Explicit browser support

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Written By Brian Krogsgard

6 thoughts on “Explicit browser support”

  1. Hi Brian,

    Just wanted to add to the feedback you gave Matty (thanks btw), on the reasoning for Woo not using too much energy on showing which browsers we support.

    In the beginning we made it very prominent on exactly which browsers we supported, as we felt it was important. We even supported IE6 quite some time. We’ve always tried to listen to feedback from our customers to understand what we are doing right and wrong.

    The reality for us is that everybody expects our products to work in every browser, so for us there hasn’t been much point in pointing that out. If we got a lot of pre-sales questions which asked about browser support, we would be quick to make it more prominent, but we don’t.

    Hopefully that gives some more insight into why we focus on the features of our products instead of what browsers we support πŸ™‚

    • Thanks for the feedback, Magnus. That’s interesting that people don’t ask. I wonder if that’s because regular users don’t always know to? Or perhaps they see the browser messaging as noted and assume that means all browsers as you note.

      Either way, I hesitate to think because people don’t ask means they don’t find it important. I’d love to see people like y’all set a standard w/ at least a small link to a more detailed page of your policy. Not much harm in that, right?

  2. Hey Brian,

    Thanks for the chat about this, earlier.

    Personally, I feel that browser support is often also a two-way street where reason needs to come into play. If we’re on IE10, and someone comes along with IE6, they should possibly listen to reason and upgrade. Often, it’s not up to the end user whether or not to upgrade their browser, as they may be working on a large intranet at a corporate or an educational institution. That being said, I feel it’s not really fair or logical to keep users on a browser that is over a decade old, where there are far newer, more improved and more secure versions available.

    This plays a pivotal role in our choice to still support a version or two behind the current version. We do, however, always advise customers to upgrade their software, so as to have the best possible user experience. πŸ™‚

    • I totally agree that it’s a two way street. IE8 in particular feels like no-man’s land to me right now. Noone wants to support it, but it’s hard to deny it’s still in significant use.

      Fortunately Microsoft is getting beyond this problem by now auto-upating Windows users. And I’d bargain most of us hardly know what version of Chrome or Firefox we’re using anymore.

      So hopefully the problem of deciding specifically which browsers we support will be reduced rapidly as more modern browsers update themselves to support latest features, and in Microsoft’s case the operating system won’t let a user use outdated versions.

      • I remember the days of having to cater for IE8 using images to achieve rounded corners. As long as we don’t ever go back to that, I’ll be happy (let us not even mention PNG transparency). πŸ™‚

        Computers are definitely getting smarter (this is the most accurate prediction, I reckon, anyone can make on January 1st… “this year, computers will get smarter”). Lets ensure that, as the humans who manufacture the software in question, we don’t lose sight of how “easy we have it” these days with web browsers and computers in general, and keep on with these kinds of moves, like auto-updating web browsers.

        Education is key, as well. If one wants to get traffic to one’s website, one should ask people to visit it. That’s the easiest way to get traffic. “Hey, will you visit my website?”… “Sure I will”. Lets apply the same principle to computers that don’t yet have auto-updates for web browsers.

        “Hey, Mr. Sysadmin/younger nephew or neice/computer-savvy youthful relative… will you update my web browser?”.

        “Sure I will.” πŸ™‚

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