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It is time for us to say farewell to Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) support for Avada. As a team, we pride ourselves in working extra hard to ensure that you, as the end-user, have the best possible experience working with the Avada Website Builder. That includes what your visitors experience when visiting your website.
Since the release of Avada in 2012, browser compatibility has been and continues to be a cornerstone of our development roadmap and evolution; as a team, we have made the decision to end IE11 support for Avada. Avada’s current version is 7.11.11.
What is Browser Compatibility, and Why is it Important?
The most commonly used internet browsers are Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and Opera. Browser compatibility is about how a website page or post looks in each of these browsers. In the field of website development and maintenance, compatibility is essential for a reliable end-user experience. Firefox will render a website differently than Chrome or Internet Explorer will. Hence, ensuring that your website is compatible across different browser types is crucial. Each browser type will interpret the document (code) differently when it converts it into HTML, resulting in a well-formatted web page for users to interact with.
Ensuring that Avada is cross-browser compatible is crucial so that your website’s features and functionality are highlighted correctly to your visitors, who will invariably use different browser-OS combinations, devices, and assistive tools.
Why Not Support All Browser Types and Versions?
If it were practical to do so, it would happen; however, it isn’t. Most modern internet browsers are predictable in their behavior because of the various organizations that create the browser developers’ coding standards. The time it takes for development teams to bring their browser up to these standards through iterated releases can differ significantly. It is also not practical (for various reasons) for browser developers to alter their old (deprecated) browsers to meet evolving standards and web technologies, and when you view a web page in an old browser, it may look or behave differently than intended by the website developer.
Why Have We Decided to End IE11 Support?
In short, because it is important to us that anyone that works with Avada on WordPress or visits an Avada-powered website has the best possible user experience. IE11 does not provide the website visitor with a modern and reliable experience.
Because web standards and technologies are continually evolving, and so is the Avada Website Builder, it is essential for our team to direct their efforts where it matters most, In this case, modern browser rendering. Browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and even Microsoft Edge are evolving and continually being updated and improved to match web standards, and this is a good thing. Internet Explorer on the other hand is not evolving, in fact Microsoft advises against using this browser as the deault browser choice. Furthermore, the Microsoft 365 Apps team is saying goodbye to IE11 by August 17, 2021.
WordPress.org has been discussing about when to end support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) and since the publishing of this post has officially declared that IE11 support will end with the release of WordPress 5.8. As summarized in this post the current state of Internet Explorer usage among WordPress users and references three metrics that clearly indicate a decline bringing it down to below 1%:
In Summary
Standards, technologies, and requirements are continually changing. With these changes come improvements for modern web browsers that allow website and framework developers to continue pushing the envelope on what is possible. At Avada HQ, this mindset is at the core of what we do and envisage for Avada. Ad meliora.
