I'm fine with you not supporting my browser but if you use a whitelist and block me from the website just based on my user agent string then I'll spoof it. Some websites already do that and it pisses me off when the website turns out to be working fine and it's just the webmaster pushing their agenda.

I've thought about this a lot jwdunne hits the problem on the head, most developers build sites for companies - not themselves - and those companies want increased revenues, users, etc. which is all lost if you just ignore people using old browsers. What I think might work, would be a simple snippet that developers could implement on their personal sites that refused to display the content to old crappy browsers. Personally, If I could I would just have chrome as the only browser anyone could use... but that's just dreaming.

"I would just have chrome as the only browser anyone could use"

Comments like this sadden me, especially as I know so many feel the same way. Chrome is closed-source (though few people realise it) and gives far, far too much control to a company that only cares about the web so long as it can make money from it. If you want to use it, fine, but it's a shame that we're returning to an age where it's acceptable for websites to be designed (or 'optimised') for a specific browser.

I don't think this is practical, especially for what I do. The websites I build are intended to generate new business for my clients. We don't support IE6 but we do support IE7-8 because, between them, they are the most commonly used browsers to our sites (supported by stats) and turning those people away would lead to a massive loss in potential business.

Perhaps your web apps and websites are targeted at the type of people who always stay up to date with their browsers bug I can't see that being the case at all for what I build based on the data we've collected.

Perhaps not a "unified alliance" type atmosphere exactly, but more of a "Group for better Standards". Yes perhaps a non-profit; no biased allowed type coalition. Our creed could be "for better standards, to uplift the end users web experience by large" or some other drivel... perhaps.

Er, why?

Because having to support a lowest common denominator of slow and feature poor browsers is a nightmare.

Yet, if people group together and don't support those browsers, then it becomes a competitive advantage for someone else to support them.

That "nightmare" you are bitching about is called either "your audience" or "your customers".

I am not that all that web savvy, but I try to keep things accessible, both in terms of systems used and in terms of physical limitations. My two main websites are aimed at folks who tend to have physical limitations and thus also financial limitations, which means they rarely have the latest, greatest tech. So perhaps my view is slightly biased, but I just cannot understand intentionally barring groups wholesale as a policy because it makes your job more convenient.

More specifically, the 'nightmare' is likely less than 1 percent of their 'customers'.

Building a website allows for little in the way of excuses as to why you shouldn't be able to support almost every single user in every single browser.

Building a web application allows for a much greater variety of excuses. Writing modern code that allows for dynamic interaction and 'save as you type' type of functionality is extremely difficult to support for older browsers or browsers that don't do a very good job of conforming to web specifications.

You've mentioned previously that you aren't a 'developer', so I thought it merited mention. Simply put, it's a lot harder than you think.

If your app is in a competitive space, or one where 'cutting edge' is expected, it's an extremely easy decision to throw away less than 1% of your audience in favor of being able to iterate faster, release new features earlier than your competition, or dramatically increase the speed in which the other 99.7% of users interact with your application (and make them happier customers.)

I generally agree with the notion of 'supporting everybody you can', but having built 'new-school' applications, I understand that it is in fact very hard, and not always worth it.

Thanks.