Drawing a line in the Sand Against Old Browsers

How long do we keep coding for old browsers that don’t work? We have designed for a number client’s website in the 10 years that Liquid Marketing and Promotions has been in business. Over the 10 years we have noticed there have been a few good browsers and a few crap browsers that have been released. Also, we have noticed that large and small companies are behind the curve of updating their browsers.

Not jumping on the band wagon of being early adopters is a smart move especially when dealing with Microsoft products because most of their products are buggy and have updates soon after they are released. So waiting 3 to 6 months after a browser is released is cool however, companies who are still running IE6 and IE5.5 it’s time to take the plunge in to IE7. Come on you can do it! Better yet jump up to IE8 if you want to stay on the Microsoft platform.

Here is a link to Microsoft IE7 – Please update. Help a web design out. For companies who feel really daring try Microsoft IE8 or FireFox 3.5.2. Having your web designer code for old browsers can be a waste your money because the older non working browsers are being phased out. Just like standard definition tv has gone the way of the dodo so will the use of old browsers.

Here is our rule of thumb. If less they 10% of your site users are using an older browser don’t worry about coding for it. Unless you are running a site that has over 1,000,000 users per month and that 10% is costing you major money then make the change.

Please comment below. We would love to hear your feed back on this.