It used to be one of the biggest pains of web development. Juggling different browser versions and wasting endless hours coming up with workarounds and hacks. Thankfully, those troubles are now largely optional for many developers of the web.
Chrome ushered in a new era of the always updating browser and it’s been a monumental success. For Basecamp, just over 40% of our users are on Chrome and 97% of them are spread across three very recent versions: 16.0.912.75, 16.0.912.63, and 16.0.912.77. I doubt that many Chrome users even know what version they’re on — they just know that they’re always up to date.
Firefox has followed Chrome into the auto-updating world and only a small slice of users are still sitting on old versions. For Basecamp, a third of our users are on Firefox: 55% on version 9, 25% on version 8. The key trouble area is the 5% still sitting on version 3.6. But if you take 5% of a third, just over 1% of our users are on Firefox 3.6.
Safari is the third biggest browser for Basecamp with a 13% slice and nearly all of them are on some version of 534.x or 533.x. So that’s a pretty easy baseline as well.
Finally we have Internet Explorer: The favorite punching bag of web developers everywhere and for a very good reason. IE represents just 11% of our users on Basecamp, but the split across versions is large and depressing. 9% of our IE users are running IE7 — a browser that’s more than five years old! 54% are running IE8, which is about three years old. But at least 36% are running a modern browser in IE9.
7% of Basecamp users on undesirables
In summary, we have ~1% of users on an undesirable version of Firefox and about 6% on an undesirable version of IE. So that’s a total of 7% of current Basecamp users on undesirable browser versions that take considerable additional effort to support (effort that then does not go into feature development or other productive areas).
So we’ve decided to raise the browser bar for Basecamp Next and focus only on supporting Chrome 7+, Firefox 4+, Safari 4+, and, most crucially, Internet Explorer 9+. Meaning that the 7% of current Basecamp users who are still on a really old browser will have to upgrade in order to use Basecamp Next.
This is similar to what we did in 2005, when we phased out support for IE5 while it still had a 7% slice of our users. Or as in 2008, when we killed support for IE6 while that browser was enjoing closer to 8% of our users.
We know it’s not always easy to upgrade your browser (or force an upgrade on a client), but we believe it’s necessary to offer the best Basecamp we can possibly make. In addition, we’re not going to move the requirements on Basecamp Classic, so that’ll continue to work for people who are unable to use a modern browser.
Basecamp Next, however, will greet users of old browsers with this:
krzyzak
on 01 Feb 12What about Opera?:)
Enrique Delgado
on 01 Feb 12Thanks for sharing the browser distributions. It’s good to know we are not alone on this :-]
Marco Vega
on 01 Feb 12Awesome, thank you for that. I really can’t convince my clients about getting the latest version of their browsers, classic answer: “Kid, this is what I use, I’m not into tech.”
IE < 8 is really killing me.
Gabriel
on 01 Feb 12Undesirable version of IE == any version of IE?
Will
on 01 Feb 12I am truly jealous, unfortunately where we are undesirable browsers (by your criteria) still account for about 22% of our traffic.
Tim Ruffles
on 01 Feb 12We’ve found suggesting people on IE use Chrome Frame works well. Installing a plugin seem like be less work/risk, and doesn’t require admin privileges.
DHH
on 01 Feb 12Gabriel, ha, IE9 is actually not half bad as far as I hear. It seems like we’ve been having more trouble with Firefox lately than IE9. But yeah, webkit (Chrome/Safari) is the nicest to develop for in our experience.
DHH
on 01 Feb 12Tim, Chrome Frame has a tiny adoption for our users. I believe 0.5% or something right now. Doesn’t seem to be a popular choice.
Brad
on 01 Feb 12Have you taken into consideration clients who may be in an environment where they are not in control of their browser version? For example, Government?
Rodrigo Noales
on 01 Feb 12Good idea.
It’s time to shake the dust, IE users must upgrade, I can’t believe there are people who work with basecamp using ie7 on 2012 (I don’t talk about an old grampa checking his e-mail, this site is for work, for middle-experienced users at very least) +1
Luke Brown
on 01 Feb 12Intriguing stats. The point about the considerable effort involved is crucial. If moving on allows you to concentrate on more value for the vast majority of customers it makes perfect sense.
Ric
on 01 Feb 12Let’s be honest, anything other than Webkit is ‘undesirable’.
Jordan Koschei
on 01 Feb 12I second Brad’s question – what about clients at slow-moving organizations who are stuck using older browsers? Government, healthcare, and other enterprise organizations seem to be five-to-ten years behind the browser curve.
And Marco, if any of your clients call you “kid,” just drop them. There’s no way they’re worth your time.
Justin Reese
on 01 Feb 12My first thought: Sounds great, but what about corporate customers whose IT departments won’t let them upgrade?
My second thought: Oh yeah, that’s the nice thing about your highest-price plan being $149/mo: you can afford to lose several of those edge case customers. None can individually hold you hostage. So nice.
Daryl
on 01 Feb 12IE9+ sounds pretty aggressive. My company just finished a major upgrade to IE8 last year.
Terry Sutton
on 01 Feb 12Good for you. If Google and Facebook did the same we could eradicate IE altogether—and we’d all be far better off.
DHH
on 01 Feb 12Brad, Jordan, they’ll still be able to use Basecamp Classic. But for our new platform which will hopefully last us quite a while, we’re not going to be held back in what we can do for the 93% of our users to deal with the 7%.
It’s not a perfect trade. Just like dropping IE5 in 2005 stung a bit and dropping IE6 in 2008.
Andrew Ducker
on 01 Feb 12IE9 doesn’t work on XP or Vista, which means that you’re telling people whose companies haven’t moved to Windows 7 that you don’t want their business.
IE8, at least, works with all currently supported versions of Windows.
Pierre Chapuis
on 01 Feb 12@krzyzak +1
You don’t even need to change the design: just replace IE9 with Opera. Advertising IE9 is not a good idea since it will lead to the same situation in a few years.
Ric
on 01 Feb 12@Andrew: IE9 works on Vista, but not XP. But yeah they’re excluding XP-based customers.
David B
on 01 Feb 12I watch the w3schools’ browser stats with great enjoyment each week as IE slowly goes down. Great post DHH; I’m glad to see you guys aren’t backing down just because of a few edge cases.
James Young
on 01 Feb 12@Brad + @Jordan Koschei,
I think you’ve missed the gist here, what they’re saying is the 7% of their user base are on “undesirable” browsers and from a business perspective, they’re willing to let that 7% go (or at least force them to upgrade) in order to better support the 93%.
J.
Pierre Chapuis
on 01 Feb 12@Andrew, @Ric: They are not excluding XP-based customers. They are telling them to use a browser that is still supported on their OS.
Terry Sutton
on 01 Feb 12@DHH—it should sting! There’s no good reason for someone to be using FF3.6 or IE7 now. No reason at all.
You forcing them to upgrade causes brief short-term pain, for considerable long-term gain.
We’ve been too nice on the web. We’d be doing people a great service by showing them a big whitescreen when they visit our sites in old browsers. Instead, we toil away hours and hours making sure every hack is working perfectly.
We need to be far less tolerant of old browsers.
Jodo Kast
on 01 Feb 12“9% of our IE users are running IE7 — a browser that’s more than five years old!”
I don’t know anyone that cares about this. You gotta be some kinda “Ultra-Nerd” to get so upset about this. It’s comical! Thanks for the laugh!
Brad
on 01 Feb 12@James – I wasn’t judging their decision, just curious about how these undesirables/unable-to-changeables fit into their decision.
@David – Thanks, I had forgotten you mentioned that the classic version would still be available.
Christopher
on 01 Feb 12Darn, I was waiting for the big “catch” to upgrading to Next. I understand where your coming from but the thing is for a lot of us, our numbers are very different. For your total user base you may onle have 11% on IE, but for my for instance nearly all my clients use IE, in particular IE7, some user IE8. Most either do not have the technical knowledge to do so, or allowed. Nearly all our clients have Windows XP, and will not be able to buy new machines just to be able to get Windows 7, just to be able to use my Project Management tool. They will say sorry, we need to go with someone else then.
I could almost understand dropping IE7, though I think that’s even premature, but dropping IE8, is irresponsible.
So as clients we will be stuck using Basecamp classic with more years until you force all users to upgrade like Facebook did with Timeline.
Once again as a web developer I understand, but even IE8, man o man.
Deltaplan
on 01 Feb 12IE9 does work on Vista… IE9 for vista on Microsoft website
Sam
on 01 Feb 12Somewhat of a catch 22. If all sites would stop working in older browsers, those still using ten years old browsers would have to update. Now they don’t because they don’t have to.
And the reason it’s become this way is because of all non tech-savvy bosses who forces their developers to support their old browsers so that they don’t have to update. So instead of leading the innovation, we the developers are holding it back.
Zach
on 01 Feb 12Completely agree with the decision here to drop IE < 9 support. Yes – not everyone can upgrade to IE9 – whether it be an operating system or job environment limitation, but 37S is going above and beyond by still offering those types of clients the ability to use BaseCamp classic – which for all intents and purposes, serves as a pretty seamless switch for when the new version does come out. I’m sure within a year or so though, BaseCamp classic will see its end.
Haarball
on 01 Feb 12Did you put IE first (leftmost) on purpose, or is the order random? Also, why not order them by the browser you’d most like your customers to have? I’d guess the more clueless you are, the more likely you are to choose the left/first option, especially when it’s what comes shipped with people’s PCs.
michael
on 01 Feb 12What about user relying on SAP. Not just an ms issue. http://www.asugnews.com/2011/11/01/waiting-on-sap-user-communities-fix-sap-businessobjects-browser-woes/
DHH
on 01 Feb 12Chrome and Firefox are both available in their latest release for Windows XP. So what we’re saying we don’t support is using a 12-year old operating system with a three year-old browser. Yes, there are corporations where that’s Just The Way It Is. For those renegade enough, but still stuck employees, there’s Google Chrome Frame.
Everyone else gets to enjoy the best web application we can build with today’s modern technology.
Deltaplan
on 01 Feb 12What is really upsetting is that the move to Basecamp Next is not on a user-per-user basis… Therefore, that means that I just won’t be able to move to Basecamp Next, just because a few of my users are (or may) need to access their account with an older browser… (or even me, in most internet cafés in developing countries, don’t even think you can find anything but older XP versions with “matching numbers” IE…)
Maybe I’m too old-school, but the webapps that I develop are always accessible with any kind of browser whatsoever, even lynx. Of course, not all features will be as ergonomic as in newer browsers, but all the data is accessible, at worst in pure text, all the core actions can be made.
So I’m never, ever, supporting older IE versions, but at the same time I’m not forcing any user to upgrade.
Bonus : this makes all my webapps automatically usable with mobile browsers too, even on older phones…
George Palmer
on 01 Feb 12Why not nudge people into a more desirable behaviour and order the browsers according to what you’d like people to download (Chrome, FF, Safari, IE)?
Michael
on 01 Feb 12I’m glad you’re doing this. Everyone chipping away at the old browser users makes the chipping easier for everybody else. It also lowers development costs for everyone else.
Mike Wills
on 01 Feb 12Problem is that many corporations are still using Windows XP which can only use IE 8. True, they can use a better browser unless they are corporate locked to IE. I am not trying to change your mind (since I am not user and I use Chrome), but something for others to think about.
Mathias Biilmann
on 01 Feb 12For Webpop we’ve chosen to go with forcing chrome frame for IE users.
Our UI just won’t be nice to work with without a fast javascript engine. Chrome Frame might not have a huge adoption, but for a client who needs to manage the content of his website, just clicking yes to a dialog for installing a plugin is not a big hurdle. People on windows tend to be very used to clicking OK on dialogs.
Chrome Frame will install even when the user is not an admin user. This makes it a very nice solution for those who might not have the option to install a modern browser.
Alex
on 01 Feb 12Old Google Chrome logo?
Andrew
on 01 Feb 12Re: IE 9 only, what some people seem to forgot is even the most stringent of IT departments at major corporations do allow other browsers on people’s machines if there is a business need.
Basecamp is not used by the entire company, getting an IT department to agree to allow a subset of PCs to have another browser, or as many have said, Chrome Frame (which doesn’t even require admin rights IIRC) is not a difficult task.
And besides, as anyone in Web Development knows, developing for lower versions of IE is a pain and if you are hell bent on making your app look, feel and act identically across all browsers, you are significantly lowering the bar by supporting IE 7 and 8.
Delivering a kickass product to 93% to your current customer base will add more new customers (or at least give you better retention rates) than delivering a mediocre product to 100%.
Neil
on 01 Feb 12God I hate IE, hopefully this will start a new era of kicking out shit browsers!
Joshua Pinter
on 01 Feb 12I know it’s not rocket science to do and there are a few out there already, but any plans to release this on Github or something?
Similar to http://code.google.com/p/ie6-upgrade-warning/
Cheers.
Matt Carey
on 01 Feb 12So, if Basecamp next is an account level upgrade, I need to be sure that none of my clients will have an unsupported browser. It isn’t just my team I need to worry about, but all my clients!
Zach Leatherman
on 01 Feb 12Hope those Windows XP users don’t try to upgrade from IE8 to IE9. Might be better to tell them to switch to Firefox/Chrome to save them some money.
Joseph Le Brech
on 01 Feb 12I love how the “that’s the way it goes” saying has been flipped on it’s head.
Before it used to be the corps saying “that’s the way it goes”, and “it’ll cost millions to upgrade, and for what benefit”
Basecamp Next comes out saying “That’s the way it goes, you’ll have to upgrade”, the corps will now see the benefit of upgrading.
And no it won’t cost millions to upgrade, because there are .msi builds and group policy templates available for chrome (firefox still trailing behind here)
Corps not upgrading are just due to cheer laziness or they have laid off the admin staff that know anything more than just “turn it off and on”
Graham Peel
on 01 Feb 12Take it for what its worth, but my experience is that most IT departments don’t view “alternative” browsers with nearly the same skepticism as they did in the early days of Mozilla & crew. Even the governmental agency I worked for back 6 years ago would allow users to install Firefox or Chrome if they presented a business need. The security guys grumble a bit, but seriously, they spent FAAARR more time locking down IE (expecially IE5 & under) than they ever spent worrying about Chrome.
While I’m sure there are plenty of places out in the wild that don’t let their users upgrade their browser or install an alternative, I suspect these places are getting rarer and rarer. Furthermore, that type of work environment probably isn’t the kind that would allow its users to use Basecamp anyway!!! They are still demanding all work be done in M$ Project 2003 or whatever (shudder).
And my ‘shudder’ above wasn’t an exaggeration. I worked at a place maybe 7 years ago that tried to track EVERYTHING in M$ Project. It was an absolute nightmare and I ran away as fast as I could.
David Alison
on 01 Feb 12@DHH: How long will you offer Basecamp Classic?
Smart move continuing to offer that, assuming you can keep it around for at least a year or so. I know a lot of companies that are stuck with IE 8.
Mike
on 01 Feb 12Can you list the major reasons not to support IE8? I am genuinely curious as to what it is you can’t do…
Nathan Pitman
on 01 Feb 12I think it’s great that you’re looking forward and not back, I’m interested to know though, when you say that “IE represents just 11% of our users on Basecamp”, is that metric tied to actual user accounts or assumed from ‘unique sessions’ or ‘visits’ that Basecamp receives. :)
foljs
on 01 Feb 12They can always switch to FF/Chrome/Opera.
Also, IMHO, any company that DOESN’T tell some of it’s customers that it DOESN’T want their business is doomed to fail.
You have to know to just say “no” to some customers. Why?
Because if you have a business, the most important notion to understand besides “balanced sheets” is “opportunity cost”.
@Jodo KastSome kind of “ultra-nerd”? EVERYONE in the web developer community cares DEEPLY about this. Actually, deeply is putting it mildly. Most front end developers are tearing their hair about this. Even regular users hate IE with a passion.
You somehow got in the wrong side of the internet, away from the people you know and share the same interests. Then, I guess, it’s must not be easy to find someone who cares about these things in rural Nebraska.
DHH
on 01 Feb 12David Alison, we will be keeping Basecamp Classic around for years. Not leaving anyone out to dry. As long as there’s still enough people to make it worth running, it’ll be around.
Mike, it’s not so much what’s possible, but how much effort it takes. If you have unlimited time and resources, you can usually make stuff work even in IE6 with enough duct tape and sewer hacks. But you could also take that time and invest it in great features and more polish for the 93%.
Chris
on 01 Feb 12We run OS X 10.4 in the office and cannot upgrade beyond FF3.6 and can’t run any version of Chrome. Fortunately Safari is at 4.1 so we’re not completely locked out… yet.
F.Aquino
on 01 Feb 12Just a minor correction, the IE icon in the upgrade alert is for IE8, IE9 is like this: http://ieblog.members.winisp.net/images/ML_LogoUpdate_IE9Detail.png
Ryan Fischer
on 01 Feb 12Another nice bonus is Microsoft autoupdating internet exploxer through Windows update for all major and minor versions. While its not the best solution, it is a step in the right direction.
AJ Kandy
on 01 Feb 12One – awesome decision. Can’t wait to see it!
Nitpick: Please tell me you’ll fix the line breaks in that message box before it goes live. The old-school typesetter in me is cringing a little. Each of those 3 sentences deserves its own line.
Milan
on 01 Feb 12I don’t know if it is just me, but amazon s3 service is keeping that screenshot for itself and does not want to reveal its secret. So much for the cloud services, they are great, but sometimes there is just no (data) rain and users are left dry.
Scott King
on 01 Feb 12It’d be interesting to see if there’s a correlation between low end browsers and use of free accounts.
dwayne
on 01 Feb 12Hear, hear! Thank you for working to produce the best product possible to make use of the technologies I’m able to run.
All of the “what about the 7%” commenters are ignoring the counter-argument: What about the 93%?
That you’re continuing to provide Basecamp Classic is nice (although it’s either a profitable decision or not). But even without that, the answer to “what about the 7%” is: They’re 7 percent. That’s what about them.
They are a small number of customers who limit what Basecamp could be for the other customers.
That aside, what about users without internet or access to computers at all? Why are you ignoring them?
Mike Stahl
on 01 Feb 12This is encouraging. I read recently that MS is making efforts to get people off older browser versions by force updating in windows update, but people still can block it. It should lower the amount of 6,7,8 versions out there.
Matt Lee
on 01 Feb 12Might be worth promoting http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/ for people using Firefox in larger companies that can’t handle the rapid update schedule, a lot of those users can now ditch 3.x entirely.
Neal G
on 01 Feb 12There’s really no excuse for anybody not having a modern browser at this point. If you work at a company that doesn’t allow you admin rights to your computer, simply download Portable Firefox or Portable Chrome.
iesuicide
on 01 Feb 12@nealG in my company im using ie6 and i have no access to usb ports… Yes its a nigthmare
I understand the move, but i think that maybe the best approach is to degrade gracefully…
Madly Creative
on 01 Feb 12This isn’t too bad of news considering microsoft plans to update everybody’s IE: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-automatically-update-internet-explorer-for-everyone-20111215/
David Tolsma
on 01 Feb 12Why is a list of minimum acceptable browsers shown? Pointing me to the latest version of my current browser would be better experience. If you want to advertise other browsers that to would point to the latest release. I can see see some users looking for Chrome 7, or Firefox 4, or even worse they don’t know what a browser is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
Mike
on 01 Feb 12@ DHH: Thanks for the answer – I would like you to elaborate a little on what kind of features it is IE8 makes so difficult. If we disregard CSS support what exactly are you spending so much extra time on when developing for IE8?
Berserk
on 01 Feb 12Absolutely the right move. More things like this and IE < 9 will soon be gone.
PJ
on 01 Feb 12Nice stats. And nice move too, I only wish I could do the same.
But, please, stop whining. Here is a little thing I’ll share with you to help you with that. I run a website in the french administrative / health sector, and here is what I have to deal with: – 89% IE, among which 72.8% IE8, 18% IE7, 5.9% IE6 and only 3.3% IE9 – 7.6% Firefox, among which 65.8% < FF3.6, 28.9% FF9 and 5.3 FF8 – 3% Chrome – 0.2% Android – 0.2% Safari
The Chrome, Android and Safari users being probably almost only people from our own staff. Probably the same with IE9 and part of FF9 users. Yeah, that’s right.
And still, I’m glad Netscape 3 and IE5 disappeared recently. And I mean it.
Marcelo Kanzaki
on 01 Feb 12That screen informing the users to upgrade their browser is pretty ugly. The message could be more direct and straight to the point, with a link to a more in depth explanation of the reasons behind it. Something like:
Basecamp Next only woks with these browsers:Browser 1, Browser 2, Browser 3…
Get in touch with us and we’ll help you with the upgrade so you can enjoy the best version of Basecamp to date.
=)
Paul
on 02 Feb 12Personally I like the google model – support the current version and 1 version back. If it’s good enough for them and their bazillion users, it’s good enough for me.
Girish
on 02 Feb 12If you’re gonna force people to use the latest version of IE, may be you should be using the latest logo of IE, no?
Mark
on 02 Feb 12The whole “your browser isn’t good enough for this” approach doesn’t work well from a customer communications standpoint. Instead, have you considered just auto-forwarding those with non-compliant browsers to the Classic page?
Then just massage the message to a bit less off putting. “Basecamp Classic is our best choice for for your X browser. To experience the Next level of Productivity, please visit us again with X, Y or Z browser.”
Ya’ll are so tight most of the time with your thoughts on the customer experience. Don’t drop the ball because of what browser your customers might be forced to have to deal with.
Yousaf
on 02 Feb 12I can not stand Internet Exploder, why is Microsoft even allowed to market it.
Marcio Castilho
on 02 Feb 12David, can we have a gem that checks all the browser versions mentioned above ?
Franklin
on 02 Feb 12I know this question is out of the ordinary; does anyone know when DHH started to learn to program? When did he start learning ruby(age wise)?
Thanks fellows!
Harlem
on 03 Feb 12I would think most Basecamp users to be at least fairly tech savvy. Unfortunately, for a high profile business news site, our traffic tends to come more from IE; about 50% for the one I work for at this point. 15-20% using the “undesirables.” So we can’t quite leave them out, or of course the big guys upstairs won’t.
But I love what you guys are doing. I stand behind you in putting my foot down against old browser users!
Anonymous Coward
on 03 Feb 12How well-though screen. They are placing IE as the first (from the right) choice since this message is more intented towards IE users, and secondly FF.
For one more time the thinking through in the design process shines!
Christian Krammer
on 03 Feb 12Wow, tough decision. For us such a cut would mean to loose or at least annoy about 40 % of our users. ;) So it’s still a long way to go until we can omit these browsers. We have only recently dropped support for IE6, although quite a big bunch still uses this browser at our website. Unfortunately … :(
Lea Verou
on 03 Feb 12Kudos for dropping support for older browsers in favor of polishing the app for most users. But shame on you for not supporting Opera, which is perfectly modern.
Dmitry
on 03 Feb 12Shame on you. Debian stable release ships with Firefox 3.5.
Larry Botha
on 03 Feb 12Nice to see someone taking the plunge in ridding the world of the dinosaurs!
Please add Opera as a recommended browser; Opera is standards compliant, as Firefox and Webkit browsers are, and far more deserved of being in your list than IE9 is.
Ehren Reilly
on 03 Feb 12This is very convincing to me, a product manager. However, I’m looking for an argument that will convince ad agency project managers (my customers) to leave legacy browser behind, for consumer-facing content. My company makes quiz software called SnapApp, which lots of ad agencies use to create content for consumers. In our quiz-building tools, we only support modern browsers, but our clients insist that the content created using our platform be compatible with some really arcane browser versions. How do we convince them that the tiny fraction of people still using IE6 are not worth advertising to?
Paul Irish
on 03 Feb 12applause
However, maybe you guys should update your browser logos. Half of them are already “undesirable”. :)
http://paulirish.com/2010/high-res-browser-icons/
Paul Irish
on 03 Feb 12http://paulirish.com/2010/high-res-browser-icons/ #linkedforthelazy
Milan
on 04 Feb 12Have to agree with Paul, logos are outdated. With the Internet Explorer even to the poin that it might cause confusion. What, you want me to upgrade IE? But look, I already have that version, icon is the same and that other one has a different icon. Do I need to get it?
Robert
on 07 Feb 12You have a typo in your upgrade message it should read: “Please download IE9, it only costs $199 if you’re on Vista.”
Nico Host
on 07 Feb 12I’m just curious… why wouldn’t you upgrade to the newest browser versions? I know that there are some big companies who are using old software that only support IE6 etc. But why don’t they save some money in there huge budgets to upgrade? It’s safer, faster and most important… webdesigners can build cheaper websites ;)
This discussion is closed.