By moving to IE9 he's discounting all corporate customers who haven't moved to Windows 7 yet.
This leaves them with only one option if they want support on a long-term supported browser, which is the recently shipped Firefox Enterprise Support Release.
Sounds like they simply want to remove as much legacy as possible in the new product. The old product will still work. They are "skating to where the the puck is going to be..." in a year or so.
It's totally necessary though. Developer's can't be supporting old browsers forever. And really, when we speak of "old browsers" we really just mean IE which still throws weird behaviors at you in the latest versions! When enough sites stop supporting these dinosaurs we not only give users a better experience on our sites but across the entire web.
Corporate customers can always use Chrome or Firefox on XP and if they can't then there's still Basecamp Classic for them. I think they're doing the right thing. It's a calculated risk and I think the odds are in their favor.
I think the title is a little bit misleading. The moment you can drop support for browser versions is pretty dependent on the requirements of your client, and your visitors. 7% for users with IE8 or lower is a pretty tech-savvy crowd, many developers might not have the luxury of dropping support for IE8 because many of their visitors still use that browser.
Agreed. There's still a very significant portion of China using IE6, for example. If you've got an international focus on non-developers, it's not really even close to feasible to drop IE6-7.
I'm so sick of websites not even attempting to render in a browser not in their whitelist. Please give me a button that says "I understand the risks, but I want to try anyway."
Some people don't understand the risks, but have been trained to click the OK button. They will then complain when the site doesn't work and completly forget that they clicked the "i accept the risks button"
The multibillion dollar organization I work for just updated to IE8 from IE6 last week. We aren't allowed to use new browsers or chrome frame for "security" reasons. ha!
Lucky you! I work at a large hospital with (likely) 10k+ computers running XP and we're still stuck on IE6.
I'm not sure what the plan to migrate away from IE6 is but my guess is that it will be a massive pain for our IT department.
I have to imagine that IE6 will continue to limp along for a number of years to come, but hopefully large organizations will have learned a lesson about depending on a specific browser version (or a specific browser for that matter).
My understanding is that IE has a significant market share among users with accessibiliy needs (came up in conversation after the recent jquery 2.0 browser support discussion). While that may not be important for 37 signals it's an oft overlooked side effect of dropping version 8 support.
Now the problem becomes mobile browsers...
(hover vs. tap, tiny resolutions, differences in form controls, sometimes crippled features that work fine in a "pc" based browser, fluid layout choices, float issues)
AndrewDucker|14 years ago
This leaves them with only one option if they want support on a long-term supported browser, which is the recently shipped Firefox Enterprise Support Release.
WildUtah|14 years ago
Nonsense.
Chrome and Firefox will both run on XP.
helipad|14 years ago
melling|14 years ago
jamesgeck0|14 years ago
billpatrianakos|14 years ago
Corporate customers can always use Chrome or Firefox on XP and if they can't then there's still Basecamp Classic for them. I think they're doing the right thing. It's a calculated risk and I think the odds are in their favor.
batista|14 years ago
Better framed: he's discounting all the corporate customers who drag their feet technology wise, and will give him more headache than money.
Such corporate late adopters are not usually the ones to use something external, much less Basecamp, anyway.
huskyr|14 years ago
eropple|14 years ago
mrspandex|14 years ago
dhh|14 years ago
If you show up with a browser that's not one of the big four, we're just letting you in on your own accord.
I completely agree that whitelisting for browsers is bullshit.
rmc|14 years ago
hodder|14 years ago
randlet|14 years ago
I'm not sure what the plan to migrate away from IE6 is but my guess is that it will be a massive pain for our IT department.
I have to imagine that IE6 will continue to limp along for a number of years to come, but hopefully large organizations will have learned a lesson about depending on a specific browser version (or a specific browser for that matter).
johnbender|14 years ago
badmonkey0001|14 years ago
There will always be madness.
[edit] Took me a few to find this link again. Do compatibility charts like this look familiar? http://www.quirksmode.org/m/css.html
kenrik|14 years ago