How to inform users that his browser is not supported

Question

Hello,

I'm working at a small company and we are developing a web application. With the very few resources we have available, we can't afford to assemble the development team we would like to (we are only two people). The web app is becoming very complex over time and it is very difficult to keep progress with IEx, Firefox, Safari, and others. We try to be clean at coding so we have an almost functional web app for all non IEx modern browsers, but IE is another story.

How do we inform users that IE is not supported at all and they should install a modern browser to continue?

Please keep in mind that the question isn't if we should or should not support IE. Because we won't. The question is how to inform the users to change browser.

Currently we have a small white box on top of page that displays some text and has some links to Firefox and Chrome. Do you have any ideas on how to achieve this? Anyone who has addressed this problem before and has some experience?

Answer 1

IE's conditional comments are more reliable than user agent strings.

<!--[if IE ]> Go away <![endif]-->

Answer 2

IE supports conditional comments, which is kind of weird, but it will work in this case. You can do something like this:

<!--[if IE]> Get a better browser! <![endif]-->

To any other browser (FF, chrome, safari, etc.) This will just look like a normal HTML comment and will be ignored, however IE will actually evaluate the statement and render what you ask it to.

Edit: Check the MSDN article on conditional comments for more information. This feature has been around since IE 5, so it's pretty safe and reliable to use.

Answer 3

1) Do you support a gracefully reduced subset of functionality on IE?

If so, pop up a warning message the first time the user sees the app, stating that due to technical limitation of Internet Explorer software, the app's functionality is reduced

if not, display an explicit error page stating that another browser is needed.

2) Do your potential users have a great level of trust in you?

if Joe Schmoe web page comes in and tells me to install XXX, I will tell that web page "no".

So the best approach is to link to some TRUSTED web source explaining non-IE browsers and how to install them, either instead of in addition to your own instructions.

Answer 4

Regarding the mechanics of how to do it, it looks like the MSIE conditional comments will allow you to handle that.

Regarding the wording, be cautious. You don't want to annoy people, even if you don't support their browser. You should probably recommend something like "This site works best using Firefox, Safari, Opera or Chrome". If your site will work under MSIE but not as elegantly, then say so - carefully.

One of the internal corporate sites I have to use does not support Firefox on MacOS X (and it renders lousily in the browser - I've not investigated why; it works fine with Firefox on XP, but I only occasionally boot the XP machine these days, mainly to keep it more or less up to date with security patches). It pops up a dialogue box telling me as much, but allows me to continue. The stuff works - it just looks rotten.

Answer 5

Consider supporting Chrome Frame for people who are forced to use IE6 (in a corporate environment).

And while it's totally understandable to not support IE6, if you can't support IE8, you're doing something wrong. It should be very little work to make a standards-based web app work on IE8 after it already works on Firefox and WebKit.

Answer 6

People always install additional software and clients to use different services. But when you propose another browser they sometimes become hostile.

Try to find a wording that explains that this is just another piece of software, another client, and that they don't need to abandon their beloved Internet Explorer. They just need a current browser for your site/web application.

Installing Google Chrome and Firefox additional to an existing Internet Explorer is as easy as installing the new version of GET-ME-PORN and I-DON'T-PAY-FOR-MUSIC.

Something like this:

To use this web application you need to use another client. Please start Firefox >= 3.5, Google Chrome, Safari >= 4, or Opera >= 9 and visit this address again.

You can install any current browser additional to Internet Explorer without problems. Just start the downloaded installer like any other installer. Internet Explorer doesn't get affected! Don't change the default browser, if you don't want to.

You could link the browser names to the download pages.

And to the critics: Can you take part in Second Life with your browser? Can you play World of Warcraft in your browser?

Answer 7

If you are using jQuery, detecting IE is as simple as:

if ( $.browser.msie )
 alert( 'Unfortunately, you are using Internet Explorer, which is obsolete...' );

Answer 8

Well although i don't recommend you to do this display them this image:

and say "Instead of wasting time with IE, we choose to ......." (get things done etc...)

And provide few web browser download link. Do not provide many, people can get confused.

Also you can provide some links such as: http://stopie.wordpress.com/

Answer 9

Most of the commentors are ignoring the question and debating the use of IE. stesch probably has a reasonable answer so far.