A Little Note About The Browser Wars

May 24, 2012

As of July 15th OrgSync will no longer be providing official support for Internet Explorer 7. The roar you just heard was our developers cheering. (We actually take this decision seriously so read on to find out why we need to do this.)

Why do we have to do this?

IE 7 was originally released in October 2006 and as you can imagine, there have been vast improvements in web technology since that date. The techniques needed to build a modern application rely on a number of different technologies in the browser and IE 7 is a large impedence to our continued development.

What does this actually mean?

This does NOT mean the site suddenly will not work for an IE 7 user. What this does mean is that IE7 will not be checked or tested for compatibility when we roll out newer portions of the website. So, as we add features the site might become progressively less useful in those areas.

How does this make OrgSync better for me?

Not having to support IE 7 will make our development team much faster. Supporting this older browser can almost double the time of certain projects when we write code. We’re also going to have access to some browser features that weren’t accessible before because we couldn’t support them universally; these minor (and some not so minor) enhancements will make browsing the app faster, cleaner and more intuitive.

What do we recommend for a browser?

The main thing is to stay modern. We’re at a great point now where the modern browsers do updating behind-the-scenes so you don’t even know you’re downloading the latest version of a browser, it just works. Chrome and Firefox are our favorites because of their regular release cycles and the fact that they comply with the internationally agreed upon web standards more so than Internet Explorer.  If you do use Internet Explorer try to get IE 9 (and in the very near future version 10 will be out) for the best IE browsing experience.

So if it’s been a a while since your last update, we encourage you to get the latest version of your favorite browser. There are many to choose from:

If you are wondering how we came to this decision, most major web companies dropped IE 7 support long ago (Google for example did so a year ago). We know our clients have different technology needs so we waited until IE 7 made up just a tiny fraction of our user base before we had to make the change. There have been many pain points extending our support for this browser for so long. If you have any feedback or concerns please let us know.

Thanks, and the development team hopes that you have an awesome Memorial Day Weekend.

The graphic at the top is great drawing by the artist Shoze

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Tyler

Tyler is a UI Designer for OrgSync and has been with the company since they moved to Dallas in 2010. When he's not designing awesome graphics he's learning how to code.
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  • Eric Fortenberry

    Great blog post Tyler!  My favorite browser is definitely Google Chrome.  

    In my personal experience, I have found Chrome to be the fastest browser with the fewest interruptions (ie, to update plug-ins or download new versions).  Like you said, Google Chrome just takes care of everything for you in the background. I also like that Chrome has doubled up the address bar that sits at the top of the browser window as a search box. That makes finding and navigating to websites extremely quick, even when I don’t know the exact URL.  And lastly, I really love how you can set Chrome to “continue where you left off” on startup.  So that means even after I quit Chrome, the next time I start it up, all of the windows and tabs I previously had open will automatically re-open up for me. I’d also like to point out that according to Business Insider in May 2012, Google Chrome Just Passed Internet Explorer To Become The World’s Most Popular Web Browser.  You can check out the global stats here: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-overtakes-internet-explorer-as-most-popular-browser-2012-5

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