WP topic: WordPress is considering giving up its support for IE 11. The utilization rate is less than 1%. Wordpress topic

A new proposal from WordPress.org is exploring the possible impact of abandoning Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) support. First of all, H é ctor Prieto summarized the use of IE by WordPress users, and applied three indicators to indicate the decline in the use rate, with the overall use rate below 1%.

The three indicators are

● GlobalStats from StatCounter, displayed as 0.71%

● From W3Counter, displayed as 1.2%

● 0.46% from WordPress.com

StatCounter's GlobalStats record shows that IE11 fell below 1.0% for the first time in August 2020, and has continued to decline steadily since then. The figures quoted in the proposal are similar to those used by contributors when WordPress 4.8 officially gave up support for IE8, 9 and 10 in 2017.

However, whether to give up support for IE11 still needs careful consideration, because considering the current user scale of WordPress, although the number of users is less than 1%, the actual impact on users will be more than expected. Prieto said: "It is important to emphasize that these percentages represent tens of millions of users. If they give up support for IE11, it may have a great impact on them".

Most users still using IE11 are often unable to decide by themselves, and they may not be able to simply download an alternative browser. This situation is quite common for users working in large institutions such as banks, governments and education.

For WordPress, abandoning IE11 support can bring many benefits. Improving editor performance is a driving factor in this decision. Prieto shared a statistical data from Gutenberg developer Riad Benguella, who measured the impact of abandoning IE11 support, and showed that Gutenberg JavaScript construction files decreased by 84.9kB (7%).

Prieto said: "Abandoning support will lead to smaller scripts, lower maintenance burden, and reduce build time. A smaller amount of downloads will have a positive impact on all users, especially those on slower networks or computing devices. We expect that the result of abandoning IE11 support is to improve performance for most users."

Most of the people who participated in the discussion on WordPress.org strongly supported giving up their support for IE11, but a few people cautioned that the EOL date must be announced in a controllable way several months in advance. Some organizations choose WordPress to carry out projects solely based on its IE11 support. They need time to plan the transition.