New Smugmug Does not work on IE

davidmedina · August 6, 2013

I am receiving complaints from clients that they cannot see their photos on the new Smugmug using Internet Explorer.

Here is the screen capture one client sent me

Andy · August 6, 2013

What version of IE?

WinkXR6T · August 6, 2013

Doesn't work on IE7 for me.

ablichter · August 6, 2013

davidmedina wrote: »

I am receiving complaints from clients that they cannot see their photos on the new Smugmug using Internet Explorer.

Here is the screen capture one client sent me

Isn't the new design mostly based on HTML5?
This is not supported until IE 9 without workarounds. Ask your clients to update and if this is not possible, maybe to use FF or Chrome.
IE 7 is almost seven (7!) years old. Released last quarter of 2006.

There is a browser test page for HTML5 -> http://html5test.com/
Chrome does best, next FF and last lame IE 10. ;-)

Andy · August 6, 2013

Folks, read the supported systems page, please:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93252

I think one of the best decisions SM made with this is to not bother with older versions of IE.

davidmedina · August 6, 2013

I am trying to get her to give me the IE version and convince her to drop IE for something better, but there are people that only have access to IE on their jobs. And if IE has worked fine for them, why change?

I can understand wanting to use the latest and greatest technologies, but Smugmug is a service is not just to deploy websites but a selling tool for many of us. I would expect to be backward compatible with as many of the most used browser. Maybe not IE 6 or 7 but at least 9 and 8.

Sure, there is a time to ditch the past, but when the income of many photographers may be at stake, that cutout point has to be chosen carefully and not just one version away.

According to the w3School.com in July 2013 this were the stats:

IE - 11.8%
FF - 28.9%
Chrome - 52.8%
Safari 3.6%
Opera 1.6%

If Smugmug made sure that it work on Safari with only 3.6% of the users, why not make sure it works on IE that has 3 times the number of users?

I am sure that Amazon makes sure their site works in as many versions of all browser as possible because they do not want to hinder sales.

And the thing is that their problem started with the new Smugmug.

thenickdude · August 6, 2013

If Smugmug made sure that it work on Safari with only 3.6% of the users, why not make sure it works on IE that has 3 times the number of users?

The reality is that supporting old versions of IE adds an incredible amount of development time to the process of creating a site like SmugMug, and can end up restricting the features they are able to offer. There comes a point where the financial and support investment simply doesn't make it worthwhile, and I think that time has come for IE7.

paulbrock · August 6, 2013

hmm.... I'm seeing around 9% of my site visitors this year on either IE8 or IE7 (And 3 visitors on IE6 :eek: ) I guess mostly from corporate networks which will often be running old software. (edit: on checking, a mix of govt domains, a top university(!), HSBC, Pricewaterhouse Coopers)

I get that we can't have shinies that are backwards compatible, but a simple alternate site would be handy - maybe even going to the legacy site! Yeah I know, that's not going to happen, and it would be unreasonable to expect it.

The answer of course is not to switch over, until the government and HSBC update their browsers, or suck it up. oh well.

paulbrock · August 6, 2013

Lamah wrote: »

There comes a point where the financial and support investment simply doesn't make it worthwhile, and I think that time has come for IE7.

Agreed... and IE7 is only 2.7% of my visitors. IE8 is quite a bit more though - does IE8 totally fail too?

Andy · August 6, 2013

davidmedina wrote: »

If Smugmug made sure that it work on Safari with only 3.6% of the users, why not make sure it works on IE that has 3 times the number of users?

Safari doesn't require any extra effort. Supporting Safari is the same effort as supporting FF and Chrome. It is a modern, standards-compliant browser. Older versions of IE are not, and require huge amounts of development effort to support, update, maintain etc. And all versions of IE just suck (my opinion).

thenickdude · August 6, 2013

paulbrock wrote: »

Agreed... and IE7 is only 2.7% of my visitors. IE8 is quite a bit more though - does IE8 totally fail too?

IE8 is not officially supported, but it seems to work okay for me on my galleries.

The only missing feature I've seen is that IE8 doesn't support transparent backgrounds on headers and things, but SmugMug has defined sensible fallback colours for them instead so they don't look completely out of place.

I can browse hiddenkissstudio.ws on IE8 with no real problems (except the main slideshow gets cut off).

paulbrock · August 6, 2013

Lamah wrote: »

IE8 is not officially supported, but it seems to work okay for me on my galleries.

The only missing feature I've seen is that IE8 doesn't support transparent backgrounds on headers and things, but SmugMug has defined sensible fallback colours for them instead so they don't look completely out of place.

I can browse hiddenkissstudio.ws on IE8 with no real problems (except the main slideshow gets cut off).

cheers for the info. And another site I can draw inspiration from!

WinkXR6T · August 6, 2013

Don't get me wrong. I don't care it doesn't work on IE7. I was just providing the info. All our work computers run IE7, so that's how I discovered it didn't work.

I don't see any reason why people who CAN upgrade to a modern browser don't.

johnloguk · August 13, 2013

So now Smug's excuse when things don't work is to blame the customer for having old software? Hmm, what happened to the wonderful company that put customers first?

ablichter · August 14, 2013

johnloguk wrote: »

So now Smug's excuse when things don't work is to blame the customer for having old software? Hmm, what happened to the wonderful company that put customers first?

Well, I guess they did. There were calls for better functionality and designs and by this there is a need for new technologies.
One death some have to die.

It might be not what you want to hear, but I believe it's our responsibility to check which browser our (paying) customers are using, before switching to the new design.

Believe this stats from w3Schools.com draws better picture - ratios of IE versions in July 2013 :

Total 11.8 %

IE 10 3.3 %
IE 9 2.8 %
IE 8 4.8 %
IE 7 0.7 %
IE 6 0.1 %

[strike]IE[/strike] aehm, IE 6 and 7 are endangered species.

I only got 9% IE users... So of 1.000.000 unique users visiting my site (which I might reach in five years

) 63.000 still use IE7.
But the ratio will sink to less than 0.4% until end of 2014 ('cause in 2014 support for XP runs out)
Obvious that a company like SM has to make a decision - a forward-facing decision and not wait another 18 month.

Andy · August 14, 2013

johnloguk wrote: »

So now Smug's excuse when things don't work is to blame the customer for having old software? Hmm, what happened to the wonderful company that put customers first?

This is silly - you can't have all the new awesome stuff on crappy, old, out-of-date browsers. Full-stop. There's nothing about blame here. Modern browsers are freely available (Chrome, Safari, Firefox).

New Smugmug Does not work on IE

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