Why You Should Drop Internet Explorer Support
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 10:45 am
The gap between Internet Explorer (IE) 11 and every other modern browser is becoming increasingly like a bottomless pit. Supporting the browser takes up an inordinate amount of time for web developers, and testing sites is a pain. Developers have wanted to ditch IE for years, but is it financially sensible now?
Aksi Marsovich
Intergalactic expert
First of all, we are talking about a dead browser.
IE's development ended in 2015. Microsoft Edge was latest phone number database released as an alternative, and Microsoft itself announced that "the latest features and platform updates will only be available in Microsoft Edge."
Edge was a huge leap forward from IE in every way. Even so, Edge lagged so far behind in implementing web standards that Microsoft recently announced it would rebuild Edge from scratch using the same technology as Google Chrome.
And yet here we are, debating whether to support Edge's aging cousin. Internet Explorer is so bad that Microsoft's top program manager published an article titled "The Dangers of Using Internet Explorer as Your Default Browser" on the company's official blog. It's a browser that's stagnant, and the Internet is moving forward.
Headlines of articles about the "death" of IE since 2015
Browsers are evolving rapidly. The most important innovations that have happened to us since 2015 are: first, CSS Grid, which allows you to do incredible things with the positioning of elements on the page, and second, custom properties, designed to help people move away from using outdated CSS preprocessors. IE11 will never implement new features.
IE hits hands and pulls down
The browser landscape has also changed dramatically since Microsoft abandoned IE in 2015. Google spokesman Sam Thorogood has compiled a list of all the features that are supported by all browsers except IE. Once the new Chromium-powered Edge is released, that list will grow even larger. It contains a gigantic set of features, including new HTML elements, new CSS properties, and new JavaScript functions.
While many modern JavaScript features can be made compatible with older browsers through polyfills and transpilation, any CSS feature introduced in the last four years will never work in IE.
Let's dive a little deeper into the capabilities we have today and how IE11 impacts them. Perhaps most notably, after decades of adapting layouts to bold design decisions, we finally have CSS Grid, which makes responsive layout and positioning much easier. Along with CSS custom properties, object-fit, and display: contents, these are all examples of useful CSS features that are not supported in IE and will make your site look broken or not display at all. This was discussed very clearly in our article "Art and Cross-Browser Compatibility. What's the Connection? "
While many of the additions to the website over the last five years have been mostly related to layout and styles, we should also not forget about the huge step forward in functionality, such as Progressive Web Apps (PWA). PWA, in simple terms, is a technology that adds mobile app capabilities to websites. You can put it on your phone’s home screen directly from the browser, and it will send push notifications, as well as gain access to the gadget’s hardware. And all this even with an unstable connection or offline. On the desktop in the browser, PWA remains a regular site, but on the screen of your smartphone it turns into a convenient application. Isn’t it magic?
However, for IE users, you will be providing very limited options. IE support will increasingly limit the choice of tools that are available as libraries and frameworks use modern capabilities.
Take, for example, the statement Evan You made during the Vue 3 presentation:
The new codebase targets modern browsers only and includes basic support for ES2015.
The Vue 3 codebase uses proxies, a JavaScript feature that can’t be ported or adapted to work with IE. MobX is another popular framework that also uses proxies. Both projects will continue to support backwards-compatible versions, but they will miss out on the performance improvements and API niceties gained from the IE crash. Then there’s the Shadow DOM , a standardized part of the modern web platform that’s unlikely to gracefully degrade under IE.
Aksi Marsovich
Intergalactic expert
First of all, we are talking about a dead browser.
IE's development ended in 2015. Microsoft Edge was latest phone number database released as an alternative, and Microsoft itself announced that "the latest features and platform updates will only be available in Microsoft Edge."
Edge was a huge leap forward from IE in every way. Even so, Edge lagged so far behind in implementing web standards that Microsoft recently announced it would rebuild Edge from scratch using the same technology as Google Chrome.
And yet here we are, debating whether to support Edge's aging cousin. Internet Explorer is so bad that Microsoft's top program manager published an article titled "The Dangers of Using Internet Explorer as Your Default Browser" on the company's official blog. It's a browser that's stagnant, and the Internet is moving forward.
Headlines of articles about the "death" of IE since 2015
Browsers are evolving rapidly. The most important innovations that have happened to us since 2015 are: first, CSS Grid, which allows you to do incredible things with the positioning of elements on the page, and second, custom properties, designed to help people move away from using outdated CSS preprocessors. IE11 will never implement new features.
IE hits hands and pulls down
The browser landscape has also changed dramatically since Microsoft abandoned IE in 2015. Google spokesman Sam Thorogood has compiled a list of all the features that are supported by all browsers except IE. Once the new Chromium-powered Edge is released, that list will grow even larger. It contains a gigantic set of features, including new HTML elements, new CSS properties, and new JavaScript functions.
While many modern JavaScript features can be made compatible with older browsers through polyfills and transpilation, any CSS feature introduced in the last four years will never work in IE.
Let's dive a little deeper into the capabilities we have today and how IE11 impacts them. Perhaps most notably, after decades of adapting layouts to bold design decisions, we finally have CSS Grid, which makes responsive layout and positioning much easier. Along with CSS custom properties, object-fit, and display: contents, these are all examples of useful CSS features that are not supported in IE and will make your site look broken or not display at all. This was discussed very clearly in our article "Art and Cross-Browser Compatibility. What's the Connection? "
While many of the additions to the website over the last five years have been mostly related to layout and styles, we should also not forget about the huge step forward in functionality, such as Progressive Web Apps (PWA). PWA, in simple terms, is a technology that adds mobile app capabilities to websites. You can put it on your phone’s home screen directly from the browser, and it will send push notifications, as well as gain access to the gadget’s hardware. And all this even with an unstable connection or offline. On the desktop in the browser, PWA remains a regular site, but on the screen of your smartphone it turns into a convenient application. Isn’t it magic?
However, for IE users, you will be providing very limited options. IE support will increasingly limit the choice of tools that are available as libraries and frameworks use modern capabilities.
Take, for example, the statement Evan You made during the Vue 3 presentation:
The new codebase targets modern browsers only and includes basic support for ES2015.
The Vue 3 codebase uses proxies, a JavaScript feature that can’t be ported or adapted to work with IE. MobX is another popular framework that also uses proxies. Both projects will continue to support backwards-compatible versions, but they will miss out on the performance improvements and API niceties gained from the IE crash. Then there’s the Shadow DOM , a standardized part of the modern web platform that’s unlikely to gracefully degrade under IE.