Nobody recommends using Internet Explorer 11 anymore, not even Microsoft, but it still needs to be supported. That’s expensive and time-consuming, and the most popular content management systems in the world is considering dropping support for Microsoft’s old web browser.
WordPress is used by over 40% of the top 10 million websites, so any decision taken by the development team will have a big impact. In a blog post, WordPress technical project manager Héctor Prieto explains how a new policy is being proposed to drop support for the browser based on current usage.
The latest browser usage figures for WordPress.com has for the first time fallen below 1% for IE11, and it currently stands at 0.46%. Prieto points out this is a similar level to usage when support for Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10 was dropped. At the same time, such a low percentage means potentially hundreds of thousands of users still rely on IE11, hence the caution over ending support.
Why end support at all then? As Prieto explains, “Dropping support would result in smaller scripts, lower maintenance burden, and decrease build times.” Ultimately, that means smaller downloads and therefore it would, “positively impact all users, especially those on slower networks, or computing devices.”
For now, this is just a proposal being discussed, but dropping support for IE11 is inevitable and not that far away. Outside of institutions that don’t allow individuals to control what browser they use, the majority of people have easy access to an alternative, be that Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, or any number of other modern, free alternative browsers.
