Is releasing a web app that only supports three browsers ill advised?

Question

Some Background information

We have developed the application against the two most popular standards compliant browsers - Firefox 3 and Safari 3, then made necessary fixes for IE 7

We have used the HTML 4.01 Strict DOCTYPE

Firefox 3, Safari 3 & IE 7 will cover 85% of our target audience -- according to Urchin stats during a brief AdWords campaign

Going forward we would obviously plan to support Chrome and IE 8

Financial restrictions preclude further testing, our only other option would be to not release at all.

So is it better to release and be damned?

Answer 1

So is it better to release and be damned?

Better than...what? Not release at all? Yes, definitely. If financial restrictions are stopping you from testing on other platforms, it sounds like you have a choice between getting it out there and scrapping it completely - I'd go with the former every time.

Answer 2

You can always add the old "This page was designed to be correctly viewed under -> download browser here <-"

well if it covers 85% of your audience i think it should be ok to release and update the compatibility in the future

Agile development ftw

Answer 3

I would say that depends a lot on the demographic you're targeting. Since 85% of your target audience should have success, it sounds like you are in an okay position.

I'm not clear on what your other options are though. Because of financial restrictions, you can't test any more...so presumably you can't code any more for the same reason...so do you really have another option besides "going for it"?

Answer 4

How do you know that you'll be missing 15% of your audience? I'm sure it's based on estimates from market research that might not represent the whole truth. In fact, you might launch and find that you're only missing 5%.

I'd launch it and then keep track of the browsers that are attempting to hit the site. Adjust your efforts based on that information instead.

Answer 5

If you've developed and tested against the latest versions of Firefox and Safari, you're going to get a lot of other browsers for free I'd say. The marvel of Web Standards means Opera, Camino, and other standards-compliant rendering engines should all fall in to place with little to no work.

The only obvious missing piece is IE6. You can be smart about what level of support you give it though. Things don't have to run quite the same on that browser as they do on the others. Maybe even send it an alternate simpler style sheet, or no style sheet at all. Certainly don't lock users of that browser out of your site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement is a good thing. :)

Answer 6

Just ship it.

You tested with 3 different rendering engines. Chances are high that other browsers won't have any problem.

You can add ie7-js to satisfy IE6.

Answer 7

Release it!

Then use Google Analytics to see what browsers your visitors are really using

If a browser that you are not currently supporting is actually popularly used by your users, then you should try and accommodate it, otherwise people may leave the website due to problems with navigation, etc.

Answer 8

It depends on who's using your application. If it's a lawn bowling simulator aimed at seniors you may have a problem, but launch anyway. (What possible reason could there be for not launching at all?) If your audience also uses sites like Lifehacker and Digg (they aren't programmers but they have some familiarity with technology) you may find that a small proportion of them use I.E.

Answer 9

RELEASE RELEASE!!!

As a very good friend of mine reminded me of a Napoleonic quote "If you are going to take vienna, take vienna"

Missing a fringe group based on new or non/compatible browsers is a bad way to take vienna!

As this same friend of mine keeps reminding me of a few of my own projects... You just need people using it... they will help find and fix any issues with it... I Promise!

[;o)

Answer 10

Release!

How tough is it to take 10 minutes and run your pages through a no cost inspector like browsershots ? That way, if anything is horribly wrong, at least you have some idea on what those "fringe" 15% browsertypes that appear in your analytic reports would see and have a better guesstimate on what resources would be needed to "fix" the issue.

Answer 11

Release!

You can add the IE8 Compatibility meta tag to make it render as IE7.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

Chrome is based on WebKit like Safari (albeit a different version), so it shouldn't have too many issues.