As of 15th of June 2022 Internet Explorer has retired and is officially out of support.

Great, let's stop supporting Internet Explorer finally, you say? Sure, I will do the same, but your support may be different from how I approach this. Let's have a look.

Ways to support a browser #

There are two ways to support a browser:

• Add polyfills/workarounds, so all unsupported features work the same in unsupported browsers as in supported browsers.
• Use progressive enhancement. Basics work in every browser, new features (extras) only in supported browsers.

Support Internet Explorer #

When I say 'Stop supporting IE' it means to me that I won't go the extra mile to get unsupported features working in Internet Explorer, but still make sure Internet Explorer users get the basics, and can use the site.

For example, in one project, we are using the Beacon API for a feature (an extra, not required). At the time (about 3 years ago), we integrated the feature, Internet Explorer was still fully supported, and we had quite some users using IE11. Therefore, we decided that it's worth to load a polyfill, so IE11 users will also get this extra. Now, this changed, the numbers of IE users are really low, so we will now remove this polyfill. IE users still get the basic experience, but not this extra feature.

We could also have kept the polyfill, you say? Sure, but we try to keep our third-party dependencies as low as possible. One fewer means one fewer to check for security issues, updates – one less dependency to care about.

So, this is how I will support Internet Explorer from now on. You could also think about it this way: Your Internet Explorer user should now get the same experience as your No-JavaScript user – the basics.

Resources #