The answer is not yes or no because that is not the right question. It involves technical issues and requirements issues questions.
Here are three key topics to keep in mind when making this decision. They are based on years of experience both as a web developer and with customer contact. Note that this decision begins even before the project starts and before the price is set.
Target audience
Analyze the target audience to try to see some pattern before countering their customer. If there is no specific nixo, you can assume that the average found in Internet sites will be the average of your client. However, if there is a specific nail, for example your customer having a site with products for companies that tend to have old computers, you will naturally have to take the issue of supporting older browsers seriously.
Public target application types that are very different from the average, and tend to force support for older browsers
- Banks
- Sites for government
- Ecommerce sites (large postage)
- News sites focusing on non-metropolitan regions
- Intranets (whose internal public uses old browsers)
Target audience is the most important metric to define which version of browsers to support. Be supportive of the contractor and do not make him lose clients, and if necessary, cover more already considering this.
Website Features
If the client has requested a responsive site, or features that only recent browsers handle well, use this as a good argument to remove support for older browsers. Strongly consider this in the price if the site is not basic.
When using third-party libraries, always look at their support for legacy browsers before using them. You should never promise to support an older browser than a library that explicitly uses supports.
Price
Supporting older browsers implies pricing. Argue with your client and make him aware before closing the deal which will cost more expensive support for an older browser, such as IE6 and IE7 on the date of this reply. The price argument in general will make him quit or pay more for the service.
Price is a variable that the customer can change if he or she really takes issue with the browser version. Keep this in mind.
Final decision
Finally, take into account the target audience , site features , and project pricing with your client. The ideal is to always ask for newer browsers possible, but strongly recommend not to force something that, for technical reasons, would be necessary, as is the case of the target audience of the client: there is no way to force the client to use another browser, and this can impact on sales. All other points, such as features and pricing, are debatable.
Even if your site is not designed to run on an older version, if not difficult, deploy libraries that are only loaded into older versions of IE to support them.
Practical example
In general, the client will not be willing to pay and it is neither interesting from a technical and target audience to support browsers that have 1% or less users who will use your site. > On the date of this response, this means that IE8 should still be supported.
Pre-talk and contract with customer
- Define in writing and signed between the parties browser support before the project starts. This avoids problems
- Unless the customer claims, let the contract be functional in all approved browsers, but small visual differences may occur due to the very wide support of browsers, but such differences should never disrupt the functionality of the site
- Informally or formally in the agreement, say that the site may work in other browsers, including older browsers, however this support is not guaranteed
- Informally, or formally in the contract, say that to support older browsers, the contractor can add javascript libraries that improve this compatibility, but can not compromise that it will really work in all cases, and explicitly say that a older browser will tend to run your site slower than a more modern browser, independent of the machine that runs it.
