Make website work for IE8 (html5/css3)

Question

I am redesigning a website and plan to release next year around Aug with support for both desktop and mobile browser (mainly iPad).

Now bcoz the code base is same, there are going to be some ui components taking advantage of gestures which iPad supports and may be something similar for desktop.

I plan to use html5, css3 extensively..

Now i am aware that IE has support for html5/css3 from version 9 ownwards...So i am a bit confused whether to have support for ie8 as well..There are 2 things; 1. Support ie8 and complicate code with lots of workaround only for ie8 2. Do not support ie8 at all..

I am not sure what is the right thing to do..But feel if ignoring lots of traffic currently from ie8 (though might not be the case next year) might not be a good idea.

Also ie9 would mean my existing users would need to not just upgrade browserr, but also their os to windows7.

Please ket me know your suggestions.

Answer 1

The degree of support for HTML5 and CSS3 is rapidly changing in all the browsers. The main difference between IE and the others is that users tend to stay on a particular version much longer than with the other makes.

It really all depends on how many users you can afford to turn away. IE users don't need to upgrade to Windows 7 to get the benefits of HTML5 and CSS3, they can instead simply switch to Firefox or Chrome or Opera or Safari.

Nobody can predict the future, but on past evidence, some users are likely to be using IE6, IE7 or IE8 for some years to come.

I suggest you build your web pages on a case-by-case basis. For each case, what HTML5/CSS3 feature do you need? What is browser support like for that feature? How hard is it to provide graceful degradation or a progressive enhancement? If a user doesn't have access to a particular feature of the web site, what will they lose? Will they notice something missing or awry? Will they go to a competitors web site?