IMPORTANT question for all RTD users - please read and reply

Hello everyone,

The web is evolving, and looks like we're all experiencing some problems because of customers still using old Internet Explorer browsers.
We already have a check that asks users to use at least Internet Explorer 7, if an older version is detected.
However, considering today's standard, that's really not enough anymore.

Internet Explorer in not the only available browser out there, so even if users still using Windows XP cannot install an updated version, they can still install alternative browsers as Firefox, Chrome or Opera.

Many regular users are in any case not considering this as long as all seems fine... so it's a duty of the various websites to inform them it would be time to update or change.

The important question I have is about updating the browser detection to alert users their Internet Explorer is not to be considered good for use with the RTD if they're not using at least version 9.
Chekcing our logs, I found that almost all of the new reported issues are from users using version 8 or earlier.

We will still try our best to support also those old versions, but I feel it's time to start instructing visitors about not being the "bottleneck of the Internet" anymore.

If I will apply this, every user visiting the RTD with Internet Explorer from version 4 to 8 would receive a message like this when launching the RTD designer:

You may experience unexpected behavior using this tool with your current browser.
This tool is designed to work best with update versions of Chrome, Opera, Safari and Firefox 3.6 or later.
For Internet Explorer users, at least version 9 or later is recommended.
Please visit:
www.firefox.com
www.microsoft.com/ie
www.google.com/chrome
www.apple.com/safari
www.opera.com
to update your browser.

To me, it's surely senseful enough. At least, your older Internet Explorer users will be alerted about possible unsupported issues that may occour because of their own system.

I will wait for your comments for a week about this: if none, or enough positive ones, I'll proceed in installing the new check.

Thanks.

I personally think it is a good idea!

Ping.
No other comments means the modification is approved, to me.
If anyone has something to add on this issue, please do it now.
Otherwise, I am planning on doing this update about IE during this weekend.

Thanks.

If IE 8 and under visit, exit rtd, re-enter rtd in the same session will the alert appear? If so, this isn't good. Would need to be one alert until the browser quits or loses the cache.

This is actually an interesting point.
Just as for other checks (as the forced domain referral), this would actually be fired every time user launches designer, even if under the same session.
But I see your point, it would be senseful to change it to act at session level.
The meaning of this is mainly to protect companies from orders with something wrong caused by customer's browsers. At least, companies could say users "we warned you about your browser".

I will look if there's any simple way for me to add such a control based on session. May delay a little bit the expected application of this.

Precisely why we don't use the check now.

Well, I will surely look to fire the browser check only once per session.

Not sure it would be a good idea for the domain referral check, thoguh. That option was really meant to allow customers in the RTD only if they're from a specific website. Or, in other words, a way for companies to to prevent visitors that are not from your own website.
Considering this, such a check would be nonsense to be performed only once in a session, IMO.

Alex I have been addressing this very issue with our site over the past three months. Here's what I have found.

We implemented a warning message on our site, a pop-up asking people to either upgrade or switch browsers. The real world result of this was that orders dropped. As soon as people see the message after entering from a search site they just hit the back button.

I looked at the analytics over the same period and discovered that 50% of our users were using IE, and of those, 50% were using IE 8. That's a big percentage of our customers still on IE8.

I had originally decided to not worry about it as I thought that surely that percentage would drop as more people bought new computers or upgraded to Win 7, then I found out something interesting. I spoke with someone who had just purchased a brand new windows 7 laptop from Dell, the preloaded version of IE that came with it was IE8. I then spoke to someone who had purchased an upgrade version of Win 7 from Office Depot to upgrade his Vista install, the default version of IE after he did the upgrade was IE8. I was amazed to learn that windows 7 was shipping with IE8 as standard. I couldn't understand why Microsoft would not send out Win 7 with their most recent browser version.

Anyway after learning all this I decided for my own site that it was too soon to back away from IE8 and started implementing changes that would make the site function better in the older browser. I felt that while ever brand new computers were still shipping with IE8 it would be a long time before a lot of internet users upgraded. Real world result was that orders started to pick up again once I made the changes and removed the pop-up.

I may have been suffering more because on my site, the pop-up warning the user was on the page whenever they first entered the site. I think this caused a lot of people to just hit the back button. It might be ok just having the pop-up on the designer as by then they have already found out all the information and somewhat decided to purchase.

I would want the ability to turn the warning on or off so that we can test both ways and see which converts the most orders.

I don't think we should hold RTD's potential back just to cater to some out dated browsers but I did just want to share my experiences in the real world to keep the conversation going. Hope it helps.

Andy

Good observations from the real world Andy. Thanks.

Alex, in previous post I was referring to the Startup Disclaimer, not the Forced Referral Domain.

Andy,

Really, thank you for for your post. In some way it was so obvious... sorry I hadn't considered this fact.
Honestly, you surprused me with the news of IE8 still being the default one even on new machines. Very unexpected.

The current check alerts users still using IE6, asking them to use at least 7. From a technical point of view I never noticed big differences between 7 and 8. I could even say that 8 looks even worst that 7 for various reasons (first of all that strange "compatibility view" mode).

In other words, if an alert is to be placed, I still think it should require at least 9.
Looks like the better solution for the short time would be to leave everything as is, and keep asking users at least IE7.
We may want to reconsider this when at least new machines will be shipped with IE9 themselves.

However, there's a little bit of curiosity now. I'd like to create something to check which browsers are used to visit the RTD as a whole (so, not at single company level, but the ENTIRE RTD). Such a view could provide better informations to see where we're going. I will post here again when done, even if you can already see a similar result at your company level by using the new "Access Trends" feature.

Thank you all for the help and time you're dedicating to these matters, it's absolutely amazing to work this way!

This thread is still open if anyone has other thoughts he'd like to share.

Cos:

Yup, sorry for the confusion.
I will look if there's something that could be done at that level too.
The disclaimer was really a dedicated request of a company which was slightly "paranoid" about legal stuffs. And they really asked it to be shown everytime.
Perhaps, if you think having a disclaimer may be needed by users, thinking at 3 options to show it (no, yes - always, yes - one time only) could be a good way?

Something else to consider. As I understand it Microsoft are due to release Win 8 before the end of this year. It's supposed to be a lot different from all other windows versions. You can download a trial here if you have a spare PC to run it on. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview

Anyway I've not had a chance to play with it yet but they say it will ship with IE10 which has also gone through a lot of changes.

I would guess that this means that a lot of users may jump straight from IE8 on their old computer to IE10 when they buy a new computer, thus missing IE9 all together.

Andy