Like a growing number of web companies, OM4 is no longer supporting Internet Explorer version 7.
Google dropped IE7 support in June 2011 (and announced timing for dropping support for IE8 just recently), and Facebook also announced in 2011 that it was phasing out support for IE7. And importantly, our friends at WooThemes do not support IE7 either.
OM4 developed websites will still operate when visited with IE7. But we won’t be checking their presentation or how they work as part of our standard service. If clients specifically request IE7 presentation, we will offer it as a paid option.
Why are we doing this? Well, IE7 has a declining market share, having dropped to somewhere around 2-4%, depending on your source of statistics – see below for a StatCounter summary. IE8 is also dropping fast, approximately halving in market share to around 12% over the last 12 months.
So while IE7 continues to have some market share, why would we stop paying attention to it?
Put simply, to meet the needs of our clients, we need to put more of our attention into modern browsers, increasingly being used on mobile phones and tablets. The iPhone and iPad are driving enormous changes in the way people interact with the web, and that in turn is making web development a lot more complex. Websites and newsletters are now regularly read on large screen desktops, high resolution tablets and tiny mobile phones.
With so much more attention needing to going to the new, less goes to the old.
So goodbye IE7, it has been nice knowing you.
Source for graph: StatCounter.com