Time To Rejoice... IE Is Dead
FREEDOM!!!
Free; we are finally free. We are free from having to check for IE anything.
Internet Explorer 11 - Microsoft Lifecycle
If you’re a front-end or full-stack developer, like myself; and you’ve been doing this long enough, then you know what I’m talking about. We had to check for specific versions of IE in our CSS code and fix the UI. Many, many, many hours; if not days, making an application look exactly the same across all browsers and making sure to support the dreaded IE.
For those of us that remember building in support for IE7, or who just want to reminisce; here’s a site to show you how it looked like to support IE:
Moving Forward
We were excited when Microsoft built Edge on the Webkit engine. It provided a standardized engine to build consistent UI without having to put in various hacks. We had greater support for various browser APIs and CSS like flexbox; and now CSS Grid.
Now, as support for IE is fading away and companies and customers are switching to Edge or another browser like Chrome, we still need to support IE until it’s officially gone. It may be another few years, but we are going to see more projects that will not support IE. So, consider having a popup or banner indicating the drop in support and to switch to a browser that works.
For me and the work I’m doing, I’ll still have to support IE as our clients (large hospital systems) won’t get rid of IE for a while. I expect the rollout to a new browser will be a few years.
No more checking if IE supports something I’m trying to use:
Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc
I, for one; am excited and will be grateful for the experience of supporting IE with various workarounds and hacks.
What did you like, didn’t like, and had to fix with IE? What was the earliest version you had to work with?