Ditch support for Old Browsers
Posted The: 03/06/2009 At: 20:39
Last Edited: 21/07/2009 At: 22:31
Contents:
Software developers have been doing it for years, maybe its time we start to do the same, tell people to update their browser. Developers usually rely on the OS as platform, and usually hard to port their applications to other OSes, and/or platforms. That's where we rely on the Browser, and i guess we can call that our "platform", so deciding which platform to support is very important.
The browser is however not an OS, its far easier to update the browser, then it is to update the OS, which is another reason why we shouldn't be so picky about telling our users to keep it Updated.
Browser Support
Brugbart recommends that you don't support any specific browser or version, and that you only apply hacks for the latest browser versions, such hacks should be removed when a new version of the browser is released.
As we increasingly get more devices and browsers, obviously we wont be able to test our sites in all of them. It is the responsibility of the developers of those devices, and browsers, to support the standard. Web-designers should be able to design a page, without ever having to preview their work in a browser.
Problems
Some fear that they might lose customers if they drop support for certain browsers. However, people will in reality be willing to update, if the site in question is important enough to them.
What about System Setups?
Some people or even smaller companies, might be using an impractical system setup, which doesn't allow users to update their browser.
This cant really be our problem, chances are that people accessing your website from work, had no business doing so in the first place, they likely should be working. If visiting your site was a part of their work, then its their system administrators responsibility to make sure that their browser is supported by your site. Just like they would make sure that their current OS is supported by Photoshop, or whatever software they are using.
What about Win9x Users?
Honestly i personally don't care much about those. But it should be said, that even win9x users have a choice, they can switch to Opera, which still runs quite well. I'm using it my self, on an older PC which i use for older games.
Benefits
The less work required to fix browser specific bugs is the main benefit, and it should be enough to get any designer going. Sadly some web designers fear that they lose visitors by doing it, and that may be true in a few number of cases. But the majority of users will be willing to update their browser, if they like the site enough.
PNG Alpha Transparency
Old 256 color Gifs and PNGs with index Transparency, should be well known to most web-designers about now. But we also have whats called PNG24 and PNG32, which are 24bit and 32bit respectively, these formats have support for Alpha Transparency, which allows for richer design. That alone would be a pretty good reason for a lot of designers, who wish to enhance their layouts a bit more then normally.
The File-size of these png-images, is also generally lower then that of normal Gifs. In addition, you can make use of CSS Sprites, to lower the file-size even more, and save http requests at the same time.
Web Standards
Web standards makes it much easier for web designers to create and maintain websites, they would include CSS 2.1 in particular. But hopefully also CSS3 and HTML5, the sooner we get these tools the better.
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