My point is that once Microsoft no longer supports any version of Windows that runs IE as it's default there's a very valid reason to stop supporting it as a 'mainstream browser', and using it to avoid technologies that aren't supported by it is somewhat dubious reasoning.
If users with IE6 and users with IE11 get a boring HTML-only-but-still-basically-functional website, and users with Edge 15 get the fancy WASM enhanced website, then that's fine in my opinion.
So even though Windows 10 still ships IE the fact that it's not a default is enough to not support it? Bad news for Firefox and Chrome then.
Using Firefox or Chrome is a step sideways to use an alternative browser. That's great. The more up-to-date browsers people use the better in my opinion.
Using IE is a step backwards usually to support a specific technology that isn't supported by other browsers (and IE is often used along side another browser if that's the case), or because the user is looking for a particular experience. I don't see either of those reasons to avoid using WASM on a new website so long as there's also a fallback to support browsers without it, even if that's a limited version of the site.
Windows 7 support doesn't end until 2020 and as someone pointed out on HN this a few days ago, Windows 10 IoT and LTSB don't come with Edge, they do come with IE11. Those aren't meant for desktop use but some people do use LTSB there and they could be used for browser-based digital signage, kiosks, etc.
I agree that older browsers can get basically functional while others can get a progressively enhanced experience but a lot developers hate the idea of making something twice. Also, for what WASM is best suited for, I don't know that there's a point to making a basic, HTML-only version.
Edit: I wasn't thinking about WASM support through polyfill, I don't know what the performance difference is typically like.
https://www.netmarketshare.com is biased towards US corporate market but doesn't represents the real world. Check wikipedia stats for more generic stats worldwide. What really matters though is the stats of your web site, not the rest. eg. debian.org does not have the same stats as msdn.com.
Ha! Don't we all wish. Here's the marketshare numbers from this month [1].
- Windows 7: 43%
- Windows 10: 30%
- Windows XP: 6%
- Windows 8: 5%
And companies are going to be buying extended support for 7 no different than XP so you'll have to wait out that 5 years.
[1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...