Defending IE6
Lately I've noticed an increasing trend among web designers/developers who are proudly announcing their decision to drop Internet Explorer 6 from their list of supported browsers, or advocating ways that enforce IE6 users into upgrading. Some of these methods are good for a laugh, some make the usual noise (complicate your markup with upgrade messages), while others are downright scary.
I have as much dispute with IE6 as the next guy - there's no denying that it's holding us back and we'd be better off without it - and I fully support non-disruptive evangelism efforts that encourage IE6 users to upgrade to a modern and more secure browser. It's in their best interest after all.
But the notion that IE6 support should be discontinued, or that its users should be blocked, is dangerously misguided and missing the point. IE6 isn't your problem, and you shouldn't even maintain a list of supported browsers in the first place. If you think I'm talking to you, continue reading.
Via Inclusive Web Design For the Future (by Steven Champeon & Nick Finck):
The goal of Web design is not merely to dazzle, but to deliver information to the widest audience possible. Compromise is possible and desirable, but such compromise should not come at the expense of the user, but rather in terms of the native capabilities of the user's choice of device.
As someone that designs and develops online, one of my primary responsibilities is to deliver an accessible user experience. To my users, and not their choice of access. Their media device, operating system, browser, screen resolution or viewport - there's no denying that these factors should be considered when planning a new project, but they shouldn't ever be treated as constraints that place limitations on the interface or experience. They are merely variables that come together in any number of ways for any number of users. And although you can trend and analyse them today, they will undoubtedly change tomorrow, and next week, and month, and year... you get the picture.
If you think IE6 is today's problem, how will you deal with IE7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 or similar browser generations a year from now when they fail at rendering your standards-compliant CSS3? Cry foul like a stuck record from a bygone era and demand that your users upgrade once again to meet your standards? No, I didn't think so.
Then what's the alternative?
So glad you asked - progressive enhancement of course!
Before you point fingers, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly a PE poster boy candidate. Using this site as a quick example - I built it with best intentions just under a year ago, and despite saying then that I'd adopted a PE strategy, there are so many things that I'd do differently today. But in my defence, that's the very nature of designing for the web: a continuous cycle of learning, adapting and growing.
So PE isn't new to me, but adopting it's methodologies into my workflow has taken longer than I'd like, only because it demands changing a system that I've spent a long time refining, and these changes demand free time that I generally don't have. But with every new project, I take another step closer towards PE utopia. I'd say I'm currently bordering on a solid progressive enhancement strategy, while some thinking around the defunct graceful degradation approach still remains.
See Understanding Progressive Enhancement by Aaron Gustafson for an overview of the subtle differences between the two concepts.
Both graceful degradation and progressive enhancement consider how well a site works in a variety of browsers on a variety of devices. The key is where they place their focus and how this affects workflow.
Although I don't appreciate the sweetness offered by the M&M anology, the article does a good job of introducing the two important follow-ups: Progressive Enhancement with CSS and Progressive Enhancement with JavaScript. Definitive reading!
Ultimately, you will need to take the basic principles and adapt them as best you can into your workflow, all within context of course (if you exclusively develop intranets for IE6 then don't bother). For example, the biggest changes that I've made include:
- Adopting a JavaScript library - together with behavioural separation, jQuery provides me with powerful, unobtrusive and accessible methods for manipulating style and content. I swear by it, but I'm careful to not rely on it.
- Resetting my CSS: see Eric Meyer's Reset Reloaded (and Again) as a starting point, or A Killer Collection of Global CSS Reset Styles if you have the time.
- Sizing my layouts and typography using ems - How to Size Text in CSS (by Richard Rutter) is invaluable.
- Using conditional comments to target IE6 and IE7-specific CSS for style compatibility. Familiarise yourself with IE's hasLayout too - adding one simple rule to your conditional CSS will save you a lot of trouble and time.
- DD_belatedPNG - Medicine for your IE6/PNG headache! - the holy grail of PNG support in IE6
- Being comfortable with the idea that despite the above points, my interface designs are secondary to the content that they deliver. They will never render consistently for all users - but then, they won't know the difference anyway.
And there you have it! No more reason to blame IE6 for your laziness or reluctance to adapt. If you're not convinced, have your say in a comment. I'd also love to hear if and how you're using PE in your own work, or any experiences worth sharing.
More reading:
- leave a comment
52 Comments
I agree, although I am not happy about agreein’ though, ;-) — but you are right: “a continuous cycle of learning, adapting and growing.”
Interesting read. Although I’d second a majority of your statements I wonder where one should draw the line. What about even older browsers than IE6? What about all the Netscapes?
I never discontinued the support of current browsers myself, the project I’m working right now I guess won’t work much in IE6. Problem though, how can I test it? My Win XP desktop has the latest RC of IE8, my Vista notebook has IE7. It’s hard for me to keep up with all the old browsers, even though I never install browsers quickly just when they’re announced in developer circles.
@David: good point on the Netscapes – I think if you can provide them with basic access to your content then you’d be on the right track. Whether that means losing all presentation or behaviour, so be it.
I use IETester for IE6 (it supports IE5.5 too). It’s fairly reliable. XP and Vista only.
I agree that blocking IE6 users is a dumb idea, trying to support old browsers like that doesn’t make any more sense than trying to support IE4, as mentioned in another comment. I like the idea of progressive enhancement as much as possible but IE6 is an 8 year old browser from two versions ago. Many software companies don’t support their own software that old so I won’t either.
@Rob: what exactly do you mean by saying you won’t support IE6? Or any browser for that matter? The very idea of “browser support” is questionable in a PE context. See What Does “Support” Mean? on the Yahoo! Developer Network.
True, but IE6 is sometimes really fuzzy: once my layout blew up because i had a semicolon in my class attribute: had i not found it i could have spent a week trying to fix it, but luckily i did so the whole matter was resolved in a few hours.
L.
You can combine PE with stopping support of IE6.
I agree that enforcing users to change from IE6 is a bad idea, but again that’s different from supporting it.
The problem with your PE list is that two of the list (PNG fix and conditional CSS) are not progressive enhancements at all, they are bug fixes and that’s the point behind dropping support. Why do we have to keep applying bug fixes (and lets be honest, even with conditional comments and knowing the most common IE bugs, debugging css in IE6 is still incredibly timeconsuming) for a browser that is now two generations old?
The argument could be just as easily made that we should just use IE6 conditional comments to make sure we don’t serve any css to IE6 as we know it has trouble handling it. If we know a user agent can’t handle something then the correct PE technique is to not serve it to them. It’s not to spend time correcting their unique issues.
Why have you left out the fact that web apps have to officially support a list of browsers (for customer relations and support reasons) and there are tangible costs involved with supporting those browsers.
When it takes a development team hundreds of man hours to get features working in IE6, then you need to take a good hard look at your IE6 usage and decide if supporting that browser is worth the cost.
Of course, for a blog, your point is completely valid. But most people don’t develop blogs for a living.
Your argument is valid, however I think you’re missing the point of the movement to “drop IE6 support”.
You, being a web designer, understand Progressive Enhancements, however many clients don’t even understand the web at all. When they compare what they are seeing in IE6 with a screenshot of the finished design, they understandably think it is broken and demand it is fixed.
Dropping support for IE6 simply means it won’t be guaranteed to look the same as the designs in a way a client will understand, rather than trying to explain CSS, hacks, box models, alpha transparency etc.
Of course, I do agree we should design P.E., but still encourage people to upgrade.
Your argument is valid, however I think you’re missing the point of the movement to “drop IE6 support”.
You, being a web designer, understand Progressive Enhancements, however many clients don’t even understand the web at all. When they compare what they are seeing in IE6 with a screen shot of the finished design, they understandably think it is broken and demand it is fixed.
Dropping support for IE6 simply means it won’t be guaranteed to look the same as the designs in a way a client will understand, rather than trying to explain CSS, hacks, box models, alpha transparency etc.
Of course, I do agree we should design P.E., but still encourage people to upgrade.
@Steerpike, spot on.
But I guess it comes down to finding a compromise between progressive enhancement and graceful degradation, as I transition between the two. No doubt the time will come when I abandon these fixes and choose to downgrade the IE6 experience, but until then they’re bridging a gap and for me that’s better than nothing at all.
@justin:
Why have you left out the fact that web apps have to officially support a list of browsers
They do? ;)
This comes back to your definition of “support”.
I’m currently involved in a large redesign/redevelopment project for which Internet Explorer/Windows accounts for 95% usage, and of that, IE6 accounts for 30%. The time I’ve spent fixing IE6 bugs is negligible – infact Opera 9 and Chrome have proven just as annoying in some instances.
Also see Garrett Dimon’s post (from 2005 even), The Reality of Progressive Enhancement, that deals with the usage issue. The last comment nails it for me.
I don’t really agree. First, I’d like to make a distinction between web pages like this blog and web applications, such as Basecamp or ETrade. I work on web applications, not web pages, and while I think you could support a PE/IE6 compatible web site, doing so in a full application is a nightmare.
I use JS libraries, I use CSS resets, and conditional comments, but that doesn’t stop a floated paragraph from appearing in the wrong place on the page when I use IE6. How much time am I supposed to spend fixing that, or using non-standard CSS or JS to make pngs and hasLayout do their things ? I’m not willing to spend 20% of my teams time every week making things work in IE6. It’s a huge waste of resources and a large increase in the complexity of the code as we try to load alternate IE stylesheets and put things in conditional comments. Not to mention all the time required to maintain an environment to test IE6 in.
In my world, PE means extra work. If I’m writing ajax to load data dynamically into a DIV, but I can’t get that DIV to appear anywhere sane on the page in IE6, I’m not going to spend another hour getting that content to load in a pop-up as well for people that can’t upgrade an 8 year old hunk of software.
And I’m not living in a fantasy world, my site has real customers who pay us real money, and while we hate to turn some of them away, we’re getting to the point that we can’t spend 20% of our dev budget on 10% of our users. We could spend that time making the site better for everyone.
What’s the problem with ’supported browsers’? It’s a line in the sand, just yesterday a user reported that some part of our site was broken. But they were using IE5.5, so we could *very easily* ignore that problem.
I’m sure I’ll be bitching about IE7 users in 8 years too, and FF3 users in 5 years. The point is, you have to draw a line. Upgrading your software is part of being a computer user. I’ll wager the overlap between all the IE6 users out there and all the zombies infected with conflicker is incredibly high. Keeping up with the latest patches is being a responsible citizen.
I concur – As an SEO, I am continually looking at website stats and I can quickly say that a HUGE amount of traffic to websites, in South Africa and International, comes from users using IE6, so booting it would be a really really bad move :/
I hate to admit it, but this is a good post. While trying to stick it to those twice convicted monopolists who control IE6, we’re hurting our users.
A better way would be a campaign to educate users about the impact of the choices they make. Which browser / OS combinations really are the most secure. Why switch. How to switch.
We need to inform users, not punish them.
On the one hand I agree that content should be king, and should be 100% available using any client, including text based browsers.
On the other hand, the blatant disregard for standard adoption by a twice convicted monopolist should not go unpunished.
The technology community needs to get out more and inform “the rest” of the web using population about their choices, and provide the means for them to upgrade browsers, based on security and aesthetics. We should even take this a step further, promoting a movement off Windows and onto Linux desktop environments. The strong move in User Experience Design within the open source community is not making Linux a truly better OS than Windows.
I’m one of the founders of a company that is hoping to make user experience the centre piece of open software development. Our users should always come first, but they also need truthful council, because who really has the time to follow technology closely enough to get it on their own?
@John: I work on web applications too. I don’t think there’s as much of a difference as you’d like to believe, just because the behaviour of one is more complicated technically, has greater functionality or is of a larger scale than the other. They both provide the same client-side challenges and demands.
If I’m writing ajax to load data dynamically into a DIV, but I can’t get that DIV to appear anywhere sane on the page in IE6
…then you probably have bigger problems to deal with. What happens when your AJAX request fails for whatever reason? Is your data still accessible or does it break the experience? How much time do you waste testing for all of these scenarios and dealing with support-related issues? Would you save on dev budget if you didn’t use AJAX in the first place?
The simple beauty of PE is that you’ve already dealt with these questions upfront by supporting a baseline standard that is accessible and usable by everyone. How you choose to build on that base – in sand or not – is up to you.
we can’t spend 20% of our dev budget on 10% of our users. We could spend that time making the site better for everyone.
By “everyone” you mean the 90% of your users that conform to your requirements? I don’t think it’s fair to expect the other 10% of your users to suffer from your negligence in not adopting a sustainable design/development strategy that benefits everyone.
What is your site URL? Keen to check it out.
@coda, you are correct that the difference is really one of scale. But it’s that scale that makes the difference. It means more complexity and more testing. The single greatest source of complexity on the front end is IE6 support.
Now to be clear, we currently support IE6. But it’s a huge waste of time, and I’m campaigning against it. Our code would be significantly more maintainable of we didn’t have to put in workaround after workaround for IE6. We’re not really punishing IE6 people, is spending 10 minutes upgrading your browser, and as a side effect making yourself more secure, really punishment ?
We don’t support any other 8 year old browsers.
To be clear, I can get that DIV to appear properly, and I have, but is that really worth an hour of my time ? And what about the next hour required when the design changes ? You ask what happens when an AJAX request fails, the same thing we do when any request fails: display an error. AJAX isn’t special like that, and, due to the good work of the prototype folks, AJAX is the same in IE6 as anywhere. AJAX isn’t the issue. It’s CSS and JS.
I doubt we’d save much if we didn’t use AJAX, but we’d certainly be relegated to 80th in the marketplace because the performance of our site would be so abysmal.
Software has system requirements. You don’t get Vista if you’re on a 286, and I don’t see anybody crying to let the old 286ers use The simple beauty of PE is that you’ve already dealt with these questions upfront by supporting a baseline standard that is accessible and usable by everyone.Vista.
I can’t reveal the identity of the site I work for, public statements by employees require legal oversight, and I’d rather not deal with that.
I’m also in a situation at the moment where I have no other choice than to cater for IE6, because it’s the company standard (at least until the end of this year). On the other hand, IE7 will be the standard in a bit, and there will be quite a few users accessing the site with a plethora of other browsers.
That being said, after cleaning up, my IE6 stylesheet was surprizingly small! IE6 support only becomes tricky when you want to to COOL STUFF™.
However, IE6’s time has come. Even Balmer agrees. I’ve taken a different approach on my personal website. Leave everything broken – as an example – with a message telling the user that the majority of websites they’ll visit in future will look just as bad.
The resources you’ve provided may just force me to spend some time changing this and supporting IE6 anyway.
I really like the way your list-items are not highlighted in IE6. Also that grey square around Twitter icon (which is .png) looks great! That definitely is cool! Thanks, IE6.
@FruJo: I really like how you kept your comment relevant to my post! Thanks.
As one of the co-creators of IE6 Update, I am reluctant to agree with your post, but I would be a fool to not acknowledge some of the excellent points you’ve made. :D
I have often thought about the point you brought up, about what we’ll do when we’re trying to get users to upgrade from Safari 3 or Firefox 2. For now, I think the Safari/FF demographic is what I like to call “browser aware” (meaning, they’re able to make the distinction between their browser and the Internet) and capable of upgrading themselves frequently through the power of their respective communities and supporting companies. That could always change in the future as they gain more market share, but that has yet to be seen.
I think a lot of it comes down to regular releases, and I blame a lot of the IE6 situation on Vista. After the release of XP and IE6, Microsoft really dropped the ball and stopped offering new browsers like they had in years prior. It always takes awhile for users to migrate from one browser to the next, but with such a massive span of time between XP and Vista, web standards moved on while Microsoft’s browsers didn’t. There was a bright side to all this though; It loosened up their monopoly and allowed for a healthier, more diversified browser market. I’m also very happy to see that they’re picking up again and making regular releases (IE8 is a great release, and if you’ll notice, IE6 Update links to the IE8 page by default).
It’s a complex and multi-faceted issue, and I’m not thrilled about the fact that users have to suffer as a result. However, I think a push in the right direction not only helps, but is necessary. I strongly believe that once we rid ourselves of IE6, innovation will be able to move a bit more briskly, at least for the next few years.
I think an issue like this can’t be generalized.
Absolutely scale has everything to do with it. If IE6 is making up less than 1% of your user base, why bother? If they are making up 10% of your user base, I suggest taking an approach that is appropriate for 10% of your user base. If they are 50% of your user base, you should take an entirely different approach.
I find 90% of my work is designing and building web applications, not websites. I have had the unique opportunity to do some exclusive iPhone stuff as well as build and spec prototypes web apps for some major oil companies (requiring all major browsers to be supported).
When it comes to dynamic web pages, that require, say animation and some intense custom built classes, IE6 can become a serious nightmare. Partly because it sucks, and partly because its debugging tools (sans) are terrible. IE6 was never intended to run JS to the scale it has been pushed in many of todays web applications. If a user is running IE6, they are probably running a very slow computer, which compounds the problem even more. Why should a web application, which should be treated more like an application, and less like a site, be forced to support a system that was never intended to run at that high of a level?
Anyways, I wont defend IE6, and I won’t completely shut it out either. I think decisions like this need to be properly thought out and reflected upon, on a site by site, or app by app basis.
this is joke? why to save something which is underdeveloped? We can still respect it somehow, but to safe? Human kind should not regress.
I cannot disagree enough regarding PE. It’s a wonderful concept, which, as it is with the various flavors of HTML, XHTML, CSS and all of Microsoft’s attempts to control the internet via Internet Explorer, falls flat on the rocky ground of reality.
In essence, a web site designer, following PE, would be required to hack code in such a way that content is always visibly viable on every browser, every device. Not only is that not practical or pragmatic, it is virtually impossible.
The cost of such development efforts would make many site projects rot in rust, without sufficient resources to complete a site that must hold to some arbitrary and utopian nirvana toward every man’s code.
It can’t happen, therefore, it won’t happen.
In other words, developers, designers, content makers, have to draw a line in the browser sand and move forward from there, proffering any apology at best, and a wistful wink at the least.
The world of the internet is a dynamic. It changes. Deal with it. Move on.
Otherwise, adhering to a religious order which requires uniform access will drive adherents crazy as they attempt to get their sites in line with the remaining and ancient 8 bit color restrictions and 640v480 screens.
Secure banking web sites have more incentive than most. The security issues of IE6 are numerous and you’d expect them to be first to drop IE6… but just the opposite — they often actively encourage it’s use by making their sites near IE only.
Case in point – Investec’s online banking site – not the front-page, but the secure transactional site. It won’t work in Opera or Safari – which affects around 9% of people (as of writing). Their entry keypad is browser specific code:
style="Behavior:url(/layout/htc/Keypad_1.htc);-moz-binding:url('/layout/htc/Keypad_1.xml#Keypad');"
Neither the risk of fraud nor IE6’s dwindling market share (around 18%, 2009-03) appear to persuade Investec.
Large organizations have their own problems. Far from flying the IE banner, I’d guess that Investec’s front-end was developed in-house in an artificially controlled intranet where neither historical precedent, interoperability nor accessibility are in the corporate vocabulary.
(The links got somewhat mangled in the second paragraph – I think by the commenting system. Markdown would be easier than writing raw HTML. I didn’t get any confirmation that the post was successfully submitted – it just put me back on the same page. That was with Safari 3.2.1. Reading with Firefox 3.0.8/9, the left hand column is entirely missing when zooming in (to make the text large enough to read on this screen. No scrollbar provided.)
LOL…. I recon I’m going with these.
But seriously, I think you should spend only as much time on IE6 support as to make your user experience over the lifetime of the project worthwhile.
Hey…you made mention of IETester and I used to use that too but recently I’ve found IECollection.
Believe it or not but it lets you install versions of IE1, IE2, IE3, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, IE6 (two different builds), IE7 and IE8
Just do a Google for “IECollection” and click on the Softpedia link
If so few people new the difference between their browser and the internet what would be the result of one or two major websites (think Yahoo, MSN, ESPN) who used a js alert to prompt their users to upgrade to IE8?
After about 5 min of trolling saveie.com i was dying laughing. Especially the quotes about supporting ie6 adding so many hours to their work, which in turn meant they could charge higher prices, which meant they could support themselves through the recession.
Just the fact that we’re having this discussion (and thousands of others like it according to a google search) about whether or not to comply with standards or revert to old tricks is somewhat appalling.
Well, for me it’s back to designing my site to work on an abacus.
I couldn’t agree more with you. Great article!
Coda, you have hit the nail on the head as it were. I have often discussed at great length the pros and cons of using different browsers but, it ultimately comes down to what the user chooses and what they are familiar with, some might not be saavy enough to download Firefox or Opera but, even then if they use them its no guarantee that the site will look the same to every visitor.
You should make sure the content is accessible and usable for the widest possible audience and not focus on any particular device or access medium, because ultimately its about what you are offering in terms of content and media that they will be looking for.
I don’t agree.
Please, everyone drop support for IE6.
I use DD_belatedPNG, jQuery and conditional comments to target IE6, and these have worked well for me so far. I first used DD_belatedPNG in Tweetimony and it truly is the holy grail of PNG fixes for IE6!
I admit, I too have elected to drop support for IE6, however that doesn’t mean I’m going to block IE6 users. I think that is just downright mean :)
I guess I’ll start to adopt PE too. Thanks for the writeup!
On new project contracts, I advocate specifying IE6 support as an optional extra. If the client wants it, its gonna cost extra, and the client has to indemnify me of any liability should their project be compromised because of IE6 voodoo.
Here’s the thing: No matter how confident you are about your technical prowess and ability to get IE6 to toe the line, something is going to break; and supporting it means more time and effort on your side. Who pays for that?
As others have said before on this post, this is not about punishing IE6 users. See it more as constructive discouragement from using a dangerous weapon browser. Layout issues aside, IE6 is so full of exploitable holes that web app. developers – especially those contracting on projects – are wary of accommodating it. And if they do, the allocation of costs and liability should be made clear to the client.
I wouldn’t attribute the reluctance of many developers for continuing IE support to laziness. It’s expensive in many ways and if the client wants it, they’ll have to fork out for it.
My opinion is that IE6 should be relegated to the scrapyard as soon as possible and pussyfooting around old browser users is only going to prolong the problem. Where will we draw the line on PE? Can I dust off my 8086 from 1982 and demand modern application support for it? Why won’t developers accommodate it? Is it because they’re just lazy?
Progressive enhancement would work if IE6 did NOT interpret CSS, but it DOES and it does wrongly.
not sure if I agree but good article. great site too btw!
we are stuck with IE6 and we will develop for it. So leave me to whine as hack this thing to work….
I agree in principle that in South Africa IE6 should still be developed for. I don’t see this trend continuing for more than the next year. At some point we must stop supporting it as it is becoming more expensive by the day to keep on supporting this dinosaur.
Should a client want to have IE6 supported, I would even consider charging additional moneys.
[...] Defending IE6 via Coda Coza Did you enjoy this post? If so please share and allow others to enjoy it: [...]
I have a great idea. All those in the web design/dev arena decide on a date when we all stop using ie6. It will be a unified push to get rid of the enemy. I think we have pandered to its oppresive regine far too long, lets stand up for “ie must die day”
And for proper PE minded development, you’d have to start developing for the least capable. Any web developer knows that’s simply impossible – as IE6 does not follow many standards you would be actually breaking your code on all decent browsers. So we’re forced to use graceful degradation instead, writing standards based code and then fixing the holes in IE6. That’s were the problem lies, it’s added cost that could be better invested in improving the UX and not making an old quirky browser behave. Supporting IE6 adds (financial, time and interface-related) limitations, it can’t be “treated” any other way.
Device/browser indepence, yes, but not for the broken ones.
Great post, I’ve always argued that supporting Internet Explorer 6 and many browsers is our job and we shouldn’t complain, but lately it seems that fewer and ewer people are using IE6, so I’ve stopped supporting it, I still test it to see if the sites can be read correctly, but when it comes to positioning issues etc, I think the users will see more and more that their browser isn’t doing the right job and hopefully upgrade to IE8, Firefox, Opera or Safari.
Microsoft need to start creating browsers that comply with the standards set with W3C, all they seem to care about is being bigger and better when the only thing they’re doing is creating browsers that people consistently dislike. I don’t have anything against Microsoft and am somewhat of a veteran, beta testing their software (operating systems etc) and defending them, but it’s clear that they need to stop worrying about what a browser looks like, and start conforming to the other standards, not just the aesthetic, but they way they work.
Here’s an idea, stop working on those crappy ideas such as that singing rubbish, stop spending money on developing the next operating system, and work on the software that runs on said operating systems instead.
God, I just got annoyed with myself.
People are angry at IE6 because it didn’t even attempt to be standards compliant. It in fact tried to break standards as much as possible in order to make life difficult for other, standards compliant browsers on the market and thus enforce MSFT’s ill-gotten monopoly in the browser wars at the time.
IE 6 does not deserve to be supported because it personifies pure evil.
IE 6 must die!
Users must upgrade, the damn thing is almost 10 years old :)).
Altough a compelling read, it did not change my policies on not supporting IE6 and other devs should join in the hanging of IE6.
However, the articles on progressiv enhancement do make good points on proofing your web site when new browsers apear.
But really, IE6 support in 2009? Get serious.
If you think IE6 is today’s problem, how will you deal with IE7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 or similar browser generations a year from now when they fail at rendering your standards-compliant CSS3? Cry foul like a stuck record from a bygone era and demand that your users upgrade once again to meet your standards? No, I didn’t think so.
The difference is most people using Firefox or Safari, are typically users that will actually upgrade/update their browser.
Good article btw!
Hello everyone.
Thank data Defending IE6. That lead to great no thanks. :)
Powerful words, and one that should be taken with salt, yes IE6 is the monster but it not the users who deserve to be loaded with the burden. We live in Africa one of the most deprived continent when it comes to information so we the designers/developers should look into educating the user so that we at least can have a new age user that can understand the importance of upgrading they tools that let them surf the net safely and faster.
Thanks for the article, but IMHO Internet Explorer is a cancer on the web. It should retire just like Netscape.
I am a freelance web developer and I don’t see anything wrong with encouraging users to upgrade to new browser version. You don’t have to turn them away, but maybe explain that certain applications may not work properly in IE6. I have spent many hours trying to make modern CSS code work for IE6, and it’s very frustrating when it’s just not possible. It’s really not a big deal to upgrade a browser, and it should be encouraged in order for programs to work properly. There also have been many security issues with IE6, so why use it if It’s a piece of CRAP!!! As a web professional, it’s part of MY job to keep up with technology, so why shouldn’t the USERS have to keep up with technology? I refuse to have to use special code in my CSS to make a lousy browser work right!
Come on, people have to update many things during the life, so why shouldn’t update a browser, it’s free and take minutes.
I can´t understand how the most known and wealthy software corporation in the world did programed such terrible things.
If your client wants his site works on IE6, the project should be much more expensive.
It’s like trying to see a widescreen movie on a black-and-white TV
Leave a Comment
Your e-mail address is required, but will not be published.
01 April 2009
Mario Luevanos03:46 am
I agree… great post.