Strong objections to moving to IE 8 for the default?

[pmeenan]

Historically I've been the strongest proponent for keeping IE7 as the default browser for testing but I'm starting to see more evidence of optimizations that may be counter-productive (particularly domain sharding).

With Global usage under 12% for IE6 and 7 combined I think it's time that the default was changed to IE 8 (still keeping 6 and 7 around for those that want to use it).

My concerns about it hiding things like blocking JS are still valid but with the majority of modern browsers supporting async javascript loading I think it's worth the tradeoff.

Opinions?

[p83822]

Agree. Only a year or so ago, no, but yes, definitely would be my vote.

Cheers

N

[sajal]

(05-10-2011 03:53 AM)pmeenan Wrote:  With Global usage under 12% for IE6 and 7 combined I think it's time that the default was changed to IE 8 (still keeping 6 and 7 around for those that want to use it).

+1 ... IE8 should be default.

[Bushido]

Most widely used should be the default.

Don't you dare unplug IE7 though, I check stuff with it quite often

[Markus]

Looking at the numbers of our financial website in Germany, IE8 users have a 26 % share and IE7 users a 10 % share of our visitors. The IE9 is fast growing at 8 % at the moment.

So it would definitely make sense to select the IE8 as default and offer IE6, IE7 and IE9 as options.