Job Seekers Should Consider Supporting Older Browsers

A few years ago, I went to an interview for a web design position at a government agency. I passed the first interview and was asked to come back to present my work to the director. Once I arrived, the secretary already set up a PC laptop for me to demonstrate my portfolio.

As the director booted up the laptop, he couldn’t find Chrome or Firefox. IE 8 was the only browser available. He said, “Well, this is actually a test to see if your sites work on older browsers.” I said with confidence, “Of course, they would.” Even though I was already using new HTML5 elements at the time, I made sure my site worked on IE 6 as much as it could. I couldn’t have imagined how I would gone through the interview with broken web pages.

With the web, you never know what situation you would run into. It probably doesn’t matter if you’re not intended to work for government or university. Still, if you can support older browser, you should. Progressive enhancement is still very important as proved here.