No need to support IE8 any more (even for corporate software)

One of my customers (mobilreport) is used by accountancy departments in large companies in Austria and Germany to analyze their employees’ mobile phone usage. More so than average web software, this web software needs to work on whatever web browsers large companies have installed; large companies tend to use more Internet Explorer than the world at large.

So it’s with pleasure that I report the following trend: (Numbers are the % of all users who come to the website within that month using IE8)

<td align="right" width="64">
  34.94
</td>

<td width="64">
</td>

<td align="right">
  44.97
</td>

<td>
</td>

<td align="right">
  22.12
</td>

<td>
</td>

<td align="right">
  17.43
</td>

<td>
</td>

<td align="right">
  16.00
</td>

<td>
</td>

<td align="right">
  14.00
</td>

<td>
</td>

<td align="right">
  7.78
</td>

<td>
</td>

<td align="right">
  4.21
</td>

<td>
</td>

<td align="right">
  1.85
</td>

<td>
   (so far)
</td>

It’s amazing to think, only 7 months ago (July 2012), that 45% of our users were using IE8 (the remaining 55% being split between IE6, IE7, IE9, FF, …). And now less than 2%, hopefully soon even less.

I am developing more and more software which uses SVG to visualize things (e.g. United Youth Symbol Generator), and IE9+ (and other desktop browsers, and most mobile browsers) all support SVG. So the drop of IE8 is great news.