Bootstrap v5: drop Internet Explorer support

https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/30377

by zaiste • 6 years ago

408 201 6 years ago

sjroot• 6 years ago

I despise the fact that IE11 is still used, but it’s used by a quarter of our users at the large company I work at.

We don’t use Bootstrap, but hopefully this encourages the companies that do use it to usher their users to something more modern and secure.

Phylter• 6 years ago

What made the change for us is libraries dropping support and us having to upgrade those libraries to be in compliance with our security audits. It's a good thing and more libraries need to force the issue.

We were almost forced to find another library or write our own but we were able to find articles where Microsoft had said publicly that they no longer consider IE11 a browser and it shouldn't be used. It saved our hides.

uk_programmer2• 6 years ago

I don't very much whether this will make much of a difference. Most devs very rarely ever upgrade the version of boostrap once it is in place, on intranet sites. One of the sites my friend supports is built in bootstrap 2.

Typically if 25% of my users use IE11, I will just make sure it works with IE11. If I have to stay use an older version of the library I will just use that unless I can polyfill or patch the lib to work with older versions of IE.

Then again I am kinda strange in the fact that if it should work in an old browser (and time permitting) I will normally make sure it works well enough that it is functional in that browser.

jayflux• 6 years ago

Most devs very rarely ever upgrade the version of boostrap once it is in place

I think that’s the point.

Those who want IE 11 support will stick with 4, whilst those who want the latest can upgrade to 5.

H1Supreme• 6 years ago

Are those users forced to use it? Or is it by choice. I spearheaded an effort at my org to restrict access to IE on all PC's that didn't absolutely need it. Which, turned out to be nearly everyone.

Unfortunately, lots of users (mostly older) still associate the internet with "Internet Explorer". Simply telling them to use Chrome or Firefox solved the issue in a lot of cases.

mekkkkkk• 6 years ago

Never underestimate an IT departments ability to not give a fuck. I once got a bug report from a colleague complaining about our website not working in Firefox. I couldn't reproduce it locally, so I got to her computer and realized that Firefox updates (?!) had been blocked. Everyone in that department was stuck on Firefox 12, when the current version was 60+. Turns out that not even evergreen browsers are safe from overzealous policies.

And this was on a pretty big media company with a large digital footprint.

thoraway10103• 6 years ago

At least govt side sometimes the staff either don't know or don't have a budget so once something works they've learned to absolutely lock everything down has hard as they can so it can't be messed up. This is partly because vendors willing to deal with a govt procurement cycle often are selling total junk (for high prices).

nikanj• 6 years ago

Some crucial thing was broken on Firefox 13, so they blocked the autoupdate. Nobody ever opened a ticket about re-checking if it's still broken on Firefox 14..

mleland• 6 years ago

I feel like the projects that rely on bootstrap are ones that have a larger IE audience.

I hate supporting IE, but that has always been the appeal of bootstrap for me.

czechdeveloper• 6 years ago

You can remain using older versions then.

But they can't really stay relevant and keep supporting IE.

tpetry• 6 years ago

Why? Their plan for bootstrap v5 at the moment is just some cleanup to fix mistakes they made and remove the jquery dependency. I dont see the reason for these goals to not support ie11.

As much as i hate ie11 we have to still support it as its used in many businesses using our softwares

JMTQp8lwXL• 6 years ago

Knowingly being locked into an older version of a technology is bad omen, e.g., security. Granted, it is bootstrap, and we're talking about IE 11. But some XSS issue might pop up that doesn't get patched in pre-Bootstrap v5.

And with time, your product that's built on Bootstrap v4 (or earlier) is only going to continue decaying.

Cthulhu_• 6 years ago

Is it going to be completely broken / inoperable or just "not quite perfect"?

dstroot• 6 years ago

This is the right question to ask. The majority of Bootstrap should work fine.

Joeri• 6 years ago

I assume they’ll want to use css variables, so probably it will be completely broken.

Etheryte• 6 years ago

Reading through the changeset[1], this isn't a minor "some styles out of line" update, they're removing a number of polyfills that were there to only serve IE11 that affect many of their core components. Without testing it out, I would expect most components that use Javascript for functional enhancements to be broken. Most of the style changes are fairly minor and nothing you couldn't fix as you go, but the script changes are breaking changes.

[1] https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/30377/files

eddywebs• 6 years ago

IE has become a tech debt that often corporations running an enterprise web app older than 10 years have to bear. I have clients who's web applications refuse to work on Chrome/Firefox and mandates the use of IE11 for proper functioning.

7777fps• 6 years ago

IE 11 is still supported by Microsoft because it is tied to Windows 10 support.

If you're B2C you can probably ignore that and just not support it, but if you're B2B where you're selling not to users it's very hard to get away from supporting IE11.

If your users never directly interact with you (for example you sell white-label software which gets resold) then you just can't control your end-user tech stack enough.

If you're selling to partners who sell to companies who push out logins to their customers or user base then even if <1% of users use IE 11, that becomes 5% of companies having a user with it, which becomes 30% of the partners who are asking for IE11 support.

It's one thing to turn down 1% of users it's quite another to annoy 30% of your income stream.

As long as bootstrap 4 is supported (and the legacy bootstrap 3 support suggests it will be) then this doesn't have to be a problem of course, just one more thing to be aware of.

wil421• 6 years ago

Somehow the large FinTech company I work for dropped support for IE 11 and just asked employees to use Chrome. Even users still on Windows 7.

We run a few customer portals and a customer facing ticketing system. Until now I’ve never been able to rid myself of IE 11. It’s very nice. Small banks aren’t so happy.

zihotki• 6 years ago

It's just your large FinTech company probably doesn't have goverment contracts and/or huge enterprises as clients.

munchbunny• 6 years ago

Personally I’m hopeful for the day when Edge becomes default. I believe it’s still able to use the older engines for compatibility, but not having to code for Trident for default Windows users would be so nice!

gsnedders8• 6 years ago

(Chromium) Edge has an "IE Mode" where it uses Trident for specified sites. Very clearly the move here is to get enterprise clients using Edge internally, as it means they have a modern browser on the public web but can maintain compatibility with internal IE-only systems.

duxup3• 6 years ago

I'm fortunate enough to be in the B2B where our customers are generally less tech inclined so we can actually say "You really shouldn't use IE, download this." and they actually do it. And our customers customer's are even less technically inclined, and they do it too.

Some even come back with feedback "Hey this other stuff works now!"

I like to think we're helping make the world a better place ;)

Granted while the leverage is nice, supporting those customers can be a bear.

websitescenes4• 6 years ago

I have exactly the opposite experience with B2B. We’re working with financial institutions and large dealers and what they use is typically white listed and controlled by an IT department. Typically, they can’t just change and use whatever they want. You must be talking about small businesses?

daotoad• 6 years ago

Because many of our users access our systems using embedded browsers in EnterpriseTM Software, we have to support IE8.

B2B can mean you're locked in to supporting things you otherwise wouldn't.

IE8 support adds significant cost and effort, but because of our customer profiles, we must maintain it. Our leadership understands the issues and is working to change the situation, but the inertia in this field can be astoundingly hard to overcome.

rb808• 6 years ago

download this

Holy Sh*t. That means a: users can install software and b: they listen to some vendor telling them to install stuff. I'm shocked either still happens.

debaserab2• 6 years ago

In my experience (looking at error log hit rates vs customer service inquires) the vast majority of people do not contact customer service when a website breaks and would never get that advice.

chatmasta3• 6 years ago

Doesn’t Microsoft advise against using IE11 because of security reasons, except for critical internal applications that only support IE11? [0] It’s mind blowing to me that companies continue to use an insecure browser, to the point of insisting on it.

Why can’t vendors refuse to support IE11 on the grounds that it’s a security risk? If you reframe the problem to “IE11 is insecure,” surely customers will adapt?

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-security-chief-ie-is...

Kye• 6 years ago

COBOL is still in use 61 years later. Institutional inertia is very much in style. Vendors can't dictate terms to the people paying the bills.

jabroni_salad2• 6 years ago

Developing for Chrome is not an unreasonable ask and many vendors are asking for it these days. Any new service should get minimal resistance.

At my org we use Chrome or Edge as the default and define ie11-only sites in group policy. When you navigate, IE11 pops up automatically.

As an aside a company I used to work for was so underwater on tech debt that instead of modernizing their site they repackaged IE9 as a citrix app that business partners had to run. People are willing to overlook a lot when the commissions are good and that was not the worst thing I have seen in the insurance space.

kube-system3• 6 years ago

This stuff happens over time. It is a result of cascading dependencies.

Companies have lots of pieces of software that they support for extended periods of time. Also, they typically avoid requiring users to use different browsers for different applications. The number of support calls goes up dramatically if you need users to use different browsers, and it causes usability headaches when linking from one system to another, because you can only have one default browser. If you bring a piece of enterprise software into any organization, they will want you to target the browser they're using.... so, targeting IE was written into the requirements well after it was a good idea, because legacy compatibility was required. That, of course, works until MS throws a wrench in the works and discontinues the browser.

SaaS will change this somewhat, because the software is continually updated by the vendor. It's mainly on-prem and/or custom applications that cause this issue, because they don't get upgraded until big bucks are dished out.

drngdds• 6 years ago

Because unfortunately, competition exists. I work in fintech and we have two options:

- Convince bajillion dollar investment banks to switch web browsers just to use our service

- Accept a mild decrease in developer experience

sebazzz2• 6 years ago

I had clients reject .NET Framework 4.8 due to security concerns.

bluedino• 6 years ago

I had to support IE6 until 2012 because a certain company didn't upgrade their workstations...

wtdo• 6 years ago

In 2015 I was writing a brand new web frontend for IE 5.5 on a mobile device with something like 240x360 screen dimensions (I forget the details now) for one of the most valuable companies in the world. We had complete control over the devices the users used (the company gave the users those devices). Admittedly, plans were in place to upgrade those devices, but it was still a fair bit out. I left before that happened.

fiddlerwoaroof• 6 years ago

I work for a relatively large B2B company and we’ve managed to convince the business to drop support for IE11 and Edge (the EdgeHTML rendering engine version). It was just a matter of pointing out the development cost and using analytics to show that very few of our users uses either browser.

duhi883• 6 years ago

How did you have that conversation?

The clients I work for are all still worried about losing business due to dropping IE11...so we don't.

They have no analytics on which devices generate income, so it is hard to have that conversation. We know that IE11 hovers around 3% for most of our sites, and I doubt that many of those hits come from legitimate users, let alone someone who is going to purchase something.

wayoutthere• 6 years ago

My company has a few SaaS apps that really only work in Chrome. I would say Chrome is a more prevalent corporate browser than IE11 at this point.

The biggest issue with IE11 from a corporate IT support perspective is that it is not cross-platform so it adds another platform to test and validate against. Most organizations have to support some level of Mac usage for software developers and executives, so it makes more sense to officially support only a single browser.

tln5• 6 years ago

IME, the IE11 users have all been able to use another browser. We send them to version of our site that includes all the right polyfills and allows signups/browsing marketing but NOT using the main app.

When users arrive on IE11 and need to use the app they are always able to fire up chrome/Firefox/edge.

The only users with an old browser and won't/can't upgrade have had win7 + ancient Firefox.

reaperducer4• 6 years ago

IME, the IE11 users have all been able to use another browser.

Then your company must not have any customers in security-conscious industries like healthcare.

Any well-run IT department doesn't just allow the company's employees to install and run any old browser they want because a web site told them to do so.

I am forced to support IE11 because a very large number of doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers use it. These people cannot simply "fire up chrome/Firefox/edge."

marcthe124• 6 years ago

Not always. Some places use ActiveX or npapi. I know one place which the security system uses a java8 applet. The functionality has been remove from other browsers. I wish if MS provided a way on edge to run some webpages in IE. At least then we could isolate problematic webpages that use plugins while have rest run on edge.

taf2• 6 years ago

We're mostly a voice application so with WebRTC being a requirement to our application we've completely dropped support for IE11 and Edge (pre chromium)

We've had to maintain support for Safari which has been very problematic since they initially released WebRTC support but not exactly bug free. That said it's a joy to develop for the web now without worrying about IE

MisterTea• 6 years ago

IE 11 is still supported by Microsoft because it is tied to Windows 10 support.

And slow to adopt banks who's check scanner software STILL depends on some ie11 feature. Edge support is coming "soon" which apparently includes the past 3 or 4 years.

marcthe124• 6 years ago

Personally I feel the correct solution for ie is to have stuff polyfilled and transcompiled by the user. So js libs, you also transcompile the libraries also and provide the polyfills.

leifg• 6 years ago

Not to mention that if your software sends out emails with links to your application, chances are high that your client's email client (Outlook) will open the links in the default browser (which still might be IE).

So even if you can convince them to use a different browser, be prepared to tell them how to configure the browser to be the default one.

bcrosby95• 6 years ago

That's interesting. Part of why we started supporting IE is because some of our most important users somehow ended up on our website in IE, despite not normally using IE. Wonder if this is the only reason why.

gentleman112• 6 years ago

I have been helping maintain and update an online fabric store. If anybody is going to be using ie11, it’s old people with old computers buying fabric for things. I think it’s still 7% of the larger market, no? I don’t see how stores can just ignore 7% of users unfortunately

wpietri2• 6 years ago

It looks like 2-4% of usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

However, there's a big difference between 4% of users and 4% of market. Not everybody out there is a customer, and not all customers buy equally. So the revenue falloff sill surely be smaller.

Typical browser stats also don't account for what people do if something doesn't work. Having browser issues surely will cause some lost sales. But even the least tech-savvy of people will try something on another device, like their phone, or ask somebody to do it for them. Making the revenue impact even smaller.

wpietri2• 6 years ago

Since it's open source, it sounds like companies who get 30% of their money from IE users should start giving enough back in time and money that Bootstrap does what they need. That, or look up parables on gift horses and little red hens.

phyzome• 6 years ago

Also consider:

- For some websites (e.g. government) it is important not to "lose" even 1% of the potential userbase -- it's another type of accessibility

- For some websites, IE 11 usage will be considerably more than 1% in the first place

keithnz• 6 years ago

It's different for all kinds of of markets, in the markets we deal with (primary industries), our experience is, a lot of IE11 users are users with a lot of $ who have a lot of infrastructure built around older tech. The old tech keeps working fine, which is great in many ways. So, I think unless Microsoft kills it, IE11 is still the minimum for widest adoption. However, for my side projects, I just care about the evergreens.

modmans2nd• 6 years ago

Imagine a world not too far away where Credge is the only browser accessible and IE tab is available there but doesn’t open unless there’s a flag on a site to say “use IE Tab”

fortyseven• 6 years ago

I wonder how many of these ancient legacy systems are content to stay on IE because everyone coddles them with support? Chicken and the egg kind of thing. Why invest the time and money to modernize if devs will bend over backwards to keep them on life support?

efdee• 6 years ago

Not sure. At least in my experience, the people demanding that their apps keep working on IE11 are not the people who care about what framework we use to build the apps.

beart• 6 years ago

More likely it's because no one wants to pay to upgrade the hundreds of barely supported in-house apps their company has that only run on IE 11 in compatibility mode.

karatestomp• 6 years ago

The people making the decision judge their personal risk to be higher if they initiate the change than if they stick with the status quo, even with the chance that it causes a major breach—they might not get blamed for that, anyway. Same as most business decisions.

wstuartcl3• 6 years ago

It depends on your user base. Sometimes you must coddle because the users are still high on your active user reports and not supporting them is a choice between killing off that user base or keeping them.

For instance if your business model is to sell to/support highly regulated industries or govt users you are effectively forced to support their current user base configs or lose that share of the market because the choice for them is deal with a huge change to their requirements and support (which move at a glacial rate) OR chose a different vendor for your provided service.

sebazzz2• 6 years ago

Especially because the ones to make that call may not know that their business apps support other web browsers. We sell some tools, which also work on IE11 but definitely on other web browsers. Do our clients know that? I wouldn't know, and wouldn't count on it.

jgalt212• 6 years ago

IE 11 legacy support is a dream compared to having to support IE 8 and lower back in the day. The JS engine on IE 9 was about 10X faster than the one on IE 8.

alkonaut• 6 years ago

I remember thinking "Once IE6 is dead I'll never complain about browsers again". IE11 is still pretty fantastic compared to IE6.

pjmlp• 6 years ago

Well, IE 9 was the first version to have JIT suppport.

rado• 6 years ago

A progressively enhanced site should work fine in text mode on IE11.

toastal• 6 years ago

Maybe for some CSS sure, but there's so much has happened in the realm of web APIs and JavaScript that certain things are nearly impossible.

KarlKemp2• 6 years ago

Bootstrap needs a modern browser, but modern browsers don’t need bootstrap.

Seriously: 90% of the value of bootstrap was homogenizing browsers and making horizontal positioning easier. Both these issues have improved dramatically, with browsers converging and CSS Grid becoming available, respectively.

At this time, bootstrap offers little more than a somewhat more opinionated set of margins and other defaults than what browsers ship with, plus some higher-level components.

rchaud3• 6 years ago

This has less to do with "modern browsers" and more with how the site was designed and the opportunity cost of switching.

Why would the developers of a Bootstrap-based site that works fine overhaul it completely for CSS Grid, which has far less backwards compatibility? What would be the benefit?

Bootstrap is more than just a layout grid, it's also a UI framework, so abandoning it would mess up things like tabs, accordions, modals, etc.

Using Bootstrap isn't going to make your site less accessible or less secure.

https://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox

https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-grid

_ZeD_2• 6 years ago

Using Bootstrap isn't going to make your site less accessible or less secure.

the same could be said for jQuery, still less and less people are using it

KarlKemp2• 6 years ago

I didn’t mean to suggest that people should invest time to remove bootstrap. Only that Bootstrap offers far less now than it did in the past, and shouldn’t be considered the default option when starting any new project.

Among the downsides is its size, obviously. I also consider the html it encourages among the ugliest things since the invention of PHP. This is from the documentation:

    <button type="button" class="btn btn-dark">

Classes such as “col-sm” are little better than style=“...”. While accessibility seems to have improved over the last years, my intuition is this happened in spite of the idea of semantically meaningful HTML being abandoned and not because of it. I used to worry about this, but had to abandon that particular fight for the sake of my mental health at about the time someone decided to name one of these frameworks “semantical”.

But with CSS Grids and Flexbox, layout has become just as easy and actually more flexible than using Bootstrap. Why would you add code and become pigeonholed into one framework when you could archive the same using vanilla CSS?

mwcampbell• 6 years ago

At this time, bootstrap offers little more than a somewhat more opinionated set of margins and other defaults than what browsers ship with

Some of us need opinionated defaults like these in order to ship something that looks decent. Can you suggest an alternative set of opinionated defaults?

drinchev• 6 years ago

I'm even not sure what an average experience on IE11 would be for any users.

I push as much as I can to POs / stakeholders to just disable non-critical features on IE11 and just leave the basic functionality.

I doubt anyone using IE11 likes that fact, so sounds good to give them just another reason to complain about their experience to their superiors. I will definitely never see "The product that just works on IE11" as a slogan, so being competitive in this won't be reasonable argument.

pbhjpbhj• 6 years ago

Ha, my office's intranet is MS SharePoint, the menu is broken in Chrome. I sent them the CSS to fix it (unnecessary divs are added, you just need the right selector and you can display:none them all) ... worked fine in IE11, apparently that's justification for a WONTFIX (fixed it for myself with uBlock).

Lots of emails come around saying use/don't use IE11 for this operation because half the time it doesn't work, and half the time the sites being linked aren't standards compliant.

As an ex webdev it's hard not to be annoyed.

baccredited• 6 years ago

I have access to analytics for a big government site. 11% of all traffic in March 2020 was IE11.

tzs• 6 years ago

I have access to order processing logs from a small site whose customers use Windows and who are generally not very technical.

Of people who actually order:

  36% Chrome
  26% Edge
  19% Firefox
  19% IE11

e12e3• 6 years ago

No problem. If you drop support for ie11, those stats become:

Of people who actually order:

  44% Chrome
  32% Edge
  23% Firefox

Unfortunately total orders will drop...

Raed667• 6 years ago

The only reason we still "support" IE11 in my company is that a "significant" number of our users visit us in their working-hours from IE11.

During the weekend this kind of traffic drops significantly, which means to me that people using IE have to, and not choose to.

maelito• 6 years ago

Don't forget the fact that some (how much ?) users visit websites with IE because it's the default browser on their entreprise setup, but admins have installed Firefox alongside for compatibility with modern websites.

So dropping IE is almost a service for them.

Source : french administration with thousands of employees.

lazyjones• 6 years ago

What are some good alternatives for developers who don't want to lose 2,39% (or whatever the current MSIE11 market share is) of their visitors/revenue?

Bulma claims 90% compatibility with IE11 at least. Foundation 6 seems to support IE9+.

StreamBright• 6 years ago

Market share != revenue share.

jfkebwjsbx2• 6 years ago

Exactly. In fact, for some domains, supporting IE11 can mean losing money. There is the technical cost, but also the support cost which tends to be higher.

reaperducer4• 6 years ago

Market share != revenue share.

This can certainly be true.

The amount of revenue my company generates from IE11 users is at least an order of magnitude more than its Chrome, Firefox, and Safari users combined.

purerandomness• 6 years ago

Just continue using the 4.x branch, it's perfectly fine and I think it's still going to receive maintenance for some time.

tln5• 6 years ago

Those ie11 users may be able to just fire up chrome etc when they need to. That is my recent experience at least

We build an IE compatible marketing and sign up flow, so I may only be seeing the motivated users' behavior

Wowfunhappy• 6 years ago

Those ie11 users may be able to just fire up chrome etc when they need to.

They may. They may also just hit the back button. One of those actions requires much less inertia than the other.

Solvitieg• 6 years ago

Your company is unable to upgrade their IE11-only software yet that same company is going to upgrade from Bootstrap 4 to 5 immediately?

Stay on Bootstrap 4. It will be supported until late 2021.

darekkay• 6 years ago

Even StackOverflow dropped IE11 support recently [1], mainly to be able to use CSS custom properties in their Dark Theme implementation.

[1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/03/31/building-dark-mode-on-...

aesyondu• 6 years ago

It makes sense when we assume that StackOverflow's audience are those who know enough not to use IE11.

websitescenes4• 6 years ago

Good lord, looks like I’ll have to wait a few years to use this update then. We have a decent amount of legacy browser users that need support. Wish that Bootstrap supported these still widely used browsers. Had the same problem with v4.

dangus• 6 years ago

“Need” support, until you just force them to not need it.

Like how YouTube basically killed off IE6: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/4/18529381/google-youtube-in...

As long as people don’t have a reason to change, they won’t. I say you drop support now and consider yourselves lucky that you can ditch your more difficult and problematic customers.

I mean, of course, I know this isn’t a realistic course of action for everyone. But I wish it was.

joshuaissac• 6 years ago

It is usually the difficult and problematic enterprise customers using IE11 that also pay the most money. The choice between ditching customers and ditching a framework is not usually difficult.

strenholme4• 6 years ago

I make sure my website is still 100% functional in IE11: Using only .jpg and .png (I don’t use .gif on my website) for images; not using too much Javascript; using .woff instead of .woff2 webfonts; text-shadow instead of text-stroke to give one font an outline look; etc.

If I was building a node website which depended on a bunch of packages from developers who may or may not care about IE11, this would not be possible. But since I’ve done the entire design by hand with HTML and CSS for over a decade, I can keep it IE11 compatible without issue. Also, everything works if Javascript is turned off, and there are reasonable (if not great) fallback fonts for users who disable webfonts.

untog• 6 years ago

The second half of what you're saying is just standard web development practise. And as for the rest... everyone has to make a judgement call. Do you still support IE8? Presumably not. As the percentage of users with a browser drops the amount of development work required to support it means you drop it. For a lot of us the number of IE11 users (< 1%) means it simply isn't worth the time.

(also, please let's cut it out with the "young developers" stuff. I've been around long enough to see lazy developers both young and old.)

strenholme4• 6 years ago

To answer your question: My site still works in IE8, but with minimal CSS. It works in IE7 and IE6 with, albeit without CSS (except for my online resume), so it gracefully degrades. I have been phasing out IE8 support through the 2010s; in 2012 I went to a lot of effort to make everything look nice in IE8 but phased out that work as I updated the site.

It’s also perfectly readable in browsers without CSS and Javascript, including Lynx. Dillo and Netsurf both have CSS implementations so broken, some versions of those browsers have rendering issues unless they disable CSS.

It is possible to make a website which renders in Lynx, which is perfectly readable in IE6, which can be read in a browser without CSS or Javascript.

duhi883• 6 years ago

I support the second half of your comment. All websites (webapps excluded) should strive for as little JS as possible. It isn't all that hard to support IE11 for most things, if you aren't doing anything super crazy with your design.

The first half though...we have grateful degradation for this reason. There's no reason to serve larger woff fonts to all users when it is so easy to use it as a fallback, preferring woff2 when supported. There are a lot of simple ways to improve the experience and data consumption for modern devices without sacrificing functionality in IE11.

strenholme4• 6 years ago

In my experience, the fastest way to serve a web font stack is via base64-encoded web fonts in a single “font” CSS file; it’s more raw bytes but fewer requests. To do it this way requires having all of the web fonts be in the same lowest common denominator format, which is .woff.

I also add about 10k to the combined font stack file by adding hinting which is only seen on 75dpi displays, because too many users are still using low resolution monitors.

The main reason I use woff fonts and their approximately 120k size is because the days of “font-face: Verdana” giving (almost) everyone the same looking website are a thing of the past with Android smart phones everywhere.

jmull2• 6 years ago

Well, this is a mistake.

Nobody likes to support IE11 but dropping support moves Bootstrap 5 from "just use Bootstrap" to "Bootstrap has tricky pitfalls". Before someone can use Bootstrap 5 they need to be sure and confident that they don't need IE11 and never will.

_bxg15• 6 years ago

IE11 was supplanted by Edge years ago. Windows 10 ships with Edge preinstalled (it comes with both, but you're not stuck with IE). Windows 7 and older are no longer supported by MS. The only in-between is Windows 8 which everyone hated so I doubt it has a huge market share, especially in enterprises which are the only ones who might be "stuck" with the browsers that come preinstalled on the OS.

x3haloed3• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, the enterprise world is still making extensive use of IE11. Here is the browser breakdown on an enterprise application I work on: https://i.postimg.cc/cCbk34SR/Screenshot-20200407-083321.png

As of now, Bootstrap 5 cannot be considered for use in any website with heavy use from enterprise users.

Edit: though it is nice to see that Chromium Edge is already catching up to Spartan Edge!

jmull2• 6 years ago

That's fine, but irrelevant.

IE11 lives on because many corporations run software that requires it.

There's a network effect, because links don't open the a browser that's compatible with the destination, but in the same browser as the link. So the corp with one IE11 app wants to serve their intranet home page in IE11, and so they want everything to run in IE11.

There are mitigations and migration paths, but that's all swimming up-stream -- it incurs risk, and costs time and money -- so it happens slowly and only in spots.

To use Bootstrap 5 you have to answer this question: are corporations my customer, or could I ever pivot to a business strategy where corporations are my customer?

If you don't care about money, then you can just answer no if you want, and you'll be fine.

But the consumers you can reliably insist run modern browsers don't pay for websites (not directly), so if you are running a business you are either committed to an ad-driven model, physical goods model, with no b2b option, or you're going to keep IE11 in-play.

I just don't think most people want to make a far-reaching commitment about the nature of their future business before they develop their first web page. (They do it all the time, but not on purpose!) A framework like bootstrap should free you from coming to grips with all that, but bootstrap 5 pushes it into your face before you are probably ready for it.

wstuartcl3• 6 years ago

which may make sense for sites that have a 2% ie11 userbase (which may even be the case for bootstrap project sites as the user base hitting those sites are many technical users!), however sites in-the-wild have dramatically different user bases to support I manage many brands marketing sites for instance and we see low single digit % ie11 users all the way up to 40% userbases depending on the specific audiences for those sites.

If the bootstrap team is looking at their (or even average) ie11 %'s to determine if they should drop support they are really making that decision blind. It would instantly take bootstrap from a viable framework on many sites to a deal breaker.

dna_polymerase• 6 years ago

Absolutely not. Those who still use IE11 have to have a hard deep look at their bullshit requirement. We can't keep support for insecure and obscure technology because someone somewhere might still use it. This type of bullshit makes it even harder to build safe & reliable software.

x3haloed3• 6 years ago

Unfortunately this is wishful thinking. See my reply to @brundolf in this chain.

magicalist• 6 years ago

Nobody likes to support IE11 but dropping support moves Bootstrap 5 from "just use Bootstrap" to "Bootstrap has tricky pitfalls".

I mean, if you're writing for IE11 that's true of any library or framework you might consider, even the ones that "support" IE11.

If you're still supporting IE11 I don't see why it's so weird to do so with Bootstrap 4.

soperj• 6 years ago

FINALLY!

leejoramo• 6 years ago

What is the the expected release date for Bootstrap 5.

Being that it is still an early Alpha, this change may not have a significant impact for a while.

tenebrisalietum• 6 years ago

Microsoft (or a third party) needs to do this:

I. Rename IE11 something like "MS ActiveX Runtime For LOB Network Apps" (AXR for short) or something like "MS ActiveX Player".

II. Create an MMC console entitled "AXR Domain Manager" that identifies a list of domains that open in AXR instead of the default browser. This list is controllable via group policy and other MS management tools.

III. Modify IE where if a website not in the aforementioned list is accessed, a popup saying "This site will be opened in your default browser" appears and the link opens up in the default browser.

It would make it so much easier to explain to non-technical people that IE11 is really a legacy app engine at this point and shouldn't be used for modern website usage.

acdha2• 6 years ago

Isn't that basically what Enterprise Mode does?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/deploy/emie-...

If you have specific websites and apps that have compatibility problems with Microsoft Edge, you can use the Enterprise Mode site list so that the websites open in Internet Explorer 11 automatically. Additionally, if you know that your intranet sites aren't going to work correctly with Microsoft Edge, you can set all intranet sites to automatically open using IE11 with the Send all intranet sites to IE group policy.

amanzi• 6 years ago

Yes - that's exactly what it does!

int_19h2• 6 years ago

I think the point is to do the reverse - if somebody does run IE11 directly (rather than Edge), and tries to open a website that is not in the system-wide whitelist, it forces them to use Edge.

cfv• 6 years ago

As a provider, supporting old tech stacks sucks. They're clunky, have all kinds of warts and annoying workarounds for stuff that got improved in future versions.

As a consumer, being told my light bulbs won't work with the new fixture is a great reason to no longer work with that provider.

As a provider that knows this, I'd rather support the old tech stack right up to the point my ability to keep the lights on isn't at risk.

tcd• 6 years ago

It seems IE11 has become the new Python 2.7. I can only hope one day MS decides to pull the plug entirely, it can't run any new JS features and is clinging onto life.

Eventually, the web will just break (for example, http/3), and IE will be forced to retire.

We just need the "right" pieces to break before it can retire in peace.

vinniejames• 6 years ago

This sounds like a terrible idea. Most of the reason to use a framework like Bootstrap is to avoid dealing with cross browser issues, looking at you IE

wnevets• 6 years ago

I would love to drop IE11 support but its still generates way too much revenue. V5 won't be an option until that changes.

0xff00ffee• 6 years ago

There are still companies in Europe I work with that use IE11.

Since we switched from jQuery to Vue last year, we put a friendly reminder on each page saying IE11 is not supported (since its ES6 support sucks), but the tickets still came in. Finally we installed a header on all B2B sites that pops a modal error saying please don't use IE11. The tickets stopped abruptly. I was expecting complaints, but the majority of them already have alt browsers installed, so instead of asking, in this case forcing them to use a different browser worked much better.

e12e3• 6 years ago

Won't this be great when Google and everyone else kills off the user agent header? 5 years from now, there'll be no forcing/detecting users with old ipads, chromebooks or phones.

bepvte• 6 years ago

You should reread that article

jannes• 6 years ago

Does it matter that newer browser versions are freezing the user agent? Microsoft will never remove it from IE11, so you can always detect IE to show a modal popup.

jakearmitage• 6 years ago

Are there any frameworks like this that support IE10 or IE11?

lanius• 6 years ago

Small world, the committer is one of the main contributors to MPC-HC (RIP)

k__• 6 years ago

Somehow Bootstrap became the jQuery of CSS for me.

I used it excessively 6 years ago. Then the v4 took an eternity to release and I already switched to different solutions.

I would have thought that people that are still using it are doing so because of legacy support.

jfkebwjsbx2• 6 years ago

Which solutions?

ativzzz• 6 years ago

Why aren't IE users considered more when thinking about accessibility? The best practice is to incorporate a11y accessibility standards to accommodate the small percentage of users who use screen readers and/or have color blindness/other disabilities. Why are we so quick to drop IE11 support when supporting users with disabilities is just as much work if not more? And possibly are a smaller percentage of users than IE users? You'll never read "Bootstrap stops supporting screen readers and removes aria tags in v6".

By extension, can we classify IE usage as a disability? Only half joking: I imagine a lot of current IE users are either doing it because of work or because they are technologically illiterate.

bfred_it• 6 years ago

Disability isn’t a choice

Bootstrap v5: drop Internet Explorer support

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