Re:37signals to Drop IE6 Support
by ajross on Thursday July 03, 2008 @12:27PM
(#235309)
I think this says more about their customer base than it does about the state of IE6 in the market as a whole. There are lots of IE6 users still out there, many of whom are using corporate installations that they can't upgrade. If 37signals (did I spell it right?) doesn't need that market, more power to them. But the reality is that better browsers just aren't as simple as providing a list of "click here" installation links.
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Agreed on the customer-base point.
I'd guess their ie6 visitors are <3% - and I'd wager making stuff work for ie6 requires a disproportionate amount of their time, which could be spent serving the majority more effectively.
As a comparison, RescueTime's ie6 visits weighed in at about 3.7% over the last 30 days.
That's surprising (but great news!) that your IE6 visitors are that low.
I agree, I'd imagine they have comparable numbers to make a decision like this. It'd be interesting info to know (anyone from 37signals out there? ;)
One of the 280Slides guys said their IE6 # was 6% or so, as another data point.
I agree. They customer base (I think) is mostly small businesses, which have the luxury of upgrading browsers.
Any effort to push the web forward (away from old browsers) gets a thumbs up in my book.
On the consumer Internet sites I have worked on in the past year, the stats have shown roughly 30% of users still have IE6. For the services that 37Signals provides, it's quite likely that this drops to just a few percent -- after all, their customers are tech-savvy enough to be using Firefox, Safari, and IE7. And when you've got just a few percent of IE6 users, it just doesn't make good financial sense to spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with IE6's inane bugs.
Firefox 3 actually installs in some locked-down corporate networks. I was able to install FF3 (just not in /program files/), even though I can't install much else--including upgrading flash!
I can only assume that FF3 was cleverly designed to be installable more widely than most other programs, which refuse to install.