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I would like to start a community discussion. As per my question, when do you decide to stop supporting older browsers?
I've nearly completed the development of a large personal application. It uses a lot of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. If I were to support older browsers, I would estimate that it would increase my front end work load by at least 50%. And to be frank, I don't want to support the older browsers. From a business point of view, one could argue that if I don't, I could lose revenue. I disagree. I feel that the customers who use older browsers wouldn't be the customers I would want anyway - they would be the ones giving me more work as I'd have to fix compatibility problems in my application to work with their old browser or have to continually tell them to upgrade their browser. If the web is to move on, then people need to stop supporting the older browsers, however, I do see that the tide is slowly starting to turn towards this.
Recently, IE6 was pronounced dead. When can we safely say that IE7 and IE8 or indeed Firefox 3 can longer be considered as 'important' enough to support?
Furthermore, I hear a lot of people say on this site "make sure it degrades gracefully so it'll still work with browsers that don't have JavaScript support"? What kind of browsers now don't have JavaScript support? Mostly old phones and if these old phones don't support JavaScript then I highly doubt that they will parse the HTML correctly either. I also have a Sencha touch mobile version of my application. Am I going to make a WAP version of it to support older phones? No. It's a rich web app. That's how it has designed to be and that's how I intend for it to stay.
I rather like Apple's approach: If you upgrade your OS, don't expect your apps from the previous of the OS to work with the new one. Yes, it can be a frustration, but it means there is less of a mess overrall and people are forced to upgrade to move along with the times.
It works the same way for new web apps, if I want to keep them clean, quick and efficient, I need to stop hacking the code to support legacy software and if users don't like it, they can move on from my site or join the rest of us and upgrade their browser and have a better web experience.
I don't want this to come across as arrogant, but I am genuinely interested in your opinions when you consider enough is enough and only support recent browsers.
For me, I have always assessed the users who would be using it. I think in the end, it is impractical to support every single browser and its version under the sun.
As a baseline, I always ensure that the application works fine in IE8 and the latest version of Firefox. IE8 is pretty decent, so there usually isn't much work required to get it working. As most versions of Firefox and Chrome tend to get auto updated, I just test in Firefox Latest, Firefox 3.Latest and the latest version of chrome.
For example, if I am designing an application to be used by tech-heads, I wouldn't really care much about IE7 and below, or old versions of Firefox and Chrome.
However, if I am designing something that will be used internally and there are certain browser requirements, then I will make sure that the app works perfectly in those browsers (i.e. the dreaded IE6 and IE7).
As IE8 is the "final" version on Windows XP, I think it would be quite beneficial to ensure that things work decently in IE8 at least.
Also, since Facebook and GMail has dropped support for IE7 and below and older versions of other browsers, I think it's safe to say that we can ignore those versions too.
As for javascript, I think it is impractical to build something that works exactly the same without javascript. I think it is a good idea to gracefully degrade, so that certain things might not be avaliable for the user, but they can still use the app to a certain extent.
However, in certain cases, the whole app would not be able to work without javascript (or a non-javascript experience would be next to useless), then telling the user to enable javascript is probably a good idea. This is implemented in apps like Facebook and Google Docs. See this excellent blog post for some debate.
So, in summary:
Develop for "modern browsers", IE8+, FF3.latest and the latest FF, latest Chrome and Opera.
Support other browsers if the development/client requirements exist.
Look at what the big boys (facebook and gmail) are doing in terms of browser support. If they can afford to drop support for browser x and we are developing an app targetted towards general consumers, then we can afford to drop support for browser x too.
I agree with you on the most part that it is a pain to support older browsers and I think that creating web applications that are supported on older browsers such as IE6 and IE7 should be stopped because it is our duty as developer's to help the web advance even further.Furthermore Google has dropped support for every IE browser under IE8 and these in my agenda means that the browser is as good as dead and I can safely stop to create websites for it.
IE8 is a decent browser and is still very widely used even if it's usage is being dropped at an increasing rate : browser usage statistics ; I still think that you should develop for it at least a year from now when hopefully it's usage will be to small to matter
Firefox ,Safari,Chrome and Opera have auto updates witch popup to the user every time a new version is released so most of the times I don't bother checking for older versions how my websites work.
But about the graceful degradation of your websites I still think you should try as much as possible to make your websites work even if you have Javascript disabled because not all users have old browsers that don't support Javascript but there are those who keep it turned off for various reasons
How can we distract our clients from using IE6. We know IE6 is not a good standard-compliant browsers; has many issues. How to satisfy clients so that they do not use IE6?
Thanks...
I'm currently in the process of building a new site for my company and I've been looking at http://code.google.com/p/ie6-upgrade-warning/.
Essentially it's a little javascript lib that checks to see if the user is running IE6 and if so it displays a nice little overlay on top of your site. The only problem I've got with it is that it completely blocks the user from using your site. I'd like to allow for them to use it anyways but I'd like them to know that their experience may not be as good as it could be. I'm sure it can be adapted though, you should never exclude people from using your site based on their user agent. That being said I think it's a good tradeoff that you try to get your users to upgrade and if they don't wan't to they can still use your site but they probably won't see all of the fancy pancy browser tricks that you can do with modern browsers.
(source: googlecode.com)
It sure looks nice anyway
Other resources include http://ie6update.com/ (not a fan though, you shouldn't trick users)
Update: Seems like someone made a bit more customizable version of this written in jQuery. See jreject.turnwheel.com
One of the reasons this problem exists is as follows.
Many IE6 user have no choice. They sit behind corporate firewalls with locked down machines and while on their home machines they will have the latest technology they are constrained by the workplace rules and policies.
So why do the corporates not upgrade from IE6 to 7 or 8? Well here is one reason. Workload.
As a sysop you need to upgrade 500 machines to the new browser.
In many cases these browsers run mission critical add-ins as ActiveX's etc so to do the upgrade you have to do all the testing and verification and then do a planned roll out upgrade, which will have problems, hiccups and glitches, a lot of work and late nights and unpaid overtime and a lot of flak from the users as you do this.
And what is the payback for this upgrade? Well the internal systems work on IE8 exactly as they worked on IE6, (well not always and you may need to rewrite that as well) but the users can now access the latest startup site that plugs into Facebook (but will be gone in 6 months) perfectly but it is not work related.
So unless there is a tangible business benefit many shops simply cannot se a reason, or justify the cost of a browser upgrade.
These locations will convert, when they go to Windows 7 perhaps or because the "application" they use internally is upgraded and needs the newer browser version. But at this point there is a justification for doing it.
N.B. I have recently worked in two jobs where IE6 compatibility was a must for this reason, large client bases, behind firewalls with lockdown, and i am not stating the above as a reason/excuse not to do it. The sooner the better.
Provided they have the proper permissions to do install software on their machines, use Chrome Frame. The speed boost, if nothing else, should be incentive alone.
"The customer is always right."
You can advise them otherwise, but if they want IE6 for whatever reason then it's up to them.
The best way is by educating them, make them aware of why you are blocking IE6. Do a comparison, case study, etc to convince them, try and put it in terms they may understand, try to convince them that using IE6 is a bad idea (whatever your reasons).
Its simple to implement a script to prevent IE Browsers from connecting to your site, however doing that may result in users being turned away. If this is a public site take into consideration the market share internet explorer has, unless your site is really incredible it is unlikely you will get a user to install a new browser.
To get around this in the past a simple splash page that informes them of the reasons not to use IE6, Example:
You are currently using internet explorer, while you may continue to browse this site using IE, please be aware that some functionality may not be available due to compliance standards within internet explorer, and due to this we do not support issues that arise when using Internet Explorer. We recommend using Google Chrome (Download here) or Mozilla Firefox (Download here).
If this is within a corprate environment you can always work with the IT department to ensure that alternate browsers are distributed. I recommend Google Chrome, simply beacuse of the ability to create "Application Windows" that eliminate problmem causing elements of the browser GUI (Back buttion etc...)
Having a site that elegantly degrades when the user's browser is IE6 is the best option. IE6 users should still be able to use your web site - if a particular feature requires a modern browser a user will be more likely to switch if they already find your site useful.
Another point: modern javascript libraries like jQuery makes it easier to code sites that are compatible with IE6. There's no need to turn away potential customers because of their web browser choice. If you're a web designer it's your job to make sure they have a good experience.
A lot of this comes down to the reasons you want them to stop using IE6. IE6/7 are a pain in the bum if you let them be. We're now taking a more aggressive approach to browser adoption when it comes to what you can/can't do.
For instance, when you visit our new sites in most browsers you'll get rounded corners, transparency, gradients etc. When you visit in IE6 you get a square, opaque, monotone website. Wherever you have PNGs you'll get a simple GIF (even if it looks pants).
Unfortunately IE6 is tied to many businesses for internal reasons (using apps etc) and you can't force them to upgrade but you can give them a subtle message.
make them understand that ie is not bad, its ie 6 thats bad .. if they wish to use ie they can surely use it but could use ie 7 ir even ie 8... make them see that how ie 7 and 8 provide some great features which are not there in ie 6..
also ie 8 is the only browser that follows strict css 2.1 methodology
plus there are many websites which previously were running in ie 6 (with no problem) are running under a warning message that some context may not be suported by ie 6 for eg. www.yahoo.com, so why to use it?
thanks
We had the same issue in one of our projects. I made a simple conditional check and displayed an additional div with links to download firefox, Chrome and IE-8.
Try facebook.com on IE-6. This was my inspiration for the additional div.
In line with Markus' post, it's simple enough to display a popup when the site loads with a warning. Ideally you won't show this every time they load a page of course, that will get old fast.
You have a good opportunity when working on a spec with your client, to tell them "it will cost $X more if we have to support older browsers including IE6 (don't just say IE6), and it will mean we can't easily add more advanced functionality... supporting older browsers will detract from the overall quality and increase time & cost.
A while ago there was a collective effort in Norway to get users away from IE6. Several of the largest sites in Norway participated, and the user got a kind warning on top of the site that recommended him to upgrade or switch browser for an improved browsing experience - if using IE6.
Check out what Wired said about it!
make a whitepaper
Two things:
Charge extra -- double or treble rates or more -- to support IE6. (even IE7 these days).
Point out that IE6 (and WinXP too) will be losing the last vestiges of support in the near future. If you think they're insecure now, just wait till that happens -- no more security fixes. If you're still developing for IE6 now, then you're clearly not going to be ready for the upgrade in time, so you will be hacked, and hacked badly. If your client is willing to accept that, then that's his problem, but you need to help him understand the gravity of the problem. He needs to be putting his upgrade plans in now, not getting more dev work done for the old systems.
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... or
How can I convince my organization to ditch Internet Explorer 6?
Having to maintain Internet Explorer 6 compatibility when developing web applications is a nightmare - but until my client decides to ditch it as the official browser, I am stuck with it. I am trying to convince our system administrators to change. I've seen a long list of arguments against using Internet Explorer 6 in any environment, and I am trying to anticipate their arguments rebuttals.
So far, the only perceived advantages I can see in Internet Explorer 6 are:
Central management through group policies
Legacy application compatibility
Both of these are addressed by Internet Explorer 7 or later (AFAIK).
Are there any advantages that Internet Explorer 6 has that are not already addressed by Internet Explorer 7 or later?
Internet Explorer 6 has been around for ages, and the vast majority of websites and web applications work correctly with it.
In order to change to a different browser (which, BTW, will probably be Internet Explorer 7), you need to, first of all, do a cost benefit analysis to justify this decision to everyone's bosses.
A really high level summary:
Cost:
Test all web applications.
Check all third-party websites actually work in the new browser.
Check all other software, to see if there are any underlying issues with moving to a new browser.
Benefits:
Multi tabs?
Honestly, I can't see this happening, unless a corporation is doing a desktop refresh which happens periodically.
Why bother changing if IE does what it's supposed to do: browse the internet. The so-called benefits of newer browsers, which to us actually mean something, have little to no value in the minds of the people who run the corporate environments you describe.
In other words: ignorance and/or apathy
I wouldn't exactly call it a "favourite" among any organisations. In my mind, it's simply that large companies consider it a big effort to upgrade everyone to IE7 (or in fact IE8 now that it's recently been released). It's a benefit versus cost decision that many executives seem to think has the simple answer that it just doesn't matter to the business. This may even be the truth in many cases if there's no system set up for automatically upgrading the (possibly vast number of) computers on the network. Many people (including myself) would argue having even a moderately decent browser (i.e. IE7 onwards, Firefox, or Safari) is would be a worthwhile thing for any business. The fact that IE8 has just been released, which now makes IE6 outdated by two versions is certainly going to encourage companies to start upgrading. The problem here is that as long as there's a significant market share for IE6, the vast majority of web designers are going to keep on designing sites to be compatible with IE6, regardless of it's poorness as a browser. Finally, if you're really keen on getting everyone to upgrade from IE6, I ought to point you to the Stop living in the past website. Perhaps if you campaign strongly enough within your organisation, you may just convince the people who make the decisions to upgrade, though I wouldn't like to bet on it...
The switch from IE6 is a painful one, because they would have to apply it to every single computer in the company.
Depending on the number of exployees, that becomes a logistical nightmare.
Also, they will commonly use whatever browser comes with the default install of the OS they use for new computers.
Changing default programs introduces unknown risk, and the benefit of switching must outweigh that risk. Currently the hassle of attempting to upgrade every single computer probably outweighs the convenience of having a better browser, especially when most of the users will not take advantage of any of the new features.
Unless they find any strong business case or advantage I don't think a company will agree to spend time on upgrading. What is the use? Also Internet Explorer 6 is little faster than the new versions and business users (who don't care about the version as long as it does the job) may complain.
If you are a developer then you have the reason to have all/latest browsers installed.
I thought mine was the only one to use Internet Explorer 6 ;-)
We actually have a bunch of legacy applications on our intranet, some written in house, others that we quite a lot of money for, which don't work well on IE7 (or IE8, or Firefox, or Safari, or ...)
Yes, Mercury, I'm looking at you...
IE6 market share is rapidly dropping, so I'd expect that in a year or so authors of AJAX UI libraries will stop testing against IE6 (just like now they don't test against IE5.5). When that happens corporations will have no choice, but to adapt.
I'm getting ready to start work on a new web project for a fairly large corporation.
For all their users, something like 17,000 people, they are all stuck with IE6. They plan to have everyone transitioned to IE7 by the end of the year, however the IT department is starting to push this promise back.
What I've been asked to do is to give the project sponsor some more ammo push back on this. However, my charismatic politician button seems to be broken. I've only been unable to come up with simple phrases, such as "IE6 is teh suck" or "it will take me a million more hours to make it work in IE6 too" and all of this may be true but it doesn't really feel like a very mature statement to be making.
I guess what I'm looking for, is some kind of laymen's way of explaining that yes we can support IE6 but I'm going to need some hazard pay, and support that fact with some kind of hard evidence it does indeed take many more hours to make something look right and work in both IE6 and IE7.
We often have the need to persuade non technical users that IE6 is a very bad idea for any company to be still running and so have a document we are working on to educate home and corporate users here is a summary if it helps:
Why is IE 6 a problem?
Much less secure than other browsers
The internet has changed a lot since IE 6 was released and there are more threats to data security than ever before including phishing scams, script injection attacks, key logging viruses, identity theft and bot-nets (machines which have been taken over for criminal activity).
It is well documented that IE6 is less secure than modern browsers when surfing the internet:
“..the most compelling reason to upgrade is the improved security. The Internet of today is not the Internet of five years ago. There are dangers that simply didn't exist back in 2001, when Internet Explorer 6 was released to the world.”
Sandi Hardmeier, Microsoft MVP
“Older browsers are a swiss-cheese of security holes, allowing black-hats out there to take over computers, construct bot-nets, and even steal their victim’s identity, most of the time without their knowledge.”
www.joelevi.com
IE 6 poses a security risk to any computer that it is used on for web browsing.
Any responsible IT team will upgrade to IE7 or later on all machines within a corporate network. Many now install the Firefox browser in order to increase security further.
It is not standards compliant
IE 6 does not render web pages in the same way that most browsers do as it uses a proprietary engine which ignores many of the standards set by the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). This leads some web pages to be displayed incorrectly in IE 6 and some not to display at all.
This also means that while web developers have to support IE 6 much of their work is taken up by fixing pages rather than developing better content and features. In short IE 6 is holding back the web’s development for all users.
Slower
During the last 8 years of browser development as well as improved security browsers have been tuned for better performance on all fronts including download speed, rendering speed and JavaScript/AJAX performance which is a technology used on most major sites to give a better end user experience (sometimes know as Web 2.0 technology).
Memory Usage
Internet Explorer 7 actually uses less memory than IE6 and uses less overall resources on a machine. So upgrading can improve the performance of older computers.
Upgrading to Firefox or Chrome
Firefox
http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html
Chrome
http://www.google.co.uk/chrome
Upgrading to IE 7 / 8
Home users
Internet Explorer 7 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=9ae91ebe-3385-447c-8a30-081805b2f90b
Internet Explorer 8
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=341C2AD5-8C3D-4347-8C03-08CDECD8852B&displaylang=en
Corporate Users
Internet Explorer 7 Resource Page
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/ie/bb381619.aspx
Internet Explorer 7 Deployment Guide
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e41d8800-d134-4356-a2e7-c01bee790908&DisplayLang=en
Internet Explorer 8 Resource Page
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/bb219517.aspx
Internet Explorer 8 Deployment Guide
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc985339.aspx
Quite a difficult task to do, as there might be other reasons why they are using IE6 until this date (other, conflicting software which relies on IE6).
The first thing to do would be to identfy the problem that stops IT from doing the migration - if it's not lazyness.
Maybe it is easier to ask them whether they would consider an "alternative browser" to be installed (which wouldn't affect the IE6 installs). But most administrators don't like that idea, because Firefox doesn't share data/configs with Windows Servers, but trade-offs might be made in favor of money.
Should there be no real obstacle, you might show them a real-life example how an average day for an IE6 developer would look like.
Choose an UI-feature (combine all merits of IE6 to create one) that will work to cause the required issues for the next few steps.
Show them how everything looks fine in ALL Browsers.
Show them how it doesn't look fine at all in IE6.
Make it IE6 compatible.
Show them how every other browser now produces a different/unwanted result.
Fix it (with heavy workarounds) so that it now looks "ok" in most of the browsers.
Tell them that you will have to put this effort into ALL of your components/features and that they will have much higer production costs.
Make sure to point out, that this would even happen if you would just compare IE6 to IE7. They may not ever switch to Safari.
What I have gone with an been successful with is the following.
IE 6 is an application that is almost 8 years old, and as part of this doesn't support current technologies as easily as most others. Creating AJAX enabled rich UI's with IE6 is a very tedious task, and typically requires substantial, browser specific work to accomplish as it carries its own level of "Standards".
In addition to all of this there are security and performance implications.
On the whole topic of IE6, whenever you get to that point of moving IT out of the past, you could use this:
http://code.google.com/p/ie6-upgrade-warning/
http://www.stopie6.org/
make them read it
All the IE6 experts are out of work and enjoying their pension.
It's 8 years old and two versions behind the times. What are people afraid of?
I do work for an unnamed company with 160000 employees where IE6 is the only company approved browser. For me, to suggest they "just switch browsers" is futile, since I realize they have millions of dollars worth of applications now working with IE6, and that to port these apps would cost tens of thousands of dollars and many thousands more in fixing the ported versions. I typically add 5-10% to web development just to address IE6 issues, depending on the interface.
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Keep in mind that I'm not looking for a list of current browsers to support, I'm looking for logical ways to make that list, backed by some kind of hard statistics.
Since it's been a while since my last web job, I decided to do this latest site up from scratch. Now I have to decide again what to support in terms of browsers. Certainly I have a list of what I'd like to support, but the decisions that went into that list seem to be a little arbitrary to me. Where can I go to get a reliable picture of browser usage and what seems to be a good point at which to cut off an old version of a browser from support?
Browsers don't die out completely for about a decade. The first thing you must realise is that you will have some visitors that are using a browser you don't support. The question is not which browsers are not dead, but which browsers are worth supporting (the benefit) relative to the work it takes to do so (the cost).
I've never seen browser statistics I'm comfortable recommending, they all seem to be snake oil. A rule of thumb I feel is appropriate is that a browser isn't worth supporting if somebody using that browser is going to regularly run into problems on other websites as well. In other words "stick with what everybody else is supporting". To that end, Yahoo's graded browser support is useful.
Ultimately, the best choice depends on your individual circumstances and will change over time. For instance, 37signals have recently dropped support for Internet Explorer 6 and Facebook are slowly heading in the same direction. This isn't a decision that most organisations can make yet, but give it a year or two and you'll see a lot more organisations follow suit. Right now, it's a bold step that you probably can't justify, but give it time.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that supporting as many browsers as possible is automatically the best choice - it may be that you are doing your visitors a disservice by wasting time working on compatibility with a browser used by five people when you could be improving the experience for the other million users you have.
Also, it's worth considering that you can "officially" not support a browser. For example, one thing I've done in the past is use JavaScript served only to Internet Explorer 5.5 and below (via a conditional comment), to automatically remove stylesheets, JavaScript and replace images with their alt text. Without those measures, the site would be unreadable due to Internet Explorer's many layout bugs, but with it, the site at least works, even if it's too much work to "support" it.
The easiest way to do it is sign up for Google Analytics and add their tracking code to your site (there are a number of similar services, but Google's one is the best I've found). It gives you detailed statistics as to what browsers people who visit your site use.
Once you have a couple of months data, you can start making decisions as to which browsers you will support. I work for a mainstream web company who want to make our site work for as many users as possible, so we consider any browser with above 0.5% market share to be within our testing matrix. However, other sites may choose to only support and test on major browsers such as IE and Firefox.
As a rough guide, the major browsers you'll see are IE 6 and 7, and Firefox 2 and 3. This should cover well over 90% of your audience so is a good starting point for the first couple of months. Then use your analytics data and make a business decision as to whether the potential revenue (or whatever you're trying to achieve) is worth the additional effort it will take to support other browsers.
Added 2008-09-18:
Admittedly one issue with this method is that if your support for some browser types is so bad that your site is unusable with them then it will potentially skew the statistics as those people will stop coming back, and thus those browsers will appear to have a lower percentage of users.
To determine whether this is happening, you can use Google Analytics' detailed breakdown of behaviour for each browser type and version. This gives you the bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, and percent of new visits. If the figures for a given browser type and version are significantly worse than others (i.e. the bounce rate is higher, time on site is lower, pages per visit is lower, or percent of new visits is higher) then it's possible that your site isn't supporting that browser sufficiently well and that you might get more users with it if you had better support.
At this point the figures will still give you a reasonable feeling for how important the browser is (i.e. if it you don't support Google Chrome and it is being shown as 2% of your traffic, then it wouldn't jump to 20% just because you added support) so you can use that browser to see how bad your site is, and make a judgment call as to whether you add support; sometimes this may involve fixing only the worst issues and leaving the site imperfect but usable until the browser gets to a higher percentage of users, or out of beta status.
You could take a look at the way Yahoo! supports browsers at Graded browser support.
The browser is dead when (a) a very small percentage of people use it and (b) you don't care about (selling to? educating? whatever your business is) such a small percentage of people.
Unfortunately, you won't find a good answer to this; even if you found some hard statistics on browser versions for visitors to your website, that almost certainly doesn't tell you what you need to know.
What you need to know isn't "what percent of my visitors use Browser X", it's "what percent of my revenue comes from visitors who use Browser X". That one guy visiting your site using an ancient copy of IE might be the managing director of a big company wanting to buy a site license; the 10k visitors you had last month using Firefox 3 might be college students wanting to plagiarize your documentation for an essay.
Really, you need to know your market - not just the raw browser statistics. If you pay the bills by selling stuff to graphic designers, then rock solid Safari support matters a lot more than if you're in the job of selling Visual Studio plugins. Not helpful, I know!
There are 2 main groups to target. (There are plenty of others though)
Group #1 is browsers that use Webkit (Safari for example), Presto (Opera for example), KHTML (Konqueror for example) or Gecko (Firefox for example). These browsers should all get the same markup, CSS and Javascript code (as they're all in the same group of standard-compliant browsers). Only work around bugs in one of these if you absolutely have to and have the resources to do so. Instead, test in the latest stable versions of each (as you're developing so they can keep each other in check as to what the expected behavior is) and (after checking in the nightlies for the bugs) file bug reports. Again, avoid workarounds for a specific browser if you can. Instead, plan a cross-browser compatible solution from the beginning.
With Group #1, you don't have to worry about older versions much, if it all.
Group #2 is browsers that use Trident (IE for example). Target IE versions you care about and still only workaround the most severe bugs.
Also, don't deny browsers you don't officially support. Let them fend for themselves instead of blocking them (either intentionally or through crappy browser detection).
Also, remember that when looking at market share percentages, try to figure out the numbers they represent so you can see how many millions of potential visitors with that browser there are. 1% or 5% might not seem like a lot, but that could still mean millions.
Most of all, listen to the visitors. If you're getting multiple complaints about a certain browser, look into it if you can. Even if it's for a browser with low market share, if it's a trivial fix, you should just do it.
Ones that are definitely not dead are: IE6 (starting to push it), IE7, IE8, latest Opera 9.x, latest FF 3.x, latest Safari 3.x and others that have about the same capabilities. FF 2.x isn't dead either and is needed for Win9X users (if they don't want to use Opera)
See also this topic
You should use a good UI framework that solves most of the compatibility issues among browsers, like YUI!, jQuery, and so on...
Personaly, I recommend YUI!
Try to answer this locally, consider your audience. For example when I was developing my own Blog Engine, my appeal was mostly to .NET developers. I hope it stands to reason what browser I primarily develop for. From that point I consider the market share and try to ensure a "reasonable" support level for all other browsers. For example even .NET developers occasionally use Firefox, maybe even Opera. Safari and Chrome are possibilities too now. So my current level of support ranks in this order:
It MUST run perfectly in Internet Explorer 7. All features I intended to build are there
It MUST run reasonably in Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 3.0, Opera 9+ and Safari for Windows, not everything has to be flawless, but it can't look downright ugly either
Everything else I don't care about. I just don't have the time and willing effort to support everything.
How do I determine whether or not I want to even consider supporting another browser or continuing supporting one of the above browsers any more? Simply I look at the market share and the statistics of who is hitting my page. If someone is dying, or I just haven't seen them in awhile, then I consider support dropped.
So in short, I would simply make a statement to yourself about the browsers that must run your code perfectly then reasonably and update periodically as the browser world changes. For the first run of your website, just think about your audience, for subsequent updates, your statistics should tell you enough.
My (very poor) solution was to get stats from w3schools and base my decisions on that. While those numbers aren't really terrible, they are skewed because viewers of that site are more likely to be upgrade-conscious. Also, it doesn't give a breakdown of any browser versions except FF.
If you purely build to standards, some browser won't render correctly since no browser supports all standards. You have to pick a few browsers and test your site in those.
Don't try to be too bleeding edge. If you must use some cutting edge CSS, then you have to expect it not to work 100% of the time.
What are you really going to do with the list? Are you planning to block browsers you don't support? What if the user hacks the User-Agent response?
Like others, I would strongly suggest going with something like Yahoo's "Graded Browsers" and, if possible, leveraging YUI or other libraries so you don't have to do it yourself.
<1% market share isn't a criteria - esp if the browser is new.
For me, < IE6 is dead, and the HTML monkeys I work with WISH it was dead. < FF2 is dead. Opera is a nice to have. < Safari 2 is dead, tho most are designing for Saf 3 now.
So it's:
IE6,7,8
FF 2,3
Saf 3,4
Chrome (which is basicly Saf4)
But depending on your app, and how many people you think you are going to get wih hold machines, you COULD drop IE6, which would make your life so much easier.
I would say IE6 and below are dead... but many are still stuck using it.
This site has a nice live listing of each browser and its actual age.
http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2008/08/browser-life-statuses.html
I'd go with the http://browser-update.org/ defaults, which currently say the following are dead:
IE <= 6
FF <= 2.0
Op <= 10.01
Sf <= 2.0
My opinion (has always been) build it to the standards and leave it to the browsers to render it correctly.
Start with the browser with the highest market share and work your way down from there.
If you have existing metrics on browsers that visit your site, use those instead of the general market share.
Whichever has < 1% market share.
I agree with Unkwntech.
You should try to make the website compatible to both IE and Firefox
It's simple - most users keep using the browser that came with the PC when they bought it (think of your mom). The browser is dead when the machines that it pre-installed with are not longer used for Internet access... which is probably around 5 years. As prices of new PC's drops and they become more of a consumer electronics item then this period will drop as people will easily buy a new PC