As a new web programmer I am finding a lot of answers to my questions on here that suggest alternate methods that will work with earlier versions of Internet Explorer. But, of course, many of those are older posts (2009, 2011).

I have seen an answer to this question (from 2009) that says that I should base this on what my specific website's users are using.

I know that I should prepare my website for vulnerabilities that can come from access through an older browser (eg. still validating an email address in an "email" input).

I want to know, now in 2015, with a new website that has no user data, what is the earliest version of IE I should be concerned with?

I'm worried this question may be too general or too "opiniony" for this forum. But I am interested in concrete reasoning for answers, not just yes or no.

  • I'm still curious, as I've not seen any discussion on this more recent than 2012. Does that possibly mean that IE 6 and 7 are no longer relevant and not a concern for web programming in 2015? – Michael S Jul 14 '15 at 0:11

My further reading indicates that for a general interest public website, it is no longer necessary to take IE 6 and 7 into consideration - and even possibly IE 8 depending on how you feel.

However certain specific targeted interest websites (eg. a business site which will be accessed mainly from office computers), there may be a high user base which will be using older IE browsers.

Of course, you still would want to consider people accessing your website from any browser ever available when evaluating security concerns.


I would say no because the web need to go on!

A good way to know if you really have to make your site compatible with early version of IE is to watch your Google Analytics Statistics. See if you have a lot of users using the IE browsers.

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