How much do you care about the old(er) browsers?

When you're making a new site, do you care about how your site may function in the old browsers? Most jquery plug-ins, for instance, won't work even in IE8 and in the older versions of some other browsers. Does it bother you, or you just don't care?

 

Here, in the US, they still use old outdated desktops in some libraries. Thousands of people use them on a daily basis. I can only assume this but they probably have IE8-9 on them.

Part of me wants to say: I don't care, but then I go ahead and make my sites work in both old and new browsers. Maybe it's an extra work for nothing. Don't know.

 

Typically I'll test out my new sites in the different browsers, such as Firefox, IE, Opera, Chrome, etc, but I don't give much thought to how it looks on outdated browsers. It's difficult enough making sure everything looks nice in the major browsers, without having to travel back in time as well!

 

I don't worry about older browsers. Of course, I am primarily interested in IT users for my cable business, so I assume that they tend to be up to date types.

 

Mostly I don't bother checking if it works for I.E, however I test my website on the rest of the popular browsers.

 

That's an interesting approach. Isn't IE still the most used browser in the world?

 

Yeah, however it depends on the kind of site your making, like atm I am involved with a video project which uses WebRTC i am not supporting i.e, however my user base will be people who use the popular browsers, and anyone else will be simply asked to download a supported browser, it will take a lot more money to try and support every browser.

 

You will drive yourself insane trying to support every browser out there. I've learned to build for the majority and not the minority. You *should* make sure your site functions on IE 8 but I wouldn't bend over backwards to accommodate browsers that haven't been updated in over 5 years. How else will the internet progress?

 

I don't care about old versions and specially IE because it's all time common scenario that your site looks and works awesome but when you go to IE (7 or 8) you can see everything is messed up.

 

Mostly I try to use updated browsers, as I am in SEO and I will have to use plugins that do not work will all updated browsers so while checking sites. But when it comes to some serious issue I prefer using an updated browser currently I think its mozilla 31.0 or something.

 

Just look at your Analytics stats or browser stats. IE is now less than 10%

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

IE8 or older only make up 2%
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp

 

You should care more about your site stats then going into general, My site have over 50% users only from smartphone so I care more to keep my site responsive. You should always go with your Analytics stats.

 

As internet user I don't really care, was webmaster I care for those who have a decent percentage based on my traffic.

 

I guess there's a strong consensus that the old browsers should be ignored. This morning I finally removed a bunch of code from some pages that was IE1-8 specific. Had that content showing up using (preg_match('/(?i)msie [1-8]/',$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']))

So far no regrets.

 

I think it depends on who the site is targeted for and if it is for a client or third party. I normally ask questions to clients to clear this in the beginning. Also if you view your stats you can see if older browsers are hitting your site and can't get further into the site because of issues. You would be surprised how many older browsers are still being used. I see stats on this every now and then, you can't just look at percentages and assume your particular site fits in that percentage. But yeah, add me to the IE haters club for years of heartache.

 

Yep, I try my best to support IE6, at the very least to make it compatible/readable. Things like rounded borders dont work but thats minor, so long as it actually works I'm fine. All my sites work in IE6+ (also IE5.5 to an extent).