How do you argue about Internet Explorer?

...to your customers?

We know, that some styles and functionality doesn't work on Internet Explorer. And yes, there are some workarounds and polyfills, but not for all versions. 😣

How do you argue about Internet Explorer to customers, if your Webapp, e.g. a React app, is not working with it? 🤔

Comments

[rhymes]

Which version of IE are you referring to?

How do you argue about Internet Explorer to customers, if your Webapp, e.g. a React app, is not working with it?

You don't, unless you're fine with losing those customers :-)

If they are a company and they pay for the service and you knew in advance what browsers you had to support, then you can't convince them to upgrade operating systems or machines.

If your customers are users from all over the world, it's even harder to "argue" with them.

I think your best bet is to look at your statistics of user agent and decide what to do. Graceful degradation is your best bet.

Being a React app means that you're probably using Webpack so you can use polyfills and ship two sets of JS for different users.

[Nils Domin]

Thanks. Today a client asks me to update the website, because "some of his customers" have said they can't use it on IE. I don't know their IE versions, but as I know a lot of those customers in my rural region, I think they are < 10. (My client himself uses Firefox.)

Being a React app means that you're probably using Webpack so you can use polyfills and ship two sets of JS for different users.

Yes, I think I'll do this in future. 🙄😬

[rhymes]

Thanks. Today a client asks me to update the website, because "some of his customers" have said they can't use it on IE. I don't know their IE versions, but as I know a lot of those customers in my rural region, I think they are < 10. (My client himself uses Firefox.)

Ok so there's a level of indirection between you and the users. I think you need to have a honest chat with your client, come up with a plan and tell them how much it would cost of time and money to make it work with IE 10 and lower.

Maybe you just need to polyfill, maybe it's a bigger change. You have to test that.

Microsoft offers Virtual Machines with IE (from IE8 onwards), download one of them, and test it: developer.microsoft.com/en-us/micr...

[Nils Domin]

Yes, I will do so.
Great, thanks for the link! 😃

[Antonio Radovcic]

For Web-Apps the browser-matrix needs to be fixed at the beginning and both parties just have to stick to it.
For web-sites, it's a bit easier in my experiencem due to progressive enhancement. If the client requests Sticky-Behavior, you can use "position; sticky", and older browsers will still see the same layout as before.

[Nils Domin]

Yeah, thanks for your tips! I think I will find out "the right way" in future. 🙂