Why do People Still use Older Web Browsers?
As someone who works with websites for a living, and then again until the small hours doing freelance bits, I have to say that I love the internet. It’s something that lets anybody can create a blog to share their thoughts, upload their holiday photos, or catch a sneaky episode of South Park on YouTube.
It may be a bit presumptuous to say at this point - but I’ve every faith that you enjoy using the internet too. Am I right?
People make sure they have all the necessary plugins like Flash, Quicktime and possibly even Java so they can see clips of cats dancing on YouTube, listen to your friends band on Myspace and catching up on the latest news.
So why do people insist on using an outdated web browser?
The current crop of web browsers is the most functional and secure that have been built. The big names in the game at the minute are Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Opera 9 and Safari 3. There’s also a few fringe players like Flock and the fallen giant Netscape who get support from the faithful.
Firefox
Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OSX 10.2+ and Linux kernel 2.2.14
Internet Explorer 7
Validated copy of Windows XP or pre-installed with Vista
Opera 9
Windows, Mac OS & Linux
Safari 3
Windows XP or Vista & pre-installed on OSX
All of these pieces of software are free to download, and free to use without any massive limitations of use. The fact is, that the newer browsers are only supported under relatively new operating systems. Someone who is still running Windows 98 can only run IE6 at best as IE7 can only be installed under XP and comes pre-installed under Vista.
Not everybody wants to invest their hard earned money in new operating systems that, as far as they can see, do exactly the same as what’s currently on their computer. Especially when they may only use their computer for checking emails, storing digital photos etc.
Internet Explorer 7 was released alongside a Windows Genuine Advantage check to see if you were using an illegal copy of Windows. I’ve got to admit that I did try to run IE7, before I bought my XP licence, with “try” being the operative word as Genuine Advantage informed me:
As such, there’s going to be a large portion of the internet sticking fast with their questionable copies of Windows XP or older copies of 98/ME/2000 and running IE6. Automatic software updates may be a move forward in general for computing, but with Microsoft locking out a large portion of Windows users (perhaps, with legitimate reason) these people are going to be stuck in the world bare of light blue tabs, rounded Back buttons and tiny Refresh buttons.
Apple Mac users can take solice that their Apple Updates cover their default browser Safari, but there is always Camino, Opera and even Firefox to choose from. Linux users know enough to make their choice. Whether it’s Firefox, Konqueror or Iceweasel, any Linux owner will know enough to backup their choice of browser.
Some people still having limited access to broadband, or just not willing to commit to a 12/18/24 month agreement when they only use the internet every once in a while, also affects the rollout of software updates. Trying to do a Windows Update or download a new bit of software on a 56k modem? Forget it - people have better things to do with their time!
Getting back to the original question - why do people insist on using outdated web browsers?
The real reason is that most people don’t insist on using a “more vintage” piece of software to browse the web - they just don’t know any different. I’ve met people who think that the blue “e” on their computer screen is “the internet”. If you take the time to sit down and install a new browser for them (if their computer is capable of running it) then from my experience they will be very grateful and be happy that you have fixed the funny looking websites they were used to.
For web designers and developers like myself, it can be a real pain to have to redo a block of CSS or include conditional CSS for specific browsers, but it’s not a part of our jobs that’s going to go away anytime soon. Of course it can be difficult to explain this all to clients who are paying you good money to get their site looking spectacular, but again - this is part of our jobs.
We all have moments of pure rage for Bill Gates when an IE6 CSS hack is needed, or Steve Jobs because Safari is following its own rules again, but as much as any web designer hates it, dealing with legacy browsers is something we have to deal with if we want to continue doing what we love.
Having said all that, there are always people who do deserve everything that’s coming to them….
if (stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], ‘msie’) && stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], ‘mac’)) {
die(’<a href=”http://www.apple.com/safari/”>Internet Explorer? On a Mac?!!? Upgrade you fool!</a>’);
}
When clients ring you to say that their site doesn’t look right in Internet Explorer on the mac….
…then you know it is time to fleece them, the idiots!
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I use Lynx, you insensitive clod!
Seriously, there are times when a good, old-fashioned text-only client is the hands-down winner:
1. Finding information
).
Okay, so your Google search has resulted in a billion hits, and it’s time to sort the wheat from the chaff. Skip past the top 5 hits (all likely to be crappy review sites or SpamEO’d sites) before finding an interesting link. Click. Three lines of text appear, and it freezes while it loads 100 images to get nice rounded corners on all the boxes and the affiliate link images and social networking/bookmarking site logos and a couple of different CSS sheets and a couple of JavaScript documents and adverts spawned from the JavaScript and a couple of Flash adverts as well. The real meat of the page is now contorted between advertising and other ‘features’ of the site, making it a bugger to read.
Of course, as Lynx has no graphics support, no CSS support, no JavaScript support and (the big winner) no Flash support, all I get is the lovely text. If people are paying more than just lip service to accessibility guidelines, the page should be perfectly readable, more so without all the rubbish that normally comes with it. (Tip: if a page offers a “printer friendly” version, take a look - they’re usually much easier to read
2. Making it *work* before making it pretty
It’s easy to get sidetracked when the boss looks over your shoulder and says “That’s the wrong colour green” or some-such Earth-shattering insight. Do they care that it doesn’t actually *do* anything yet? No, just that it’s the wrong colour green. So you change it. And it’s still wrong - maybe the first one was right. Could you do two pages so they can compare them side-by-side? What about yellow? Actually, what about letting the user decide! Can you do a mock-up for that?
Whee! There goes your deadline - you’ll now be fannying around with the formatting despite the fact that the damned thing doesn’t actually do anything yet. Lynx suffers not from formatting - you’re free to get it working, then making it pretty. If it’s the wrong shade of green on the release date, that’s a minor thing, but if it looks good but doesn’t do anything, wait for someone to ask “What *have* you been doing then?”
3. People looking over my shoulder
I hate that. If I wanted you to read what’s on my screen, I wouldn’t have monitors carefully positioned to prevent casual overlooking and keep switching desktops whenever anyone approached, I’d have a massive 42″ plasma screen on the wall with big neon arrows pointing to it.
If someone ninja’s their way to my desk, I don’t have to worry (much) that I’m sat on the b3ta QOTW - all they’ll see is a black box filled with text, very similar to several other black boxes all full of text. Did I mention it was quite small text? One quick key press and a terminal window (yet another black box with quite small text) pops up and covers the offending site. I *must* have been doing work - the box looks the same, doesn’t it?
Where am I going with this? Umm…I’m not sure, but don’t freeze us cyber-Amish out just because we don’t have buttons. Make it look half-way decent in Lynx and a lot of your accessibility problems are solved. Lynx (mostly) frees you from the design so you can concentrate on the development. Lynx runs on all versions of Windows and Linux, loads really quickly and doesn’t eat all your RAM. Oh, and it fits on a floppy disk.
Now get off my lawn, you pesky kids! You can’t have your ball back!