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by NearAP 1967 days ago
>>Internet Explorer has less than a 2% market share in the US, so under normal circumstances (given the sacrifices you’d have to make everywhere else) not bothering to support is is often a sensible decision. When it’s an access to healthcare issue though you can’t really exclude 2% of users.<<<

That thinking is exactly the reason why this system turned out to be problematic. Even if it wasn't for healthcare purposes, bottom line is - you have to know who your 'actual users' are. Elderly people (60s and above) are still heavy IE users and so are quite a few government offices. If these 2% of overall browser users are the majority of your users or your early users, then not supporting them becomes a problem.
1 comments
krrrh 1967 days ago
Detect IE, redirect to a static site with a 1-800 number, have a call centre staffed with people running Chromebooks schedule an appointment over the phone.

Probably cheaper overall, and certainly a better user experience for the tech-challenged seniors.

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onion2k 1966 days ago
Something to note about this strategy is that older versions of IE (10 and older) only support TLS 1.0 by default. Below 8 you're stuck with TLS 1.0 and can't even enable anything higher. So if "https://www.cdc.gov" is using modern web security IE users won't even get to request data from the server, so you can't detect their browser.
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user5994461 1966 days ago
To add more info. TLS 1.0 is prohibited from usage by many regulations and it will be immediately flagged by any security audit/tools. The government contract most certainly includes clauses about security and following recommended practices.

In short, anything below IE 11 is de-facto out of the picture.

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