⊞ Survey: IE browser support for a Three.js product configurator?

You can make exactly one choice. The poll will automatically end in one week (on February 4, 2020). Thanks to everyone who participated!

This poll is not intended to stop development for Three.js in Internet Explorer.

Want to see what developers are up to in the web 3D space while making web apps/websites(product configurator) with Three.js. What browser support, especially IE, is given today or 6+ months ago?

Which is the oldest Microsoft browser you care about supporting?

  • IE 8
  • IE 9
  • IE 10
  • IE 11
  • MS Edge
  • MS Edge Chrome

0 voters

Should the last alternative, “MS Edge Chrome”, instead be “No directed effort for supporting Microsoft browsers”?

Is discussion welcome in this thread, at this stage?

3 Likes

:slight_smile: Absolutely discussion is welcome, this is for all of us to know the current state in our development lifecycles. Thank you for your comment on the new Edge browser.

  • Long time developer of IE cross browser compatibility. Mac IE 5.5 is as far back as I would go, that was many years ago though.
  • Then IE 6 became my nemesis for the longest time, learning from IE 6 I felt unstoppable in my skills for everything to come in the future, this also is many years ago.
  • This doesn’t mean though I continue to support all of IE any more, my current stop gap is at IE11.

Not sure it is wise to keep up with the effort of IE11 while Three.js is in the mix?

Also support for Chrome, Firefox and Safari, iOS and Android - this topic though is for IE specific browsers.

tenor (1)

Attempted in updating the poll, discourse won’t allow this to happen at this time. :frowning:

I think the formulation and choices of the poll are a bit unfortunate. It would be much more interesting (and simple) if you just ask if it’s okay if three.js would stop support for Internet Explorer. This would help the development team to see how many users still rely on Internet Explorer. It would also indirectly reveal the remaining importance of the browser.

@looeee Is it actually intended that normal users (no moderators/admins) can start polls? I think it might be good to have some sort of review/approval before a poll is published.

1 Like

@Mugen87 like your idea on the review/approval for a poll.

Still an interesting point of view. Wish there was analytics everyone could share for Internet Explorer/other browser support to help the Three.js team better understand the browser playing field we work in day after day!

@Mugen87 thanks for helping to refine my poll description.
Don’t sense this is a waste of time, still curious what results come of this poll.

I don’t think the votes made here would be significant enough to tell if users rely on IE, the requirement is varying while for games IE rather won’t be relevant, it still is very relevant for product viewers for example as in a lot companies only IE is used, some don’t allow to install others. As well as users not installing other browsers as they don’t know any technical difference or how to do so (older generations).

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@Fyrestar this is very true in understanding the potential/value of the users relying on IE. Same thinking that a lot of companies only use IE. Very curious what % of the browser pie these type of users are viewing with Three.js.

From a google search find this comparison sheet on browser wars

Unfortunately IE is treated differently because of the variety of IE flavors, unknown of what % is real per browser. The community of developers though may tell a different story on what they have been experiencing or hearing through the grapevine.

Well, it’s never come up before.

I kinda like the idea of having an “official” poll every so often, what do you guys think? Maybe once a month or so.

That seems outdated even for 2017. Where did you find that?

I usually go by caniuse.com:

https://caniuse.com/usage-table

According to them, Edge and IE1 combined only make up around 3% of users.

Same here:

Is this actually true still? IE is a pretty big security risk now that it has reached end of life.

3 Likes

@looeee found here for the browser chart: https://www.google.com/search?q=browser+market+share&oq=brow&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i60l3j69i65l3j69i60.6727j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 scroll down a bit to find topic: What percentage of users use Internet Explorer?

For projects such as games i don’t even remotely consider supporting IE, as it is quite clear unrelevant for the audience, but for anything such as viewers, product configurators, even rather small widgets for websites this mostly becomes a requirement. The reasons are mainly those i already mentioned, non-tech companies don’t do anything more than using office and IE.

I know from a international operating company (a brand everyone knows) that they’ve been still relying on IE 8 or 9 around 2014 and only rolled out IE 10 after they were basically forced to do. Asides of them not seeing any need for a better browser they also only get support from MS with IE.

IE is one of MS biggest failures, with great power (being preinstalled with the OS) comes great responsibility but IE never really even covered the bare minimum and even if, at a horrible performance. I’m glad they decided to switch to a proper engine instead trying to win a fight they lost years ago, it literally became edgy at this point.

I like the idea, one interesting could be what release the community sticks to or to break it down, if they always keep updating to the newest release, do it in larger timespans or just stick to the version they started a project with.

1 Like

@looeee For example, in requirements for our clients we still have IE9 :sweat_smile: Just imagine and old accountant lady, living in a wooden mossy house in Russian deep forest, where you can get your newspapers only with pigeons, your guard dog is a bear and the closest village is in 500 km :laughing: So there’s no chance to update your browser or install another one.

And because of this, I have to keep compatibility with IE9 for plain html with css, which is fricking pain in the ass (at least for me :slight_smile: ).

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@prisoner849 wow IE9! When you ever have troubles in CSS/HTML, I can help!

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This opens the question if there is even internet ^^

Even if that case sounds quiet extreme, this is the non-tech group that uses internet, shops online maybe and you want to reach with a product viewer, especially if there is no fallback solution or your service entirely depends on your app.

Especially clients hiring you to develop such will often insist on the support. Good example i had myself, the company is non-tech, having a decade or older office machines only, they wanted a viewer but only tested it on their internal office machines with IE, of course there is no GPU in office machines and intel graphics has a horrible performance/compatibility, with this constellation they just assumed it would run unexceptional no where for no one, even with statistics of what specs the visitors had with almost 100% running at 40-60 FPS they ignored these facts - so i had to put rediculous unreasonable effort into making it run on the worst machines, even was discussing with AWS to implement a streamed version as some machines just aren’t capable of rendering 3D or even just plain modern websites smoothly.

Fortunately modern companies aren’t that stubborn and more open to technology.

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@Fyrestar How far do you go back for IE support on a product configurator?

When you had opened the discussion how vague my survey question was, hadn’t thought about this angle on the different varieties of how Three.js could be used, was thinking general and that is why @Mugen87 was thrown off by what I was trying to do. Wasn’t intentionally targeting the Three.js engine.

Updated the topic headline.

These days 11, but it depends on the configurator, the requirements and audience. Something that can be also rendered in 2D can use a fallback renderer.

Though it doesn’t only depend on the browser, with cheap office machines they simply can’t be able at all to perform at a reasonable framefrate in any browser, or driver being not compatible at all. So there are 2 factors, old browser and old machines. A old slow donkey with a brand new racing suit still is a old slow donkey.

Also just to mention, Nvidia Optimus on notebooks can disable their GPU for browsers with users having to enable it in their settings, what most wouldn’t even know, not even that their GPU is disabled for a specific program.

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That is super useful to think about as well with not depending on the browser alone.
@Fyrestar: Your comments and others have further pushed my current thinking thank you!

mindblown

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There is a mismatch between the question and the alternatives. I was able to interpret it anyway, but it would be better to match them.

In my previous answer, I was ignorant of the new Edge Chromium. There could still be a separate alternative for no support, though.

@EliasHasle this is a very good point and one that I understand where you are coming from.

Are you suggesting the poll would make more sense looking this way:

  • IE8
  • IE9
  • IE10
  • IE11
  • No IE Support
  • MS EdgeHTML
  • MS Edge Chrome

No IE Support a dev is supporting for Windows: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and maybe Opera?

You need to rephrase the question to something like: “Which is the oldest Microsoft browser you care about supporting?”
Then one additional alternative could be: “Blaargh, I HATE M$!!!111 I hope my app fails to work in all their browsers” ;D
Or a more modest: “I do not target Microsoft browsers during development, but am not offended if my application works on them too.” :wink:

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Updated the question per your recommendation. :slight_smile:

Unfortunately the poll would have to start over for the “Blaargh, I HATE M$!!!111 or No IE Support. Thought about adding a second poll to the current poll - would be confusing?!?!?.

By accident this maybe the best poll setup though because a dev would still want to support IE in some way for more clicks across the web no matter how overbearing IE could be and yes this does depend on how extensive the fixes are, there are limits to everything we do.

The poll discourse widget is good for the community to understand the limitation of editing once activated in discourse.

1 Like