Hawaiʻi's Technology Community
IE versus Firefox in Japan
So today, 37signals announced that they will be ending IE6 support across their products in the near future. While this happens in the US, I noticed in Japan that the majority of users still use IE with firefox recently announcing they have just about a 11% market share in Japan.
I hope firefox reaches a greater share in the near future but in my opinion, one challenge for mozilla is that I keep coming across websites in Japan that are accessible only in IE. This weekend, I wanted to download songs from musico.jp, a major music download site in Japan that is even advertised on TV. I got to the download page and I got a message saying that downloads are only available in IE. What?
Take hangame.co.jp as another example. This is the largest online gaming site in Japan with thousands of users and they don't allow firefox users to play games. This is the page I'm greeting with when I try playing games. What is worse is that they are guiding people to download IE6 not IE7.
Even yahoo japan does not allow firefox users to use their music streaming service called 'sound station'.
As a web developer, I am aware of the difficulties involved in developing cross-browser applications but major sites like hangame and yahoo should make a greater effort to accommodate their services to browsers beyond IE.
Just my thoughts and frustrations in facing the reality that I'll never be able to toss out my IE CSS hack cheat sheet :)
I hope firefox reaches a greater share in the near future but in my opinion, one challenge for mozilla is that I keep coming across websites in Japan that are accessible only in IE. This weekend, I wanted to download songs from musico.jp, a major music download site in Japan that is even advertised on TV. I got to the download page and I got a message saying that downloads are only available in IE. What?
Take hangame.co.jp as another example. This is the largest online gaming site in Japan with thousands of users and they don't allow firefox users to play games. This is the page I'm greeting with when I try playing games. What is worse is that they are guiding people to download IE6 not IE7.
Even yahoo japan does not allow firefox users to use their music streaming service called 'sound station'.
As a web developer, I am aware of the difficulties involved in developing cross-browser applications but major sites like hangame and yahoo should make a greater effort to accommodate their services to browsers beyond IE.
Just my thoughts and frustrations in facing the reality that I'll never be able to toss out my IE CSS hack cheat sheet :)
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on
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The supported browser matrix is an important business decision that needs to be carefully considered by web app service providers. Its should always be an explicit, unambiguous decision (i.e. you don't want to sort of support a browser.) Every browser you add to the matrix costs money. It takes dev and QA time. Back when Japan was 95% IE, I can understand why companies chose not to spend money supporting other browsers. It was a simple cost benefit analysis. As Firefox usage passes 10% and Apple's marketshare skyrockets I think companies like Yahoo Japan really need to reevaluate.
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