Internet Explorer End Of Life
The information in the article below is outdated: I posted an update on this article
A short note (to myself), because the information is shattered:
Internet Explorer 11 is the only version of Internet Explorer to be supported after April 11th this year. Until then IE9 might still be running supported on machines on Microsoft Extended Support program.
The facts:
- Windows versions 7, 8 and 10 all support IE11
- Microsoft only supports the latest version of IE available on supported OS’s
- Vista is the only OS that is still supported that doesn’t support IE11, support that will end 11th of April, 2017
Should we worry?
According to the Wikipedia usage stats, IE11 (the latest version) is actually the most used version of Internet Explorer (representing almost 5% of all users), followed by IE7 (2.9%). Note that the total market share of Internet Explorer is slightly below 10% these days.
Update November 2018: Internet Explorer 11 is still at about 5% of the users at Wikimedia-sites, while the other versions have dropped.
I think it is reasonable to say that if Microsoft doesn’t support these browsers, you shouldn’t feel obliged to do so either. However, 5% of your users (but do check your own analytics) might be using an older version of IE. If you’ve built your pages with progressive enhancement in mind, however, users of ancient browsers should be able to use your site.