top | item 46005357

Ask HN: Are you still working with a website that requires Internet Explorer?

11 points| urnicus | 3 months ago

I ran across one of these warnings the other day while working with a government website, "For best results, we suggest using Internet Explorer".

That warning was so common during the 2000's. Nowadays, it is like cat nip to me when I run across one. Does anybody still need to interact with one of these types of websites? Are you able to interact directly with it or do you need to utilize a virtual machine? I'm so curious.

10 comments

order

comprev|3 months ago

I worked for a client once (in the e-commerce space) whose demographic was people likely running ancient desktops/laptops due to financial circumstances. A large part of their business model was affiliate marketing allowing anyone with a browser to make some money online. A/B testing showed a massive drop in traffic when TLSv1.1 was set as minimum.

JohnFen|3 months ago

I do, as well as a website that requires edge.

If the website is really insistent about it, then I change my user agent to identify as the browser the website is demanding. No VM needed. I'm sure that there are some sites that really won't work well enough without using the demanded browser, but none of the ones I deal with are quite that crippled.

urnicus|3 months ago

This one I visited was a false flag operation - worked fine in Chrome. I suspect they never bothered removing the banner after modernizing.

dehugger|3 months ago

Yes, a configuration app for a proprietary service that was built on Silverlight.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt|3 months ago

I wonder if Silverlight can be compiled to wasm these days.

speedgoose|3 months ago

I had to develop and maintain some web application that was embedded in another old application as an internet explorer web view not many years ago.

I left the job, partly because of that.

urnicus|3 months ago

Oof - sounds painful.

pabs3|3 months ago

Which website?

urnicus|3 months ago

I ran across it on the Pennsylvania Department of State website when it served up a download link for data.