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Why support older browsers?

Zell Liew 🤗 on December 11, 2018

Why you have to care about old browsers? Who use old browsers? Probably, users with old computers? If they use old computers, they probably don...

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Mattia Astorino • Dec 11 '18 • Edited

If my userbase don't use old browsers i will never support them. Old browsers are deprecated, obsolete, not secure. It's like voting against digital security and privacy. Would you use an old toaster that can cause a fire? would you use an old vehicle from 1800 to drive on today highways? As developers we must care to provide the better and secure experience to all our users

Ondrej • Dec 11 '18

Best thing ever:
Ping from time to time your competitor's webpages with IE6 VM/UserAgent. Keep them on their toes!

Allan N Jeremy • Dec 12 '18

😂 genius

Ondrej • Dec 12 '18 • Edited

Hey, I was just joking, do not do it please, it would deserve capital punishment :D

Allan N Jeremy • Dec 12 '18 • Edited

😂😂😂 I know you were. Still troll gold

Michiel Hendriks • Dec 11 '18 • Edited

I don't think that's a really ethical/nice thing to do.

Benny Powers 🇮🇱🇨🇦 • Dec 12 '18 • Edited

People on older computers can download and install Mozilla or Chrome, and it's our responsibility as developers to make that process easy for them.

Here are the system requirements for FF62, a modern, module-loading, CSS-grid rendering, security-vulnerability-patching browser:

Pentium 4 or newer processor that supports SSE2
512MB of RAM / 2GB of RAM for the 64-bit version
200MB of hard drive space

And here are the requirements for Chrome on Windows

Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 or later
An Intel Pentium 4 processor or later that's SSE2 capable

Older browsers are unsupported and insecure. Supporting older browsers doesn't help users, it hurts them.

danhhristov • Dec 12 '18

"Why support older browsers?" ... "Consider global warming"...
Am I the only one who is lost here? How are those two things even closely related... if anything... when trying to support older browsers you go out of your way and work more than usual which causes the use of more electricity and other resources which should actually be bad for global warming? no?
Also I have not met a single person with such train of thoughts about why people use old browsers...
I agree that the web is for everyone but I also agree with Mattia Astorino that there is a reason for mostly supporting newer browsers.

robin deatherage • Nov 14 '19

Very good insight in your post. My thought with the whole Internet mess is preserving a means to which we have an escape for if and when the Corporations may take away our freedom for their own Proprietary Software.

After all it is Java and Microsoft who are only allowed to view the inner workings of both WebKit/WebView and IE/Edge's Widget Toolkit Libraries. And interesting enough not even Google Chrome or Chromium can see the inner workings of WebKit's highly customized NCSA Mosaic Canvas GUI Widget Toolkit underneath.

They all only have access to the API Name Spaces and their method names and are using JavaScript to capture all hyperlinks before passing them into the Webkit Rendering Engine to gain control.

Now even with all this knowledge it is my estimate that Web-Assembly will not help the freedom situation at all. And why we need to develop other Web Rendering Engines or a Means to ensure that freedom. Thanks!

David • Dec 11 '18

"But the problem is: Nobody earns a single cent from operating the ramps or the elevators? So why build them?" Wouldn't the question really be: why build stairs?