What browsers to consider when developing a site?

Question

HTML

O_O
Good afternoon.
The boss gave the task to develop a website with adaptive layout. And everything would be fine, but the task includes support for browsers of IE 5.5 and higher, Opera 7 and higher, Mozilla Firefox 1.0+.
I'm shocked, but I need to convince him in the morning that it's not good to do this.
For example, I immediately thought of the following things:
- ie 5.5 was released in 2000 (!!!)
- ie 9 is not supported by many resources, because ie11 was released
- jquery (?) and other libraries (and adaptive layout itself) - nonsense in such old versions (?)
Help, what other reasons are needed to change the decision.
Tell me which versions to support now really.

Answer 1

Google dropped support for IE8 in its services last fall. And on IE5.5, your boss suggests doing responsive design on tables, obviously, even if jquery minimally supported IE6.
If you were a freelancer, you would simply multiply the cost of work by 2 for each earlier version of the browser, then customers will immediately realize how much it costs them to support 0.01% of the audience and begin to behave more adequately.

Answer 2

I enable ie9+ support, otherwise only modern browsers. And your boss is a tyrant)

Answer 3

Why adaptive layout on IE55? It's also desktop. Yes - tell your boss that everything works on IE55 - let him try to find win95 with it.

Answer 4

Actually, explain why you do not want to support these browsers? How do you connect jQuery and layout in general?
So far, everything looks like you are just too lazy to do it and you are looking for excuses.
And weighing all the pros and cons from the point of view of the customer, it would look like this:
1. Each new browser (which does not support any of the already used standards) is an increase in costs (PS your task is to calculate and make a report, but let the customer decide).
Perhaps here it is worth calculating the solvency * the number of this audience.
2. Also, do not forget that any modern layout is shadows, transparency, rounding, a lot of new styles. reducing code, etc. For older browsers, that means lots of images, tons of html code, and for IE, filters.
It is worth considering what kind of computers customers have with such browsers. Perhaps your site will be so heavy for them that they will hardly be able to load it.
This is the most common situation when design testing is carried out on powerful machines with old browsers and everything seems to work fine, but real people and computers are usually old (new OSes are already shipped with new ones).
The best option here would be 2 designs with the same functionality (hello abstraction): the first (beautiful) for the majority, the second (simplified, web 1.0) for the latecomers (and they don’t care anyway).

Answer 5

www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/browsers.html?period=year
well, ~2000 out of 120 million people use IE5, so you have to work hard and support their browser =) He also forgot that there is win 3.11, don't forget.

Answer 6

You bring some absolutely stupid arguments, if I were the customer, I would have wrapped you up after the first phrases for not professionalism.
We must always offer the customer to do what he wants and name a specific price for this and show the share of browsers.
Let's say it's hard to catch up for IE 5.5, well then it costs 10 times more than under chrome, but let's say IE 5.5's share is less than a tenth of a percent on the Internet. For the customer, the issue of price is much more understandable than your excuses. And what of the fact that IE 5.5 did in the year 2000? Look, the nuclear bomb was invented more than fifty years ago, but it is also taken into account in military operations.
What difference does it make to me that IE9 is not supported by many resources, if it is supported by me, then this is, as it were, also a great competitive advantage.
Why did it suddenly become nonsense, people typeset and nothing.

Answer 7

Q: Help, what other reasons are needed to change the decision?
A: It's hard to give advice without knowing your boss, but I think you can try anonymous threats by mail and phone. This, perhaps, will be the most convincing arguments :)
Q: Tell me, which versions are really supported now?
A: It depends on what kind of site is tender. The site that displays the call - "Fly with Aeroflot aircraft" is easy to make with support for the versions specified in the task.

Answer 8

Answer 9

IMHO - adequately, IE 9+, Latest FF and Chrome, for the CIS still Opera 12.

Answer 10

I already wrote once that there are times when you need to support ie6. For example, if you work for China. However, support varies. Personally, I would push the idea that when a client uses older versions of browsers, they see the content partially: contacts, information about the company, catalog (even the attached pdf catalog may be enough).
And we need to convince like this: for supporting old browsers, we strain those who use new ones. They cannot use what they are already used to using on other sites. Finding a new client with ie6, we lose one with ie12 or the latest chrome.
Now my formula is:
ie9 and above, chrome (latest versions), mozilla (latest), opera - Full support
ie7-ie8 - the client should see all the content, if he doesn't see a gradient, rounded corners or css3 animation - so be it, but nothing should go anywhere and so on - everything should be readable.
below ie7 is a separate page.