Gradually Stopping the IE11 Support

Time to say goodbye to Internet Explorer 11 as the countdown begins. In the light of these events, we have an announcement regarding our support for the browser for ongoing and future projects. And in case you’re wondering about what is happening with IE11, what big companies stopped the support for IE11, and why you should too, we’re giving you the short version.

htmlBurger’s Timeline for IE11 Support

On May 10th, we will officially end the “by-default” support for IE11, for new projects.

• For existing clients who still need IE11 support on their new projects, just get in contact with a manager you are used to working with. We will continue testing your projects on this browser at no extra cost.
• For new clients who need their work to be compatible with IE11 or any previous version, please leave a note in your request. Extra charges may apply.
• Ongoing projects that already have IE11 support included, will continue to be maintained as usual.
• Complete detachment of IE will be initiated, when we see our clients no longer need compatibility with this browser. There is no set date. We want to make sure everyone is covered.
• For questions about the IE11 support or anything related to that topic, please email us at info@htmlburger.com

Microsoft’s Timeline for IE11 Support

The usual practice for Microsoft is to give their products a lifecycle. It begins once the product is released and ends when Microsoft stops providing support for said product. During that time, the product receives security and non-security support. Once the product meets the end of its mainstream support, what begins is the next phase of extended support that lasts about 5 years. During that phase, Microsoft continues to release only the minimum of bug fixes.

• On November 30, 2020, the Microsoft Teams Web App ended the support for Internet Explorer 11.
• On August 17, 2021, the remaining 365 Microsoft Apps and services end the support for Internet Explorer 11.
• October 2025 marks the official end of Internet Explorer 11. The date aligns with the end of the support for Windows 10.

Who Else Stopped the IE11 Support?

Many of the big names already ended the support for IE11. Among companies like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, are also products and services that we and many of our clients use, like – Bootstrap, Trello, and  GitHub.

Why Should You Consider Ending the IE11 Support?

The first obvious reason is the lack of support from Microsoft, meaning IE11 will receive only the minimum of bug fixes until 2025. But what else?

1. IE11 doesn’t support modern CSS and JS properties.

You can imagine what this means to developers, right? To make everything compatible with IE11, we talk about compiling JS to use old methods and simplifying and processing CSS until the code is compatible with IE11. This takes a lot of work and puzzles-solving, considering the partially missing features for HTML5 and CSS, including Flexbox, Grid, and CSS variables.

Here’s a small list of nice features CSS provides, and we could use them on your projects now when IE11 support is no longer needed.

And that’s just a small portion of what we could do with CSS, not even mentioning the JavaScript world with ES6 and Web APIs like Fetch API, Web Notifications, and WebRTC.

2. Internet Explorer 11 is slow.

According to TopTenReviews, it takes 4.53 seconds which is below average. This is usually caused by enhanced security features or corrupt or missing add-ons, and a variety of other reasons.

3. Internet Explorer 11 has security issues.

IE11 has a long history of security vulnerabilities, including a very critical zero-day exploit discovered by Kaspersky last year. According to Microsoft themselves, the bug was found in the browser’s script engine and could corrupt memory.

4. IE11 support most likely doesn’t help your website visitors.

The percentage of users that will visit a website from IE11 is extremely low, about 1-2% in the best case. It’s worth putting in efforts and improving the experience of all other visitors, by just ending the support of IE11. Not to say, to provide support for IE11, sometimes we have to sacrifice the experience other users get.

The benefits of stopping the support for IE11 are way too many to be neglected.
It’s time for all of us to move on and make the best of what the new technologies can bring.