Which IE versions should we kill?

[Pony99CA]

People don't want to develop for these versions of IE because it's a pain, possibly requiring extra workarounds that every browser has to load in and extra testing is required, all for a small minority to have the same web experience. Honestly, it could be avoided, and workload potentially halved. Being ruthless is surely the way to go.

Replace "these versions of IE" with "persons with disabilities". Making accessible Web sites can also be a pain, but it helps that small minority function.

I know it's not quite the same -- people can't generally help their disabilities, but they can generally (but not always) upgrade their browsers, but being ruthless is rarely the right way to go.

Furthermore, 'Which IE versions should we kill' should be defined more, does it mean everything should look the same in all browsers, or just look and operate acceptably?

In my opinion, operating acceptably is sufficient. I wouldn't expect the site to be pixel-perfect across browsers.

Steve

[Louis7777]

Thinking of and looking at the bigger picture (the users) it's clear that IE9 support will need to be kept for the time being. IE8 not so much and, as stated, we could already say it's not supported for 3.2 and not have to think about it a whole lot.

What if I told you that currently IE8 is used a lot more than IE9 or IE10 is?

The question is, when do we end support for an IE browser?

When Microsoft stops supporting it? Because clearly that will not be the end of its usage. For example, MS cut support for Windows XP a year ago, but people are still using that OS, and by extension, IE8.

In my opinion, we should aim for Windows 7 SP1 and above so we should support IE10+. When 3.2 will be out, Windows 10 will have already been released, so that would be Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. Isn't that good enough?

Furthermore, 'Which IE versions should we kill' should be defined more, does it mean everything should look the same in all browsers, or just look and operate acceptably?

Everything should look and operate the same, as much as possible.

[MattF]

The question is, when do we end support for an IE browser?

Really, never, or at least, not until looong after it has been replaced.

Why? Because dropping support for a browser hurts visitors. Whatever we support may only be relevant to a a site admin looking for a forum to operate. But no admin can control what browsers or browser versions the users who visit their site use.

It is in phpBB's and the administrator's best interest to present a site that works for the largest possible audience.

So while phpBB will grow to try and take advantage of as many "trick" new features that most modern browsers support, it will continue to carry fallback support as much as possible as far back down the line of browsers as reasonably necessary. Currently we stopped support for IE6 because IE6 was a special kind of problem browser that the entire web wanted to kill. As for IE8, 9 and 10, well, they work well enough and the hacks still in prosilver for them are minimal, compared to the IE6 days (just look at how small the tweaks.css file is in 3.1 compared to 3.0!)

The bottom line is the development of the next new style for phpBB, and what we want it to achieve, will ultimately determine which browsers will be supported by it.

PS: I hate IE with a passion. But I still understand the need to continue living with it, even now. Unfortunately, after reading about MS Edge, I have a feeling it will be more IE - doing things outside the W3C standards in MS's attempt to redefine the web themselves, ultimately leading to quirks we will need to exploit to prevent it or force it to behave like "normal" browsers.

[Louis7777]

The question is, when do we end support for an IE browser?

Really, never, or at least, not until looong after it has been replaced.

But life is too short and IE8 is already 6 years old and IE9 is 4. We can't possibly wait for half a decade for redemption every time MS releases a new browser. >.<

It is in phpBB's and the administrator's best interest to present a site that works for the largest possible audience.

And also a site that is cleanly and semantically coded, that doesn't have a complex DOM, that performs fast, that has a nice look and feel, that does things with CSS3 instead of JavaScript whenever possible etc. etc.

The bottom line is the development of the next new style for phpBB, and what we want it to achieve, will ultimately determine which browsers will be supported by it.

I really hope so. That the devs won't cut on what they want to achieve because of old IE versions.

There are already a few style-related pull requests for 3.2 where there's trouble accomodating IE. I'd like to see #2794 and 2702 implemented but for that to be happen...

... we'll either have to settle with some IE versions having less or change things for all browsers. For example, IE8 and IE9 don't support CSS3 gradients or @keyframes rules...

Unfortunately, after reading about MS Edge, I have a feeling it will be more IE - doing things outside the W3C standards in MS's attempt to redefine the web themselves, ultimately leading to quirks we will need to exploit to prevent it or force it to behave like "normal" browsers.

Edge is going to be another IE, I have that bad feeling too. However, I believe that this one will be updated much more frequently just like the rest of the major browsers, since MS announced that Windows 10 will be their last version of Windows and that it'll be just "Windows" OS which they will be updating.

[brunoais]

IMO, not giving support to IE8 doesn't mean we should just remove everything we have to make it work. It should just mean that that code is frozen and that adapting it to also work with IE8 is optional to whomever develops to phpBB.
Anyhow, phpBB with prosilver works well with CSS and with js turned off. I've tried it myself and I confirm it. It will not look anywhere near the styled way but it works correctly. That's what we ultimately need. This way, we can confirm that phpBB works well enough on every single browser even if it is as old or crippled as netscape.

tl;dr: Dropping support should be just seen as dropping the fancy stuff and shortcuts allowed by JS (and potentially also by CSS).

[Louis7777]

Ticket: https://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-12939

[Volksdevil]

Kill all I.E! It's been dragging its heels for way too long IMO.

[callumacrae]

Kill all I.E! It's been dragging its heels for way too long IMO.

Not true at all—the IE team have been doing great things recently. They've become more transparent with development and they're taking and implementing suggestions, the most noticeable of which is that they've turned on automatic updates.

Supporting IE9+ is pretty easy—especially IE11+, which is more standards-compliant than Safari. Supporting IE8 is a pain.

When Ember were debating dropping support for IE8, a Microsoft engineer came in and agreed with dropping support.

I thought we agreed ages ago to drop support for IE8?

EDIT: I accidentally voted to drop support for both IE8 and IE9. I do not agree with dropping support for IE9, only IE8.

[hanakin]

@callumacrae I was of the same understanding

of note, after watching a recent video from the lead on the development team at recent Microsoft event he went on to point out that the reason behind IE8 hang on is more to do with strict laws and regulations put on financial institutions preventing them from making any hard fast changes to the infrastructure without full up in-depth assessments being completed which are very lengthy and extremely costly. To help mitigate this they have a recent patch to IE11 that allows it to be configured by the system admin to run as IE8 thus allowing for such companies to move forward to IE 11 as their default internal browsers to assist with killing it once and for all. You would have to watch the video for the specifics but it was a pretty interesting watch. I will post a link once I track it down.

with this in mind the need or requirement to adhere to IE8 is pretty much obsolete. Obviously it will be a few months until this update is widely adopted but that should not hold us back from making the switch.

[Volksdevil]

Kill all I.E! It's been dragging its heels for way too long IMO.

Not true at all—the IE team have been doing great things recently. They've become more transparent with development and they're taking and implementing suggestions, the most noticeable of which is that they've turned on automatic updates.

Supporting IE9+ is pretty easy—especially IE11+, which is more standards-compliant than Safari. Supporting IE8 is a pain.

When Ember were debating dropping support for IE8, a Microsoft engineer came in and agreed with dropping support.

I thought we agreed ages ago to drop support for IE8?

EDIT: I accidentally voted to drop support for both IE8 and IE9. I do not agree with dropping support for IE9, only IE8.

You can't say that my opinion isn't true You can disagree with it sure...
But again IMO, even how you say that they have started becoming more transparent and more compliant...Well, about time wouldn't you say? And it doesn't mean it's up to speed as far as modern browsing when it comes to speed, reliability, U.I etc etc. It's a million miles behind Google Chrome for me.