I’ve written about the death of Internet Explorer before over on CSS Tricks and A List Apart, perhaps prematurely, but we’ve finally reached a tipping point.
The majority of popular JavaScript frameworks have already dropped support:
- Vue 3
- Preact 11
- Angular 13
- Ember 4
- Ionic, a library of UI components
- Marko, the Javascript framework from Ebay
- AMP from Google
- SolidJS (a more recent JS framework)
- React 18
The React framework itself does offer support for IE11 but some projects popular in the React ecosystem have dropped the browser. For example version 5 of MobX, released a few years ago, and the animation library Framer Motion. React dropped support for Internet Explorer with the release of version 18.
Bootstrap, still the most popular CSS framework, officially dropped support for IE with the release of Bootstrap 5. Tailwind, another popular CSS library, also dropped support for IE11 with the release of version 2.
WordPress dropped support with the release of version 5.8. Drupal will drop support with the forthcoming release of Drupal 10.
The list of companies that have dropped support is growing by the day, and includes: Adobe, Dailymotion, Skillshare, LinkedIn, Twitter, SAP, among many others.
Many of Microsoft's own products have already dropped support: Microsoft Teams web app ended support in November 2020. Microsoft 365 apps and services dropped support on August, 2021.
Windows 11 does not include Internet Explorer. On Windows 10 Internet Explorer 11 will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022.
Senior Director of Engineering at GoDaddy tweeted back in 2020: “We dropped support @GoDaddy for IE11 in April. We've seen 25% bundle size reductions since targeting modern JavaScript for transpilation”
It is now Safari that is the major outlier. Few users are stuck on old versions of Chrome or Firefox, but plenty of users get stuck on old versions of iOS.
Top comments (26)
I do wish I could convince my product folk that the 15% of users we have on IE11 "could" easily move...
15% seems extremely high compared to overall market share estimates, which usually peg IE at around 1%. But if your user base really is that heavily skewed in that direction for some reason, it probably makes sense to keep supporting it. "Could move" and "will move" are very different propositions.
It's quite normal for IE to be found in B2B solutions into non-tech industries, IE is under-represented by a factor > 2.5x on most consumer based tracking sites, if you look at the Wikimedia status then the usage is still at 3.7% compared to 1.45% on Stat counter. Now how many of those would shift if you made a case... well probably a lot of them...
Still seems extremely high to me, but I guess it'll be industry and location dependant as well. I guess you could survey the customers as to whether they'd make the switch, maybe citing some killer feature you'd love to implement but can't because it relies on technology less than a decade old 😆
Yeah we produce Health & Safety systems which covers everyone - but it does include 30k+ contractors in the UK many of which will be small operations of plumbers, engineers etc. Our US/Canada business has a similar clientele but lower %.
My approach would be to talk about data security, maybe we'll get there...
I work in an company which makes billions with car parts, every work station still has IE the don't even know what Egde is... very sad. Microsoft should make Win11 not be able to have IE at all.
I've just added a sentence to the article about this: according to The Verge, Windows 11 will not include Internet Explorer. theverge.com/2021/6/25/22550714/mi...
Yes, but my ageing but perfectly capable desktop machine won't support Windows 11. So I'm stuck on Windows 10 and IE 11 will still be available to me. I won't be alone, and IE 11 will live on in the real world for quite a while yet.
But win10 can run Egde and Chrome why use IE?
Yeah, that's not the point, though. The point is that whatever reason users have for still using IE, that reason's not going away because of Windows 11.
If a large amount of popular websites either break or display a “browser not supported” message, particularly if they are web apps that people need to use for their job, then using IE becomes untenable. Seeing as popular frameworks are abandoning IE, this will become and increasingly common experience, so a chain reaction effect sets in.
Users should never see a "browser not supported" message. That's a failure state on that site. Instead there might be things like "new site features available if you upgrade your browser" or "click here to see what you might be missing". But you should never show a "this site is busted, go upgrade!" as users will just go to another site. Need more carrots, less sticks.
Totally disagree. Unless you actively test Internet Explorer, there is likely to be bugs. Letting the user know they won’t get a reliable experience ins a better experience than that. And realistically, for anybody using any of the frameworks mentioned, or new features like CSS grid, the experience in internet explorer will be unusable, and letting the user know why is a good idea.
Sure, presenting a "this browser is no longer supported" banner is helpful for users - and helps them make better decisions about their browser choice. My take was if at all possible don't show a broken experience and help the user make a positive choice towards a better browser / experience.
But yeah, unless there's some dedicated team working on old browser issues, then there's going to be more and more brokenness as the web evolves.
I am not going to miss IE. But sadly as others have said, anyone that develops for a company of a size to have IT and managed Windows machines will still have to deal with it for a while until Microsoft stops supporting those OS' that have it at the core.
Even if it is true that some apps don’t run properly in Edge IE compat mode (can’t say I have much experience tbh) surely you could just use Internet Explorer when you need to access those web apps, and then use another browser for everything else?
Your IT Dept should be in absolute control of that, no? When I managed IT the image was the image and it was up to me to make sure defaults were set. And if it was an older workstation it could be pushed remotely.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Just saying.
Japaneses still use IE. that is a headache when support CSS. LOL
I don't want to see it anymore
That is the reason there is a IE compatibility mode in Edge.
IE mainly has been replaced with microsoft edge, IIRC
Thank god this browser will die soon!