some current estimates (feel free to share your own/other):

Changes involved with dropping IE8 support:

Remove IE8 related code
Switch to jQuery 2.x.x
Update conditional comments for "browse happy" prompt
Remove html5shiv?
Update documentation
Other (which?)

julienetie commented 9 years ago

@Alex

Just curious, if possible how did you accumulate those figures?

On 5 December 2014 at 10:25, Alex Nishikawa notifications@github.com wrote:

We are still making over $75k a quarter on IE8, and yes we have international users.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/1524#issuecomment-65771427 .

timmarinin commented 9 years ago

Let it go

anEffingChamp commented 9 years ago

I still have to support IE8 on many projects, which makes me shake my fist at fate. Keeping the comment in place is not a big deal, but saves a step for poor souls like me when returning to the grind.

Marsinator commented 9 years ago

sadly, it is still widely used.

there is even sites that solely design for IE, it's ridiculous.

check out, www.gluecksspielschule.de for example

arthurvr commented 9 years ago

Once again, to keep stuff updated, some newer estimates:

W3Counter: 2.57% (November 2014)
Clicky: 2.41% (today)
Statcounter: %4.93 (December)

robinio1 commented 9 years ago

I got a problem with this site http://www.fensternachmass-shop.de and IE, it won´t show the pictures.

davidjbradshaw commented 9 years ago

Update as of June 1st.

W3Counter: No longer listed in top 10
Clicky: 1.99%
Statcounter: 1.95%
Wikipedia: 1.55% (March)

arthurvr commented 9 years ago

Wow. It's going in the good direction :)

Marsinator commented 9 years ago

I don't know how I became a part of this conversation, you guys probably have the wrong mail address.

Frank

Am Sonntag, 7. Juni 2015 schrieb Arthur Verschaeve :

Wow. It's going in the good direction :)

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/1524#issuecomment-109756462 .

alex commented 9 years ago

(Not sure how I got CC'd on this issue, but since I'm here anywhere :-)). If you feel like looking at another source for browser usage, there's https://analytics.usa.gov/: sadly IE8 is still at 2.6%.

patrickkettner commented 9 years ago

@Marsinator you commented on it back in December - https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/1524#issuecomment-67084713

@alex you were @ mentioned by julienetie back in December as well

y'all can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe button on the right of the issue page

ArmorDarks commented 9 years ago

Please, consider that in other regions situation might be very different. For example, sadly enough, in eastern Europe and ru region IE8 still more alive than ever (in most cases, used by corporate sector).

jpdevries commented 9 years ago

Hopefully Win 10 and Edge get people to update!

— Sent from Mailbox

On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Serj Lavrin notifications@github.com wrote:

Please, consider that in other regions situation might be very different. For example, sadly enough, in eastern Europe and ru region IE8 still more alive than ever (in most cases, used by corporate sector).

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/1524#issuecomment-109783033

ArmorDarks commented 9 years ago

I wish companies would appreciate that, but they won't, since win10 will require subscription after free 1 year, and they already bought WinXp, so they don't want to pay for anything else.

So, in case you're working in corporate sector, you're stuck with IE8.

jpdevries commented 9 years ago

It's too bad Microsoft flip flopped on their "win 10 will be free even for pirates" announcement. That seemed like the nail in the coffin.

— Sent from Mailbox

On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Serj Lavrin notifications@github.com wrote:

I wish companies would appreciate that, but they won't, since win10 will require subscription after free 1 year, and they already bought WinXp, so they don't want to pay for anything else.

So, in case you're working in corporate sector, you're stuck with IE8.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/issues/1524#issuecomment-109785051

stevemao commented 9 years ago

:+1:

benfurfie commented 9 years ago

As others have explained earlier on, corporate adoption of newer operating systems and browsers has little to do with the cost and more to do compatibility and change management. The reality is that updating a browser within a corporate environment isn't as simple as updating 1,000+ machines. They need to test every plugin, piece of custom software and service that is used on a daily basis. If the new browser fails on any one of those tests, it isn't implemented.

Forcing these companies to upgrade isn't even as simple as EOL'ing the version of Windows they are using. I have a client who is runs an IT support company. He has two clients who are still running at least one DOS computer because the software they rely on to run their business was never updated.

The cost of moving from that system to another isn't worth the cost, both in terms of financial outlay and lost productivity/sales.

I'm not saying I don't agree with dropping support for IE8. I actually charge my clients double if they want IE8 support. And I also recognise that we're part of the problem – while we keep developing websites that are compatible with IE8, we keep allowing them to continue to use IE8.

However, the reality is that we're just one small piece of the puzzle. As for Microsoft making Windows 10 a subscriptions service? That doesn't even factor into the equation.

clarkdemvher commented 9 years ago

On Jun 16, 2015 1:56 PM, "Ben Furfie" notifications@github.com wrote:

As others have explained earlier on, corporate adoption of newer operating systems and browsers has little to do with the cost and more to do compatibility and change management. The reality is that updating a browser within a corporate environment isn't as simple as updating 1,000+ machines. They need to test every plugin, piece of custom software and service that is used on a daily basis. If the new browser fails on any one of those tests, it isn't implemented.

Forcing these companies to upgrade isn't even as simple as EOL'ing the version of Windows they are using. I have a client who is runs an IT support company. He has two clients who are still running at least one DOS computer because the software they rely on to run their business was never updated.

The cost of moving from that system to another isn't worth the cost, both in terms of financial outlay and lost productivity/sales.

I'm not saying I don't agree with dropping support for IE8. I actually charge my clients double if they want IE8 support. And I also recognise that we're part of the problem – while we keep developing websites that are compatible with IE8, we keep allowing them to continue to use IE8.

However, the reality is that we're just one small piece of the puzzle. As for Microsoft making Windows 10 a subscriptions service? That doesn't even factor into the equation.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

jdalton commented 9 years ago

:+1: for dropping support for future releases.

Devs wanting IE8 support can always use an older version.

jQuery, Lodash, and possibly others are planning to drop IE8 support as part of their next major version bumps.

QWp6t commented 8 years ago

sauce	marketshare	methodology publicly available?	notes
clicky.com	0.3%	nah
w3counter.com	0.5%	nah
analytics.usa.gov	0.4%	maybe?	raw data is available, uses google analytics for data
wikimedia.org	0.67%	unknown	uses piwik to gather data
statcounter.com	0.97%	yep
net marketshare	6.55%	yep	weights data by country, counts unique visitors instead of pageviews

roblarsen commented 8 years ago

Not surprisingly, nine months later, things have clarified.

roblarsen commented 8 years ago

So, I opened a PR #1892
Two things

Is the PR missing anything (other than a shiv-less Modernizr, which I'll add shortly)?
Should we remove the browsehappy block (the PR as it stands) or pull in the new version from #1748 Thinking about it, I think pulling in #1748 is a good idea, but I could be convinced otherwise (since my original inclination was to do away with it altogether.)

JohnnyWalkerDigital commented 8 years ago

Personally I'd feel more comfortable keeping BrowseHappy in. It has zero overhead and covers for any old IE users you may encounter. But maybe IE8/9 have so small a marketshare it's not worth it?

If we ARE dropping IE8/9 support, why not IE10, too? It's actually the least popular of the three and there's no versions of Windows that support IE10 that aren't upgradable to IE11 (which is probably why it's the least popular of the three).

Dropping support would also mean we could drop X-UA-Compatible which actually DOES have an overhead attached to it. See: http://stackoverflow.com/a/26348511/199700

timmarinin commented 8 years ago

@roblarsen: README still says that H5BP is IE8+

JohnnyWalkerDigital commented 8 years ago

@roblarsen The IE comment also still says lt 8 instead of lt 9 (or lte 9).

roblarsen commented 8 years ago

@marinintim Thanks for the heads up

roblarsen commented 8 years ago

@JohnnyWalkerDesign That's coming in as a separate PR.

h5bp / html5-boilerplate

Drop IE8 support #1524

Please, consider that in other regions situation might be very different. For example, sadly enough, in eastern Europe and ru region IE8 still more alive than ever (in most cases, used by corporate sector).

So, in case you're working in corporate sector, you're stuck with IE8.