At my work we just decided this week that we will no longer support IE or Edge. We won't actively block them (or show a message) and if the site works in those browser then great. But, we won't test in IE or Edge and we won't make any bug fixes just for those browsers. Frankly the number of users using those browsers (low for our site) versus the number of hours required to fix problems with those browsers (high in our experience) makes it a poor business decision to continue to support them. Though, lets face it, some of the decision also come down to a sense of Schadenfreude after all the pain MS gave to web developers for so long. I started as a web developer in 1996 and I'd be delighted if both IE and Edge went away forever.

> I'd be delighted if both IE and Edge went away forever.

To be fair Edge is a pretty solid browser these days, I don't think you can put them on the same league. I've been using it for some time now and other than a slightly different font rendering engine I have yet to find a fault on it; everything works like you would expect in a modern browser. Development wise, we test for Edge ocasionally and so far we haven't come across Edge-specific quirks like the good ol' days of IE.

You mean you haven't found any Edge edge cases?

(Sorry I couldn't help myself)

How Edgey.

Not bad [0]; although still a bit of catching up to do, it's nowhere near as far behind as IE traditionally was. Apparently, Edge is the first desktop browser to support columns properly, which I give it massive props for.

[0] http://caniuse.com/#compare=edge+13,chrome+51

SVG rendering is still wonky, FWIW.

how so?

I recently ran into this. I was putting an SVG into an <img> tag and sized it with CSS. In every other browser, it worked as expected. The SVG filled the space and stretched to the set dimensions. In EDGE, the SVG appeared tiny at the top-left of the space the <img> took up. I could not figure out a way around it. Had to convert it to a PNG. It seems that it handles SVGs as background images just fine.

I use SVGs all the time in Edge, styled appropriately. Edge however considers (as the spec says) that the bounds of the image are at the bounds of the "page" (as Inkscape sees it, in my experience)

I do The Bad Thing™ with inline styling on occasion, but I've had no problems:

<img style="width:100%;height:auto;" alt="header" src="https://zaibatsutel.net/zaibatsu-wide.svg">

Works 100% fine in IE using a layout kit like Marx or Twitter Bootstrap every time.

>Development wise, we test for Edge ocasionally and so far we haven't come across Edge-specific quirks like the good ol' days of IE.

Edge is simply expansive to test for, because at the places where i worked the only windows laptops (that are locked down like Azkaban for obvious reasons) around were those of the sales people. Majority of the developers on linux, where the designers are on macs.

Unless it is actively formalized, Edge ends up not getting a lot of testing with anything we make.

It had some annoying CSS quirks that pissed me off last time I had to deal with compatibility issues.

I mean, that's fair for you to make that business decision, but if I'm a customer of yours and having issues, and I find out you're not supporting me, I'm just going to do business with someone else. And if that's fine with you, it's fine with me too.

Where I work, we need to use IE for many things, and we have exactly one piece of software that requires a different browser. If in the future, I have the opportunity to replace that product with something that also works in IE, I will, without hesitation. Because the frustration caused by the one IE-incompatible software outweighs the benefit it could possibly provide over a competitor.

I have seen plenty of corporate software that was supposed to work with exactly that version of IE. When you were automatically forced to upgrade to a newer version usually nothing worked anymore. In some cases even forcing the compatibility layer. I would rather see that kind of software, developers that produced it and users disappear. In my experience few things are more annoying than an IE specific website. If you are happy with it, then great for you. But I believe that you are the first person that is actually happy to use IE given the aforementioned quirks.

It's not really about being "happy" to use IE. It's about using what does the job.

Am I correct in assuming that you "need to use IE" for software that is incompatible with other browsers?

Yes. Obviously, I'm going to need to use the browser best supported by most of our infrastructure. If that rewards Microsoft's earlier behavior, so be it. I need things to 'just work' for non-technical coworkers.

More and more sites are only tested in Chrome. It's not just Edge that no one cares about, Firefox is becoming a second class browser as well.

Often it's pretty obvious that the authors didn't even try Firefox, because the JavaScript isn't even loading properly.

I regularly have to email SaaS companies and tell them the service I just signed up doesn't work correctly in Firefox.

I use 85% Firefox and I only see issues on experimental stuff. I'm curious, where do you have these issues?

Firefox is a pain to support. Its box model is slightly different than other browser, like shadows take up space and an outline is rendered around the shadow instead of aroubd the border. There are other minor things especially on the drag&drop events (in same window, not from outside) but I can't recall the specific.

Yes. The latest version of Firefox has cache issues. The same in Chrome was working perfectly after a single refresh. Sad. I love Firefox.

Chrome does not obey cache headers on refresh, I think they assume something is wrong if you are hitting the refresh button and fetch all files from the server.

I can't really blame firefox for obeying the headers that the server sent them.

This problem hit me very hard, chrome ignores most headers if a server sends a 304 response for a resource.

For a site I was working on, we issued a change to our CSP headers only to attempt to fix a CSP issue that made it to production, and chrome would not accept the new CSP changes since the HTML body and scripts were unchanged.

Had to include the hash of our headers as an HTML comment to allow this dynamic change to be picked up by chrome.

It's not just Edge users, I get the same constant annoyances with Firefox.

On the computers I use Firefox, I only get it the first time I use Gmail. Then it doesn't return. But on Edge it seems like it's all the time.

And for those who are curious: I submitted feedback about it both with the Submit Feedback button and on the Gmail Help Forum.

Yea, I found that really annoying.

We fixed our Edge bugs, and removed the block. If you see anything strange don't hesitate to report them at https://www.github.com/google/fonts/issues.

Chromium of all browsers gets pestered all the time by Google services. It's... odd.

Google doesn't want you to use Chromium. Use Chrome instead, it's exactly like Chromium but with all the Google bloatware installed!

>with all the Google bloatware installed!

Oh yeah? Like what?

Sorry, does anyone downvoting want to actually explain to me what "bloatware" is "bundled into" Chrome? Or just more errant bullshit that's tacitly accepted because it's anti-Google rhetoric fired from the hip without substance?

Those audio/video codecs... so much bloat! https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...

Or maybe you're upset about the "colorful logo" bloat?

I'm thinking about the profile features, Google Cloud Print, the Google Now thing that I think is now gone (not actually sure if I'm not being listed to)... I'm upset with Google because they keep imposing their services/design in an otherwise good browser.

Google Chrome also ships various Google Apps extensions that are enabled by default. No idea why that's not in their documentation.

There isn't Chrome for FreeBSD. When I access google.com/chrome from Firefox under it, it says I needn't download it because my Chromebook does it by own means :) Shall I retry later on?

Which Google services are you talking about? I've been running Chromium for about 6 years as my main browser and I don't remember a site even detecting that it wasn't Chrome, let alone pestering me.

He's probably using Ubuntu. They chose to patch Chromium's user agent to identify as Chromium, not Chrome. Obviously that breaks stuff.

Chromium doesn't contain the commercializatin Chrome does. In other words, they don't make as much money on you if you use the clean version.

Google Inbox is also blocked on Edge, which is sad. I wonder why they're blocking it. As you said, Edge works fine with most websites, it's not IE6...

Service Workers, maybe?

If you change the agent string to Chrome the page will load in IE, but it looks as broken as it is in Firefox for me.

I'm using Inbox in FireFox right now with no issues at all?

My Firefox in OSX is fine, my Firefox in my Win8 VM is not. Really strange.

My Version 6 (OS X 10.8), Safari is rejected as well, I should be using 'Chrome, Firefox, or Safari' apparently. By incrementing the useragent I discovered that it loads and all works just fine when I pretend I'm using Safari 8, there's no 'proceed at your own risk' link so I can only chalk it up to google being dicks.

Particularly since if you spoof the UA in F12 the site works perfectly fine as far as I can tell, although I haven't exercised the entire site. (Disclaimer - on latest public Win 10 build, 14361)

It's fair play after the IE-ification of the web before that.

Is it? The complaint at the time was the number of websites that outright blocked non-IE browsers rather than just letting the non-IE browsers try their best to render the pages, closing the web. Just because the tables are now turned it's appropriate for Google to break the open web? It seems evil from the standpoint of trying to support an open web (the arguments are the same now as they were back then), and it seems peculiarly childish and immature for a company as big as Google.

Not to mention if you were going to do it based on standards support and caniuse.com statistics, it's Safari now that is the one that lags behind. Shouldn't Google also start blocking Safari now? Isn't that closer to "fair play"?

works on Firefox and Safari as well as Chrome. There's a difference between the old-school Microsoft efforts to break competitors and current efforts to support a (popular) subset of browsers.

But the point is that with current standards, things that work on Firefox, Safari, and Chrome just work on Edge. It's extra effort on Google's part to throw up "not supported" banners and pretend like Edge is the worst scum and villainy on the planet. It's a terrible marketing effort disguised as "building a better web" and it's doing a disservice to the open web, modern standards, and basic common sense "do the right thing".

How is not devoting time to supporting a proprietary browser doing a disservice to the open web?

Because an open web means the freedom to choose which browser you want to use. Even if that choice happens to be proprietary. Please remember that with the Internet of things, more and more devices will be running closed or non-upgradable browsers, from games consoles and smart TVs through to portable gadgets.

Sounds like parent is saying Google is spending time to deliberately block/not support Edge.

How much time would they have to spend with support requests if they don't spend the small amount of time required to tell people to use something else? I understand your point, but I personally don't care about proprietary software not working with certain websites -- they chose to make it their problem alone. It sucks that Google isn't choosing to not support them because of _that_, it's because they've had bad experiences with old IE implementations of standards.

1) Google generally doesn't answer support requests, they let a random Google Group handle it for "community support". (Unless you are an Apps customer in which case you might expect a reply somewhere between a week and a two years later, and it's still recommended you try the "community support" first.)

2) This isn't a "We won't support you, use at your own risk" banner, this is a Chrome ad. It's a Chrome ad disguised as a support banner. It's a Chrome ad that is designed to get ignorant users to install Chrome out of some fear. This is no better than those "Your computer is unprotected, install this fake anti-virus to fix your computer" malware ads you see everywhere! Sure, maybe Chrome isn't malware to you, but it's unneeded confusion to, say, my grandmother, to have her browser suddenly change because she installed a thing Google told she had to to stay "supported"...

3) This is a case of "Proprietary" versus "Proprietary" on Windows: Chromium is open, Chrome is not and especially on Windows has adware and custom extensions that are fairly opaque and proprietary. On the other side of the fence: Edge's JS engine (Chakra) is open source and community developed, and Edge's WebGL renderer just became open source. Edge is already more open and standards compliant than IE ever was. Blaming Edge for IE's old problems is like kicking your new puppy for things your recently deceased dog did.

4) Yes, as a web developer, I remember bad experiences with IE's implementations of standards, but unlike some I also remember some of the good experiences. I also am aware enough as a web developer to know that IE's "bad" implementations helped make the standards better. Plenty of people can talk about how IE contributed XHR and AJAX. Another example is that "box-sizing: border-box" you see littered throughout CSS these days is "Hey, use the modern version of the classic IE way because it is easier to math." The point of the "Open Web" is not that "mistakes shouldn't happen and standards should be implemented in lockstep", it's that anyone can and should implement the standards and when the implementations don't agree we use that to make the standards better! Chrome owes a legacy to IE, and "bad experiences in the past" don't outweigh the benefit to the Open Web today by not interfering with users that choose to use Edge regardless of whether or not that's simply because it is Windows' default browser.

Since when did Google accept support requests for their broken websites? o_o

> Not to mention if you were going to do it based on standards support and caniuse.com statistics, it's Safari now that is the one that lags behind.

It is?

http://caniuse.com/#compare=edge+14,firefox+50,chrome+54,saf...

Skimming it, Safari seems to do a bit better than Edge if you just count boxes; at any rate it's not significantly worse.

More specifically, I meant iOS Safari, which seems to lag wildly behind Desktop Safari. Plus, iOS Safari has a much bigger userbase than Desktop Safari, which you see in the "Usage Relative" views on caniuse.com.

That said, it was also a dumb joke. :) I do not recommend adding banners saying "This site is not supported on iOS Safari". Imagine how many users you would anger doing that.

It doesn't matter if it's "fair" - I don't want Chromification to become the new IE-ification. Vendor lock-in is always bad.

That was the old IE. Edge is a whole new browser and management has changed since ballmer era. It's like punishing current generation of Germans because of hitler.

Comparing IE to hitler - be fair, he wasn't that evil.

Someone trots out Hitler analogy #879274032890, and it's the poster who at least turns it into a laugh who gets downvoted?

Edit: And this post downvoted within seconds. What a fucking joke this place is thanks to assholes abusing their karma. (If I'm going to be downvoted, it may as well be for something real.)

Who, Hitler?

I don't think Chromification is any better.

Indeed, in 2016 requiring IE can be forgiven as a symptom of Microsoft captivity and/or being behind the times, while requiring Chrome is a proud proclamation of some mixture of not caring about standards, not caring about UX, not caring about users, not caring about proper web design (in order to avoid proprietary features), and being an ignorant and arrogant Google fanboy.

It's strange too, because if you are building a production-ready (i.e., not a proof-of-concept demo using bleeding edge technologies supported in only one browser) website or webapplication, the bare minimum level of browser support that grants you a very modern set of features you can depend on is to only support up-to-date evergreen browsers. That means Chrome/Chromium, Edge, and Firefox.

I can get dropping Edge if you are an individual developer and simply don't have any Windows machines around (testing websites from a VM really sucks), but going Chrome-only pushes us back to the monopoly position that harmed our field so much in the first place.

Actively moving towards a webkit-monoculture ultimately harms our profession.