Older versions of IE show a much stronger dropoff in usage over the weekend

http://bl.ocks.org/erwaller/6511564

by ericwaller • 13 years ago

84 76 13 years ago

bl.ocks.org

It would be cool to further break this down by time of day. i.e. look at people who use IE8 from 9-5 on weekdays vs. the weekends. Because I bet nighttime weekday IE8 usage dampens the effect.

edent• 13 years ago

Timezones are a problem there. Unless you're a hyper-local site, your worldwide visitor numbers will skew anything on a "daily" basis.

For example, my blog is based in the UK but gets a substantial proportion of visits from the USA - which itself has multiple timezones.

tbirdz• 13 years ago

Couldn't you do some kind of correlation from geolocation to correct for time zone differences?

hef19898• 13 years ago

Have to agree with conclusion, right now I'm using IE8 and not voluntarily! What's really interessting are the multiple "you are using an old browser" messages you get.

perpetuated• 13 years ago

As a non-choice user of IE6, I can confirm that this is annoying.

Especially when articles about old versions of IE don't render in the browser.

jackgavigan2• 13 years ago

Same in IE7.

"Error: 'd3' is undefined"

autonomy77• 13 years ago

The irony is heavy, isn't it? :)

jtbigwoo• 13 years ago

Same error in IE8.

IE8 came out in 2009. 4.5 years is not that long in enterprise terms.

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

I wonder whether the total numbers are significantly lower on the weekends - i.e. if there's a selection bias going on for people who choose to use the internet.

anonymfus• 13 years ago

Yes. Ever mobile browsers people use less on weekends in absolute numbers (but more in relative).

devx• 13 years ago

It's probably how Net Apps manages to still get such high numbers of IE market share (they measure browser "usage"), when I think it's pretty obvious Chrome, and then Firefox are the most popular browser choices. But since a lot of people use IE continuously for work, that could raise "browser usage" a lot.

herbig• 13 years ago

The folks I know who use Internet Explorer by choice also don't really use the Internet outside of work.

stephen_g• 13 years ago

I think a lot of people just don't know enough to upgrade their browser - I see people using IE9 at work even though we are allowed to install whatever software we want...

IE really needs silent auto-update, and to actually release more often...

JPKab• 13 years ago

If you think this, then you don't understand enterprises. The vast majority of users you will encounter, even in their 60's, are aware, through friends, kids, family, etc that this "Google Chrome thing makes the internet faster".

They want it, but your typical large enterprise foces IE down their throats, courtesy of 20+ years of rape by the legions of IT guys who, through the cognitive dissonance inducing Microsoft certification/training/tools process now think that everything Microsoft is magic.

If you are reading this, and 3 years ago you were telling everyone at work how amazing Silverlight was going to be, you are part of the problem. If you were talking about how great Sharepoint was going to be, you are part of the problem.

FYI: Most people working in the Pentagon are forced to use IE8. Just in case anyone here had any illusions about how deep Microsofts' shitty certificate-holding fanboy culture has penetrated our government.

prawks• 13 years ago

your typical large enterprise foces IE down their throats, courtesy of 20+ years of rape by the legions of IT guys who, through the cognitive dissonance inducing Microsoft certification/training/tools process now think that everything Microsoft is magic

I can't speak for every company, but in my experience there's much more to it than that.

A large part of the problem is that many of the tools leveraged by Enterprises (which are purchased from vendors) to develop web applications are extremely brittle and sensitive to the user's browser. When you talk about pushing a new version of IE, every web tool in the company (easily dozens) needs to be examined to determine the impact and cost related to making sure it works with the new version. This often means pushing new versions of these vendor packages as well, and the costs associated with that planning (think of the management effort required) and implementation.

In many Enterprises, this is infrastructure overhead and is largely avoided (it's a huge headache/cost) until absolutely necessary. "Absolutely necessary" means when the vendor (MSoft) stops supporting that browser version. Which doesn't happen until it is well past obsolete.

Of course, management gets many of these concepts from those Microsoft Certified developers, but that's not the whole story.

mpyne• 13 years ago

FYI: Most people working in the Pentagon are forced to use IE8

And in a different DoD office a few miles away, IE7. :(

bunderbunder2• 13 years ago

At places I've worked they absolutely do know how to upgrade, but they have to hang onto IE8 because there are sites on the corporate intranet which don't work with IE9+. So the usual compromise is to hold IE at version 8 in order to be able to use those apps, and install some other browser to use everywhere else.

JoshGlazebrook• 13 years ago

The title needs an asterisk. Because I unfortunately have the privilege of knowing an older gentleman that purposely uses IE6 on Windows XP. He calls the concept of tabs useless rubbish. And I'm not talking a regular consumer, I'm talking someone who develops actual software.

comex• 13 years ago

In his opinion about tabs, he is in good company [1], though the company in question prefers Safari rather than IE 6 :)

[1] http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-...

untilHellbanned2• 13 years ago

anecdotes don't justify asterisks

pdpi2• 13 years ago

Actually, you'll find that while a single anecdote doesn't provide evidence for a general theory, it does provide enough of a counter-example to disprove a statement.

How can it be the case that nobody uses old IE by choice, if at least one person does?

arxpoetica• 13 years ago

Certainly a general title flourished with a little hyperbole is not atypical.

jere2• 13 years ago

Bollocks. It doesn't need an asterisk. It has a graph that proves your point! The graph doesn't show IE8/9 use going to 0% on the weekends.

In fact, it clearly shows about 35% of IE users still cling onto older versions during the weekends.

ytjohn• 13 years ago

Or.. 35% of IE users work during the weekend.

loupeabody• 13 years ago

I second this. We recently had an incident at the office where all our Windows 7 machines implemented an update which upgraded everyone's IE8 to IE10. Some software which is used daily in the office to generate reports (using a browser) was using the <font> element to display barcodes (with a barcode typeface).

Since the <font> element has been long deprecated, the barcodes as well as a few other elements rendered differently. This alarmed a few of my bosses who were eager to understand what could be done to bring the barcodes back. After showing them IE10's dev tools and the browser mode, the problem has been temporarily fixed.

But many people I spoke with in the office were of the opinion that IE8 was all around better than IE10, and for their use case, they're not wrong. The legacy software everyone here uses to generate reports is outdated, but it still serves its purpose fine. Web standards and innovative technologies are not relevant to them on a personal level to justify the inconvenience of the update. So yes, my coworkers prefer IE8 to other browsers, but only because they depend on it.

The software we use to generate reports, by the way, could easily be changed to meet modern web standards. So, their opinion is further arbitrated if the software would just be tweaked to work with newer browsers.

magic_haze• 13 years ago

Doesn't IE (and Firefox, Opera etc.) have an option to turn off tabs entirely? Using IE6 at this point on a machine that has direct access to the internet seems rather... masochistic.

johnny_reilly• 13 years ago

It's been my (unfortunate) experience that most enterprise / corporate environments lock down users machines heavily in the name of security. And with that goes the ability of the user to upgrade their browser. Oftentimes the reason is that there are old internal web applications which don't work in newer versions of IE / look rubbish in newer versions of IE. It's a pain. And it looks like the death of XP won't mean the death of IE 8 as many Win 7 shops are resisting the upgrade to IE 9 let alone 10.

mcherm• 13 years ago

[...] lock down users machines heavily in the name of security

And because the browsers aren't the more recent versions with more recent bug fixes, it may actually increase vulnerabilities, making things LESS secure.

fpgeek• 13 years ago

Just because the lock-down was in the name of security doesn't mean that it's going actually help improve it...

unreal372• 13 years ago

Not necessarily. I have a client that runs IE7 on all their machines, but those machines are completely locked down. We can't even run Webex on those things without IT coming down to install. Their own corporate website looks crappy on their own employee desktops, because the corporate anti-virus blocks one of the javascript's from running. (We had them whitelist it.) I challenge anyone to install any virus or malware on that thing.

yuhong2• 13 years ago

And the fun thing is that MS is actually willing to support IE8 on Win7 until Win7 ends support in 2020. For the record, they were willing to support IE 5.01 on Win2000 until 2010!

davidjgraph3• 13 years ago

And from a startup point of view, legacy IE means Enterprises, Enterprise means big price tags:

1) Because they are Enterprises.

2) Because nobody wants to support those browsers.

If you think it's a declining market that'll be dead in 18 months, we have contracts to support IE 6 until 2019, not to mention 7 and 8.

JulianMorrison• 13 years ago

For ultimate job security, write your ActiveX controls in COBOL.

127001brewer• 13 years ago

...only if it connects to a Visual FoxPro database.

ekidd• 13 years ago

Enterprise also means six-month sales cycles, finding salespeople with good Rolodexes, endless awful meetings needed to sync up five different departments, and a diminished ability to turn technical superiority into paying customers.

There's a ton of money there, but you need to build the right organization. Some companies will find it easier to sell to smaller businesses.

awda• 13 years ago

Sure -- but if you're happy being an employee, not a founder, the $$$ is great. </big_corp_cog>

melling• 13 years ago

What business are you in? If you're going to support IE6 until 2019, which probably runs Javascript 200 times slower than IE10, your software is going to be very limited.

Once your competitions builds a better mousetrap, sends in their sales team then explains that all your customers need to do is install Chrome, it might get a little ugly.

mgkimsal• 13 years ago

they might have multiple versions, with modern faster versions and a scaled back IE6/XP version.

brazzy• 13 years ago

explains that all your customers need to do is install Chrome, it might get a little ugly.

No, since these are his customers exactly because they don't want to install Chrome.

davidjgraph3• 13 years ago

We do a diagramming library. Try http://www.draw.io in IE 6 and 10, I suspect you won't notice the difference.

Fully supporting IE 6 doesn't constrain you at all with the modern browsers, we take full advantage of the recent stuff. We basically have 2 codebases wrapped up behind a single API.

baconner• 13 years ago

That's assuming you didn't already tell them about the limitations of the environment they're choosing and explain stuff like ie compatibility modes that can let them move forward but still use all their cruddy old ie6 only enterprise apps, etc. My experience with this is you want them, cut features out if on those old browser versions and periodically remind them that they're holding themselves back. The scenario where they force vendor a to use ie6 and allow vendor b to use chrome IMO doesn't exist if you discuss this stuff up front.

EnderMB• 13 years ago

One of my last jobs was at an agency that handled the digital account for a very large airport in the UK. They get a lot of traffic, and quite a high percentage of users using legacy browsers, probably from businesses looking up flight info and trying to book stuff.

I can't remember how high it was, but let's say it was around 10%. We were told that we had to support all the way down to IE6. To do so, we raised our prices, almost constantly during that project, and they happily paid it. At that level, an agency can change thousands for legacy browser support, and the client will happily pay, because in their mind that 10% will spend far more money than what we can charge.

With that in mind, that's how I view browser specifications today. For clients with an existing website, I check what percentage of their users use legacy browsers, and work out with them whether the cost of supporting these users against the potential benefit. A lot of developers and agencies simply won't do this because they either can't or won't find a solution for legacy browsers.

jackgavigan2• 13 years ago

The words "older", "versions" and "of" are superfluous.

timje1• 13 years ago

I just choked a bit on my coffee. But people do continue to use IE voluntarily, even if it tends not to be HN geeks..

unreal372• 13 years ago

I don't understand when geeks insult other people who like Microsoft Windows or IE. I get it if you don't like the browser, I get it if you HATE the browser, but to actually insult the users of that browser is just ignorant.

jessaustin• 13 years ago

Where's the insult? jackgavigan is actually being charitable toward those using the new version.

idProQuo• 13 years ago

Sure we don't have to use IE if we don't want to, but we still have to design for it. IE6 has a broken box model and more recent versions have been slow to keep up with new web standards.

If it was just a case of sites looking "less beautiful" in IE, that would be fine too, except that IE often breaks websites by not supporting certain CSS properties or Javascript functions.

The amount of work that goes into IE-proofing websites (which could've gone into more productive things) is huge. It's not just "hipsterism", a lot of these people are angry for a reason.

freehunter• 13 years ago

I use (mobile) IE voluntarily because it's the only browser on my preferred mobile platform. I have no complaints, it works as well for me as Chrome on my Android phone or Safari on iOS devices I've used.

lcedp• 13 years ago

In a big corporation I used IE for all intranet sites (because those crappy sites simply couldn't be rendered properly in any other browser) and Firefox for the world web. Why not do like this?

fro• 13 years ago

This isn't just a corporate phenomenon, state and local governments use IE 8 almost exclusively. There are a lot of bored government workers browsing the web on IE 8 during the week.

jere2• 13 years ago

Please retitle to "30-40% of IE users use older versions of Internet Explorer by choice."

[derp. updated the numbers because I was being stupid, but the point still stands]

randlet• 13 years ago

It won't account for the whole 30-40% but some people work on weekends. I work at a hospital where there are probably thousands of people using IE8 every weekend.

tambourine_man• 13 years ago

IE 8 is the last version to support Windows XP

See, browsers have become so important that they now support the OS, not the other way around.

Zelphyr• 13 years ago

Hm. Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.. release a new version multiple times a year. Microsoft ties IE to OS releases which happen every 5(+/-) years.

Dear Microsoft: I'd love to hear that cosmic resonating pop of you pulling your head out of your ass.

I recognize that the latest version of IE finally has auto-update. It taking Microsoft this long to do what Firefox and Chrome have been doing for years doesn't do anything more than certify that Microsoft Actively makes my job 50% more difficult on a daily basis.

raverbashing• 13 years ago

It would be so fun if there's some leak mentioning the role of "legacy software" in facilitating information acquisition by government agencies (or other interested parties).

Like using LM Hashes for "backwards compatibility" or older, more easily exploitable browsers.

thecosas• 13 years ago

It would be funnier if there was something documenting dropping support for snooping on anything <= IE6 because it had so little reach/useful intel :o)

RougeFemme• 13 years ago

I once worked for an organization that had a handful of small customers holding on to older browsers and operating systems. They represented <1% of our customer base and an even smaller % of our transaction volume.

But this was a government-contracted non-profit and it couldn't just write them off as customers. So the organization decided it would be cheaper to help these customers upgrade their legacy operating system, browser and enterprise apps then to continue to try and remain reasonably compliant with their browser.

drill_sarge• 13 years ago

Can't wait when Windows XP finally gets dumped by MS. I suspect a nightmare for a lot of companies and lots of crying towards MS. I hope they don't change their decision to drop XP next year.

CWIZO• 13 years ago

I've written[1] about this trend way back in June of 2009. The drop wasn't as dramatic as it is now, but it was certainly there. We have (fortunately) come a long way since then.

It's also funny reading how Chrome had a 1.9% share at that time, and how I found it amazing :)

[1] http://hancic.info/ie6-is-dead-over-the-weekend

chris_mahan3• 13 years ago

We're on IE7, and XP sp3 (though some have moved to win7). Large bank with 250,000+ employees.

crazygringo2• 13 years ago

Is it Citibank?

I went in to open a business account the other day, they wanted to take a look at the business website, and it looked like complete crap. Took a look and it was IE7. It was like stepping into a time machine...

chris_mahan3• 13 years ago

Not Citibank. I have had an account at Citibank for over 20 years, and they've never, ever, made a single mistake. Highly recommended. I work for one of their bigger competitors.

ck2• 13 years ago

I really hope IE6 is not in use in governments anywhere in the USA because it is not FIPS compliant and therefore not hipaa legal. Which is a huge no-no and risks very private information.

A few major lawsuits for major $$$ might solve that problem.

olegp• 13 years ago

We are seeing the same thing at https://starthq.com. We've been getting a disproportionate amount of traffic from IE gallery as a result of being the most recently featured pinned site for the past 6 weeks in the US: http://www.iegallery.com/PinnedSites

There are a few other patterns we've spotted about IE users:

They're older - we can deduce this from the the fact that many include their year of birth in their email address.

They're less tech savvy, we see people typing in in all caps, using the search as it wasn't intended - and we've actually had a few get in touch via the feedback form asking for tech support.

Also the conversion rate from visitor to sign up user is consistently 3x that of Chrome.

clemesha• 13 years ago

I definitely see this trend with a web app (game) of mine. Here's some screenshots of Google Analytics that show exactly this behavior: http://www.clemesha.org/blog/You-must-use-Internet-Explorer-...

Older versions of IE show a much stronger dropoff in usage over the weekend

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