Controversial concept

[Blackhawkso]

I’m pretty sure that everyone is getting sick of having to pull their site to bits so it will work in older versions of IE (I’m talking about 7 and down). The thing is if all of the web designers of the world wanted to get rid of this issue we could set a conditional style sheet for those versions of IE that just has

CSS



* {

display: none;

}



#message {

display: block;

color: red;

}

And this in your HTML markup

HTML





UPDATE YOUR BROWSER PLEASE FOR THE SAKE OF THE INTERNET PLEASE UPDATE.

Inside it then people should fingers crossed get the message and we can stop worrying about it and the internet can progress as it should.

I said that this was a controversial concept

What’s your thoughts?

[Al3ks]

Good idea. But won’t it slightly ruin the look of the website?

[karlpcrowley]

It all depends on your target audience, I don’t support older than IE9

made this for fun http://jsfiddle.net/3TnGU/

[Blackhawkso]

It wouldn’t show those versions of IE the site at all, but for everyone else the message div would be set to display: none; so it won’t show

[Blackhawkso]

@karlpcrowley I love it lol

[Senff]

Terrible idea. People won’t upgrade their browser when they see that message, instead they’ll never visit that site again.

If you want people to upgrade, send a friendlier message, along the lines of “You are using an old browser which may degrade your browsing experience. Click here to upgrade.” and don’t block them from viewing the content completely. Much less aggressive, and probably more effective.

Lots of sites already do this, I don’t think it needs improvement to be honest….

Not a fan of advising people to not use IE — instead, I would only advise them to UPGRADE their old IE or use a different browser. As developers, we’ve been telling people “IE SUCKS!! GET FIREFOX!!!!” for years. And now… Firefox is memory-hogging, often-crashing bloatware, not that much a worthy opponent to IE 10 in my opinion.

[karlpcrowley]

Yeah don’t actually use the code in my fiddle unless you’re going to change the text, IE9 is on par with Firefox if you forgive the fact that it randomly switches to quirks mode, so make sure to use the x-ua-compatible

Also, if IE is the same as if !html5

Probably best to to use if lt IE9

[TheDoc]

I agree with Senff. Some people can’t upgrade due to limitations outside of their control. Why should they be punished for this?

[Brightonmike]

Yeah, don’t do this. I advise people to upgrade, but you cannot force, and you absolutely should never tell people not to use IE at all – there is NOTHING wrong with IE9 and people find it patronising and frankly, a bit rude.

“We advise you upgrade to the latest version of your browser to ensure you view this website as intended”

Fine.

“Sorry, but this website only supports modern browsers. Please upgrade to Chrome or Firefox in order to use this website”

Nooooo.

[Author]

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