by 18a Editorial
First published on TalkingWeb.co.uk
An Australian retailer selling LED TVs got so annoyed with the time it took his developers to have to code his new website to be suitable for Internet Explorer 7 that he introduced a tax for shoppers using the browser!
Mr. Kogan of Kogan.com felt it was taking his developers as long to make the site suitable for IE7, as it did for them to make it usable for Chrome, Firefox and Safari all put together! (Which basically means they built it, and then had to go back and tweak bits to keep IE& happen. But lots of bits, it would seem.)
He became so annoyed at the ridiculousness of having to spend time and money on development for a browser only 3% of his customers use, that he imposed a tax for those 3%, to encourage them to upgrade their browser.
The tax, when the BBC reported the story, stood at 6.8%, to represent 0.1% for every month since IE7 was launched.
I notice that where it says “Avoid the tax, use a better browser:” it lists Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera… no mention of Internet Explorer 9!
If you’re faced with the same ancient-IE demons, then you don’t have to go as far as a tax (although it did get Kogan some great worldwide PR!) – you could just put on a little message saying “we notice you’re using xxx – our website is best viewed on xxxx – please upgrade”. Whilst it’s important to make a website work on older browsers to a certain extent, people not upgrading does just hold up the progression of web technologies because it means you can’t – if you’re considering the minority – use some of the features you might like to. So if your browser prompts you to upgrade, do it!