AlbertMarashi

Posted on Jun 23, 2019 • Edited on Oct 29, 2019

Fuck you, Internet Explorer 💖

#javascript #html

Fuck you Internet Explorer for not supporting new CSS Features

Fuck you Internet Explorer for not supporting new HTML Features

Fuck you Internet Explorer for not supporting new JS features

Fuck you Internet Explorer for not being an evergreen browser

Fuck you Internet Explorer for not working with modern frameworks

Fuck you Internet Explorer for stopping progress

Fuck you Internet Explorer for being a huge headfuck for every web developer around the world.

But finally, Thankyou Internet Explorer for being ahead of it's time, for being responsible for the internet, for being for our jobs, and allowing humanity to progress with technology, even if it made things really annoying sometimes.

You are the reason this website exists, IE

but, it's time to forgive and forget.

I urge all web developers to follow suit and speak with their organisations, clients, and developers to tell them that IE is now a relic of the past

Despite the few business-benefits that may exist of supporting IE, it has come time for even big corporates to abandon IE, and move towards evergreen browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Firefox

By every developer doing their part, we ensure IE does in fact become a relic of the past.

DEV.to developers reading this,

This is how you can help

Urge Website Visitors that don't already, to use an Evergreen browser.

What is an evergreen browser?

~~If developers are interested, I can provide and develop some IE-friendly code for developers that will tell users it's deprecated and how to easily change browsers.~~

This has already been done by browser-update.org

You are responsible for the innovation of the internet, and reducing IE usage across the globe.

I classify web developers into:

A+: Doesn't even accept that IE exists, and codes to evergreen standards
A: Accepts that IE exists, and that it may cause risks to abandon it, but are willing to take it
A-: Willing to let their companies know that they're behind the curve by supporting IE
B: Letting clients know they're on an outdated browser
C: Trying to code for IE standards

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Top comments (11)

The Jared Wilcurt • Jun 23 '19

The browsers you support is always a business decision.

I classify Developers as:

Professional: Supports the browsers and OS's used by their userbase
Hobbyist: Refuses to learn their craft and only supports the browser they develop in.

With the tools we have today, I don't think anyone should be complaining about cross-browser/platform support. We have Eric Meyer's Resets for weird old feature phones, Normalize.css for all modern browsers, and Auto-Prefixer + browserslist for everything else. And we have Babel to transpile and polyfill newer JS. All modern frameworks even produce multiple builds for modern browsers that support ES6+ so those users get a lighter payload that runs faster, along with legacy browser support.

If you're going to complain about anything, complain about Grid still being a year away from real production use (no animation, no subgrid, poor devtools). Complain about the evergreen browsers slow adoption of basic text layout like box-decoration-break or line-clamp. Complain about developers abusing every new technology that comes out (arrow functions that return arrow functions that return arrow functions, replacing all Sass variables with custom-properties that don't need to be dynamic, etc).

IE is not long for this world anyways. This is just a lazy post. Learn your craft. Get off my lawn.

Ben Lovy • Jun 24 '19

arrow functions that return arrow functions that return arrow functions

I'm not a JavaScript person, nor much of a developer at all. This sounds okay to me, and like something that might happen to me if I wrote a bunch of JS, can you elaborate on why it isn't? Is it just a smell, i.e. you should be using classes better?

The Jared Wilcurt • Jun 27 '19

x=>y=>(z,a)=>{
  return (z) => {
    return (a) => b
  }
}

stinky stinky stinky. If you convert it back to normal functions and it looks like an abomination, you're coding wrong.

function (x) {
  return function (y) {
    return function (z,a) {
      return function (z) {
        return function (a) {
          return b;
        };
      };
    };
  };
}

It's the same for nested ternaries. It is the result of someone being clever and trying to put everything into one line. Being clever is the fastest way to writing bad code.

AlbertMarashi • Jun 23 '19

Great, that's why an professional developer should use webpack, babel, browserlist, as I do

But it's not crafty to stick to IE and outdated technologies.

A good developer will realise it's a better business decision in the long-run to support only evergreen browsers, because it'll allow them to be more technologically innovative than their competitors

Nicholas Stimpson • Jun 23 '19

It's not about businesses or technologies. It's about users. There's no point in telling users to upgrade any more. It's almost inconceivable that users are not aware there are better browsers available. If they haven't moved on by now it's because they either can't or consciously don't want to. In either case, not providing at least minimal support for IE means missing out on those page views. The only practical way to drop IE is for it to become commercially unviable, just as support for Netscape Navigator is. So it's down to those who produce web sites to make it clear to their clients that IE support increases costs, and charge more accordingly. The clients will inevitably become more and more unwilling to pay that extra charge.

AlbertMarashi • Jun 23 '19

It's commercially unviable for a company to not remain technologically innovative.

Users that don't want to upgrade their browser aren't worth keeping, and you need to be clear and authentic about that with any executive you deal with, for the sole reason of remaining technologically innovative

Ben Lovy • Jun 24 '19

Users that don't want to upgrade their browser aren't worth keeping

This is not always true, depending on the domain.

Rich Winter • Jun 25 '19

Your "C" Class Web Developer might be working for a large corporate entity [bank] or a Government agency that requires IE to work with some random legacy portion of their web-based software. I think for most of us IE isn't any sort of standard, but it may be a client requirement.

(Also, no #CSS tag for this article? JavaScript can usually be pretty easily polyfilled, but CSS, not always. CSS in IE is the bane of front-end devs - Including IE11! )