Since IE8 is such a backward browser, I was wondering if there are any web-sites on the Internet that just don't support IE altogether (and block it via conditional comments, for instance)?
I remember stumbling upon web-sites that block Firefox in the past (like ~2004).
The justification of blocking IE is (obviously): You don't want to deal with IE bugs, and you don't want to have to maintain IE-specific hack and workarounds.
I'm sure you can find some site on the whole net but I would imagine these sites aren't very succesful unless they have a really specific audience to start with(Like developers for example).
I looked at one of my sites with a very mixed audiance(sports club website). And I have about 65% IE users. Blocking that many visitors it would be much harder for the site to get traction and reach critical mass.
I would say IE8 is a quite capable browser as long as you stay away from CSS3 and HTML5. Older versions are a pain in the arse though. Instead of blocking the access it would be much wiser to show a warning explaining why it look and work bad. This way the site can show what it has to offer while hopefully encouraging the user to get a better browser. I would expect any larger site adapted to IE atleast partially. Noone is going to download a new browser because of a site they haven't seen the content of.
If you were searching for examples I'm sorry I couldn't help you. I think it is very rare to block all versions of IE and I have never seen it.
To block Internet Explorer is suicide in my opinion.
I hate the browser, I think it's slow and buggy and rather rubbish at the job it's mean to do. If I could choose not to support the browser, believe me I would!
However, it is important to recognise a lot of people still use Internet Explorer, something around the 60% mark (I may be wrong on this but I know it's a massive number), and if you block access to that website you are blocking the access of 60% of the traffic on the web to your site. 9 times out of 10, these people won't even bother going back to your website on a different browser ever again.
If you are that bothered about writing code to fix IE bugs, then I would suggest you take a look at the way you actually code your HTML and CSS. It is very possible (and easy) to write HTML and CSS that will work on ALL browsers (with the exception of IE6) without using conditional tags to load IE specific fixes.
As I have mentioned IE6, I would suggest developing a very low-res version of the site to run on this browser. So instead of having a nice site that's got gradients and transparent PNG's, when some one in IE6 see's the site they will see a very basic layout with a reminder to either install Google Gears, or upgrade their browser.
You must remember that while most of the people who go on the internet do own their own computers, they may not have decent enough hardware to run a better browser OR want to upgrade their browser. A guy in the office the other day said he loved using Internet Explorer, while he could see why people may hate it, for him there was no other option to view websites. He wanted to use IE.
But it is very possible to write CSS and HTML that will look the same in Firefox and Chrome as it will in IE 7 and IE 8. I think you need to look at your coding skills and practices before cutting IE out.
:not(), :checked, :last-child, etc.), a dozen of CSS properties (box-shadow, border-radius, opacity, text-shadow, etc.), media queries, 2D transforms, transitions, RGBA color values; HTML: CANVAS, AUDIO and VIDEO elements, new semantic elements, new form field types and attributes; APIs: Web workers, Offline web-applications, Geolocation; JavaScript: A dozen of Object static functions, a dozen of Array methods; Other: TrueType fonts, SVG 1.1 (Note: this is not a complete list.)
Commented
Apr 14, 2011 at 16:21
Personally, I have not encountered any sites that exclude IE. From IE7, there are very few issues with IE. This is mostly minor cosmetic ones you can ignore. It usually don't break the page, just makes it look slightly different than you intended.
If someone bans a page, it is probably as a general protest against Microsoft, rather than not wanting to pollute code with workarounds for IE.
You might not have a large percentage of IE users in your area, but world wide, IE still has a good share. See this page on w3schools that measures the browser statistics hit on their page. The statistics for IE degrades gradually, but is still miles ahead Safari and Opera. It is still one tiny step ahead of Chrome, but it seems like it is Chrome that takes over the IE users, as IE degrades at about the same speed as Chrome increases.
That said - w3schools is a site that is not quite representable for a normal user, because it is a site mainly for web developers, and technical (especially web technical) people are more reluctant to IE than normal internet users. Most non-technical Windows users will stick to IE because they don't bother to switch to anything else.
From a users perspective, there are a lot of sites, which are primary designed for IE (because it historically has been the larges user base). These sites are mostly tested also for Firefox, but that's where it stops, which leaves the browsers that are stricter to the standards out of the loop (Firefox works good with the standards, but also allows for more buggy HTML than many other browsers).
