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Is Internet Explorer 6/7 Support Required Now?
k33l0r writes "Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, I find myself wondering whether we (Web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and IE7. Especially when creating Web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade? Recently I and my colleagues had to decide whether it was worth our time to try to support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separate page explaining that the site is not accessible with IE 6 or 7. This was easy once we saw from our analytics that fewer than 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all. Have you had to make a choice like this? If so, what was your decision and what was the reasoning behind it?"
You could just let IE6 "try its best". And use a big red notice bar at the top with a link explaining it.
How well do your current pages support Lynx?
Does that answer the question?
And how much code is there that is IE6 specific that IE7/8 isnt compatible with?
Depends on your clients. If you're talking about a mostly technical crowd? No, probably don't need IE6. If you're talking about a site for corporate users, yea, you need IE6. There are many major companies out there still running IE6 on XP. It sucks, they should all switch to Firefox (Or Chrome, or Opera, or anything but IE), but unfortunately most don't have a choice in the matter. Oh and if you're trying to sell people something, then most likely yet again.
Of course it all depends on what your usage stats/analytic say. Personally, I've not supported IE6 for a long time, but then on most of my sites Firefox is more than 50% of the market.
snowulf.com
IE8 is still fairly new. My workplace hasn't yet authorized its use, as some of the web applications used in our business do not work properly with it. Thus, we are all stuck with IE7 for the time being. My recommendation is to support the last two major versions of each browser. There are very good reasons why users may not yet be able to use the latest version.
I'm seeing about 12% of IE users (6% of all users) on IE6. Almost none on IE5 and below. I would say dump IE5, but make IE6 usable at a minimum.
All of my sites now use browser detection for Firefox 2.* and IE versions prior to 8 and sends the user to a page giving them download options. It'd be nice if more people did the same.
Actually, no browser should be explicitly/directly supported. Only standards need to be supported. The browsers and their makers should be forced to comply.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
At my web development company we officially stopped testing our sites on IE6 last year. However, we do still test sites in IE6 when we know the client is specifically using that browser (so they don't complain). However, IE7 is still pretty common among XP users, so we still have to test all sites on IE7 and IE8.
Though as far as we're concerned, IE6 is dead.
google.slashdot
We're a web company, making different kind of websites for different kind of people. Which means we make anything from small "Mr and Mrs Smith My Pink Pony" kind of sites, to web shops with 5k+ transactions per day.
We recently (within the last year or so) put a note on our contracts, stating we don't support IE6 anymore, unless the customer is actually paying extra for making the appropiate changes. It was just too much a hassle to manage all the hacks and workarounds all the time.
So basically, we state we only support the latest generation of browsers, included IE7 since the migration to IE8 isn't complete yet. A lot of people still on IE7.
And IE7 isn't TOO bad, the work arounds is mainly CSS, the rest is worked out by MooTools, Prototype, etc.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
I worked for a federal agency and just this past summer we were finally upgraded to IE 7 - a lot of places where security is tight the IT people can be overly cautious when upgrading software, meaning employees could be years behind. If your site is something I need to access (technical documentation, etc) I'd be pretty annoyed when it wasn't my fault I couldn't access it because I'm not allowed to update my own machine.
Pages directed at 'technical audiences' often are composed of vanilla HTML and/or links to PDF files. There are of course exceptions to this, but a large proportion of the pages you described would easily support every modern browser.
For the exceptions to this, I think that there comes a point where it does not make sense to continue support for legacy systems. Now seems to be a good time to end support for old versions of IE, since this recent security fiasco that has put greater attention on upgrading to more secure browsers.
That's what it comes down to: corporations. There are still too many 10,000+ employee corporations out there that run Windows XP with the Flash 7 plug-in and IE6. You have to support that or there is no client.
your thinking is the typical fail thinking that persists here on /. that technology sets the agenda not the customer.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
My employer hasn't switched from IE6. Does anyone have tips on how to convince them to move to IE8? We have exactly zero software which requires IE6; in fact, some of our software doesn't work properly with it.
... as you've done. What percentage of those IE users are still running IE6/7? Then ask yourself, "Am I willing to lose X% of my visitors to save Y% of coding effort?"
For any typical website which depends on traffic for revenue, I'd say you'd have to be nuts to cut support for IE 6/7; thats about 35% of the visitors to your site. The fact that only 5% (and not 62%) of your visitors use IE at all, however, indicates that you're not running a typical site (or there's an error in your metrics collection).
I (attempt) to keep my websites standards compliant. If it works in your browser, great. If not, not my problem. I'm not jumping through hoops to help support companies actively ignoring agreed upon standards.
However, I'm also not financially dependent on my websites...
"Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, I find myself wondering whether we (Web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and IE7..."
What a shame. It took a move by a large company like Google to get you to wonder about supporting IE 6, rather than reaching this conclusion through your own experience and common sense. Of course, this shame is also a blessing, as I'm hoping that it will get others like you to question the same, and hopefully companies will all follow suit.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Especially when creating Web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers?
I'd think that most 'technical audiences' would already be running a non-obsolete browser if they had any say in the matter...
Not everyone has the option of installing/running alternate browsers (think: locked down corporate PC's, etc.)
*Especially* with technical audiences, there's a larger than average chance that you'd lock these people out completely by preventing them to use an older browser. It's more likely that grandma doesn't realize that her browser is ancient than it would be for your typical techie...
Come on. Some people still love IE6. Moreover, I believe IE5.5 is still used by some people.
Well, that's my assumption based on the phrase "These versions include Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service 4" mentioned in http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/980088.mspx , but perhaps that's bad logic.
Have you had to make a choice like this Yes we have made a choice. And that choice is to maintain support.
We are an agricultural company at cutting edge DNA profiling for the beef breeds industry. Despite this our clients are farmers. IE 6 runs at 60% of browser share for us.
Sorry, but its a fact of life.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Get rid if IE6? Boy I wish we could. But we can't.
Our 4-man startup software company targets medium sized corporate customers (250-2500 seats) and they are still using lots of old computers with IE6. There are many reasons but a few of the most noticable ones are:
1.) a ton of old Line-of-Business applications still uses IE6 for presentation.
2.) a surprisingly large amount of corporate software uses embedded IE6 components in their GUI.
Most of these corporations have installed newer browsers on their machines (some of them even installed non-MS browsers) but IE6 is still there - under the surface - because critical business applications are still depending on it.
All those Line-of-Business applications are extremely hard to remove. They often solve critical business needs so nobody wants to throw them away. They work and "do the things they were built to do". And since they just work there is no budget to replace them with somerhing else. The people who created them have left the company years ago so nobody really knows exactly how and why they are implemented.
But everbody knows this about their old LOB apps: they neeed IE6, they still work as intended, nobody can tell how to make an alternate solution, and there is no budget to analyze or re-implement them (and why would anybody want to - right?).
I imagine this is quite common for many corporations around the world and not just in my region.
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
The stuff I really want on the web would work fine with Netscape Navigator 3.x and the correct plugins.
Do us all a favor and get rid of CSS, XHTML, and all the other alphabeet soup. Oh, and stop using target _blank. I've held out quite a while, but I think I'm finally going to install one of those script/tag-stripping proxies just so I can get rid of target _blank.
I wanna new window, I'll click right-click and chose "open in new window". That's what it's there for. Oh, and how's that back button compatability thing working out? No? Still not there? Wankers.
Oh, and "get off my lawn".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Remember: The only thing you can achieve by supporting those “browsers”, is to be an enabler. Basically the only reason those people still use IE, is because they can. And the only reason they still can, is because you still code for IE 6/7. And the only reason you do that, is because people still use them.
Do you see the circular logic here?
Someone has to break the cycle. And you can bet your ass that it won’t be the users. It’s your job. It’s mine. After all we’re the experts for a reason.
Don’t be an ass. Be nice. Don’t push them. Pull them. Coming from IE6 to a full-featured modern browser with HTML5-enabled sites, is freakn’ great! It’s like opening the box of your shiny new electronics device (or whatever you like) and playing with it all day long. Get that feeling across! And you will see them getting dragged in in the euphoria, switching in the blink of an eye.
People don’t change anything if they think they don’t have to. It’s called efficiency. But sometimes it’s bad. E.g. when there is a lack of information.
So if you think that they should switch, then just code close to the standards. If they want to use their site, it takes them five minutes to install a recent browser, and they know it for years.
Still supporting IE 6/7 is similar to acting like those EA managers, who would never dare to do something innovative, edgy, fresh or even slightly offending, to get a target group as big as possible... and then ending up with a shitty target group because the result of your work is bland, average, plastic-fantastic, non-innovative, boring shit that nobody hates but that also nobody loves.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
My employer hasn't switched from IE6.
It's OK, your new employer might use IE8.
(my employer doesn't know I have a netbook here, I get to use Firefox :)
I’ll be an example to you:
I left my well-payed day-job because my boss (who was a very powerful player on the net) wouldn’t let go of IE6. (I had to write webapps for that piece of shit.)
I’m happy and would I have the choice, I’d do the exact same thing again. Just earlier. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Let the users sort the rest out. Be very upfront with why things break in IE.
HTTP/1.1 400
to revisit with a real browser. If GMail, FaceBook, Twitter all give a "the browser you are using is not standards-compliant" message, then the browser-maker will change his stance.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Then you can use your old ass browser and be happy. But seriously I'm always using the latest RC of whatever (no brand war bullshit) it is I use, doesn't matter if it OS or browser. Get with the times or become a dinosaur and everyone will forget about you. One of my local suppliers just upgraded from DOS (I shit you not) don't know what version to XP and at least now I don't have to put up with them rebooting 3 different POS terminals before they can actually bill something out to the company account. Waiting 20 minutes for an invoice is not acceptable I'm a contractor I don't get paid by the hour while 20 year old machines churn away wasting my time.
Poop stinks and so do you=:)
They'll just quit the fray once enough number of people respect standards.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
I'd love to ditch IE6. But where I work, it's not reasonable. Even if only 5% of our users are running it, quitting support for IE6 would mean tens of thousands of dollars a month. I think some sites have the clout to try and force the users to upgrade, but not us. They can simply go somewhere else.
There will definitely come a time when the cost of supporting those users will be less than the revenue they bring in. Soon, but not quite yet. So, I'm still spending the 11th hour before roll-out pathetically debugging some hard to get at IE Glitch.
At least our policy has gone from "IE6 must be pixel perfect" to "it just can't look like ass, at least where the site doesn't already". And for certain behind the scenes features (analytics, content tests) we do not have to support it.
I would argue that for more technical sites (ours is not from the point of view or the browser) ie6 will certainly hinder progress and is likely a liability. I don't mention ie7 here because, for the most part, it's okay. It works. At least for our sites.
our visitors still come 30% with IE6 so: decision is yours: do you want that that 1/3 of your possible customers cannot view the page properly
God's gift to chicks
As a developer, you need to do what the bosses ask of you. You may argue a bit about it at the beginning, especially if you can back your argument up (vulnerabilities, extra costs, missing features...), but once the choice is made you've got to suck it up.
My brother works for one of those infamous IE6-bound large corps. It hurts them quite badly (to the point where most users have installed firefox on the side and try and use it whenever it works), but they've got so much specific stuff (activeX controls, .NET, just plian web stuff) invested in IE6 that switching would be a multimillion-dollar proposition. They're reluctant to even start phasing it out for new developments, since that would mean supporting 2 browsers instead of just the one.
Now, if you're your own boss and got a choice, you need to think carefully about who your users are, how willing they'll be to change browsers just for you...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
IE 6 is about a decade old, while IE 7 just came out three years or so ago - why are you lumping them together? I'm not fond of IE 7, but from a coding point of view it's far less broken than IE 6.
On a related note, I suggest you shouldn't plan on writing pages that require HTML 5 canvas support for a while yet.
C'mon, I've ranted about IE as much as anyone - but seriously, are you going to hold Firefox or Webkit up to the same standards? Heck, Webkit seems to be pushing the envelope the hardest... so maybe you need to deny access to anyone who's not using a bleeding-edge Chrome or Safari build.
#DeleteChrome
You could alternatively use a widget from http://ie6update.com/ it's quite a smartass idea. However it's meant for ie6 only, which really is obsolete now. I believe that IE 7 should still be supported. But it's your business and money.
Set your boss's default homepage to http://www.crashie.com/
There are very few situations where it would make sense for an end user to continue using IE6. The only one that occurs to me off the top of my head is if you're in the unenviable position of being stuck on Win2K, and relying on mission-critical Intranet applications which absolutely require IE. Even in this case, Firefox can be installed alongside IE6 (and would be a much safer choice for accessing the public Internet anyway). Given these factors, I think dropping IE6 support for a public web site (in the sense of no longer continuing to test changes to the site against IE6) is reasonable.
Dropping support for IE7 seems rather premature to me though; it still has a sizable installed base. Furthermore, its CSS implementation -- while still not perfect -- is much less broken than IE6's, so it requires less effort to ensure that pages render correctly in IE7.
Don't explicitly break IE6/7, just don't kill yourself to making your site 100% compatible.
Use IE6NoMore
As for corporate sites...I haven't seen much of an issue, honestly. The last few big corps I've worked with that still use IE6 also have Firefox installed. Yes, their desktop machines come with 2 browsers and IE6 is used almost explicitly with a couple of legacy apps that rely on ActiveX.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
What happened to the tried and tested option of ignoring the browsers you don't want to support; web1.0 was built on these sound principles. When we could not access the site due to the webmaster (remember them?) implementing the latest Netscape tag, we would assume it was our fault and upgrade.
I blame agile development practices for worrying about what the user can handle: pussies.
Simple answer to the above question: what's the cost of continued support of $OBSOLETE_BROWSER_X compared with the revenue your website makes from customers with $OBSOLETE_BROWSER_X who won't switch to $SANE_BROWSER and rather abscond tom $EVIL_COMPETITOR.
I just started working for a governement agency and we only support IE6 apparently. Working with JSF/ICEfaces atm.
I respectfully disagree.
The customer is not always right. (especially if the service in question is free) Can users dictate their needs to developers? They can try, but if they want the moon, they're going to be disappointed. IE6 needs to be unsupported eventually. Or do you propose continuing support for IE1-5 too? The only reason we don't see them in use today is because they (and they OS they run on) are deprecated. Stop laughing, I'm quite serious.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Microsoft is phasing out support for Netscape 4, in retaliation for Google declaring Internet Explorer 6 a "pustulent syphilitic drunken crack whore with no mates. And bad breath. Who smells funny."
Google has given up bothering to support IE6 on its sites, directing the doubtless hideously virus-infected users of the browser to download another browser. Any other browser. "Lynx will give you a vastly superior YouTube experience. Now it will, anyway."
"The Mozilla Foundation has completely failed to fix problems in Netscape 4 that have been around for years," said Microsoft marketing marketer Jonathan Ness. "Furthermore, Firefox gets just as many hacks as Internet Explorer, and pay no attention to my lengthening nose."
In December, Chinese hackers exploited a weak spot in IE6 that Microsoft had only known about since September. Following this, governments worldwide told people to get the hell off IE6, except Britain, which relies on IE6 to leak data when there are insufficient funds for USB sticks or train journeys for civil servants.
Web designers around the world welcomed Google's move, but have not given up their Bill Gates dartboards just yet. "'That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.' Steve Ballmer said that, you know."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
easy. tell them microsoft is ending updates and support for ie6 in july.
therefore if they stick with ie6, they'll be stuck in a deadend.
the early they switch, the more money they'll save later on.
Ask Google what site they were sent to for that exploit then go around visiting it on as many computers as you can find at work. Something will definitely change.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
DONT FORCE PEOPLE. SHOW A BANNER SOMEWHERE.
probably 95% of a site will render correct under a obsolete browser. Don't force people do to large technical stuff (like downloading) to show 5%. Most of those obsolete browsers are in locked down offices, where people cannot install software.
Make a list of the software that doesn't work properly with IE6. Try to evaluate the lost productivity. If hit by a virus that uses a flaw in IE6, count the time lost and put a $$$ figure on it. Then defend your case. Your employer is concerned chiefly about money. Make a case with monetary facts.
Also in some kind of companies (high tech startups) the argument "Google did X" is often very powerful. Tell them that now you are using a technology that someone like Google does not consider usable anymore.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
i vote for web designers be more aware of missing/disabled javascript/java/flash.
God's gift to chicks
Yes, but contrary to popular belief: this is not in our hands. (Also, I'm a firm believer in "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" -which doesn't apply to IE6- but upgrade to the latest greatest every point release isn't a good idea) Do realise that many companies use internal web applications made inhouse or by a third-party (think stuff like EMC Documentum, SAP, etc...) that simply work best on IE6.
... as it is that of the browser vendors. As web developers, we NEVER should have coded to anything but the W3C standards. Browsers would have been forced to fall in line, and this fascinating banter would never have been necessary. While I have always tried to just code to the standards, I can understand the position other are in, with their PHBs squeezing them to do stupid things.
Though it'd never happen, I'd like to see W3C monitor all web content, and have the power to issue DNS deregistration notices to all non-compliant sites.
Dear Sir,
we have determined that you site, www.microsoft.com, is not compliant with the W3C 'xhtml1-transitional' standard it claims to implement. You are advised that you have 14 days in which to make the aforesaid site fully compliant. Failure to do so will result in the immediate suspension of your Domain Name registration, until such time your compliance is proven.
Have a pleasant day.
Regardless of what people actually *need* Internet 7 or below for, it has major security flaws. If it is one thing my customers want to know, it is how to better protect themselves.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Dropping IE 6 is definitely something we all should promote and do. IE 7 no chance as of yet.
I work in Enterprise and I constantly see ie6 numbers of 10% of users. Lots of people say that's enough to justify that we continue to support it. I counter with. How much cost are we devoting to ie6 bug fixing? How much is ie 6 costing us in lost capability holding back the entire site? How often have we put our users in jeopardy when a dodgy add sneaks through our add provider? How much money have we lost because ie6 regression testing slowed product release.
I content that we should not only drop support. We should actually redirect them to and upgrade or you get no access page.
The pennies that ie6 users provide my customers is simply not enough to justify the costs. The business guys always get pissed when I bring up the topic of dropping any cash stream no matter how small.
what if a client has another web app they spent big money on that only runs on IE6, what if their worldwide network SOE is based on IE6? your going to just ride in and tell them to update or they can shove their money up their arse?
in most contexts, the customer is right. it's only in the event they aren't paying or that you don't NEED those users that it makes sense to cut down your work load supporting older browsers. oh and the reason ie 1-5 isn't in use has nothing to do with websites removing support - it's because MS forced everyone to upgrade.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I'm a bit totalitarian about this. I believe that the web should be as CLOSE to the standard as possible. If there are alternatives that are better than IE6/7 now, then by Zeus make sure that people know about it if the page their viewing b0rks out.
I have hated having to code around problems of rendering with IE at the expense of other browsers which render closer to the standard.
Just my .02 euros (or whatever dominant currency we have now)
If someone spent "big money" on some app that only works on IE6, then they deserve their money back, or should pay for a fucking upgrade to something that's not designed for a 9 year old browser.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it possible to have 2 browsers installed? Use IE6 all you like for ancient intranet apps. Use a modern, more secure browser for external sites. It's not hard. The only reason organisations don't do this is either laziness or ignorance. There's no excuse for it at all.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
*** *sigh* no - my technical blog still gets 40% of its traffic from old outdated browsers ***
If your web site is there to deliver technical content, why do you care what browsers are used to access it? Write simple web pages that comply with HTML 4.01 Transitional. Feed them through the W3C Validator before posting them. And possibly everyone will be happy?
Yes, I understand that not everyone lives in a world that can work like that, but I should think that many -- probably most -- people do. Why are they working so hard to make their world more painful for themselves and their users?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
There are a lot of companies that mandate the standard of what goes on the Corporate machine image and are slow to update. For example the one I work for got to IE 7 (on XPSP3) as a standard over IE 6 about a year and half ago. The only thing thats going to bring them kicking and screaming to IE8 is the looming upgrade to Windows 7. The upgrade to Windows 7 isn't even a serious consideration until sometime next year.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Strainge only yesterday did my employer drop support for IE6, k33l0r are you my boss?
When I worked at a job that not only used IE6, but used a heavily-locked-down IE6 that wouldn't even let me change the homepage.. I ran Portable Firefox from a USB drive and stopped caring.
So.. it has come to this
I'm curious, what is your site? Because tepin.aiki.de is not blocking IE6 here.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I work in local government IT - our standard right now is IE7 - we won't push IE8 because several of our vendor web apps have issues with it. I know, not good, but it's what we've got and it won't change anytime soon. I can't imagine it's anything but the same in countless other localities and businesses. Thus, it'd be irresponsible as a web developer, if you value a broad audience, to disregard the older incarnations of IE. Go ahead and flame away with your "it's irresponsible to use IE 6/7 in your organization" - you gotta get over it and realize that's just the way it is, and decide whether you want to be inclusive of all audiences or want to tell potential viewers "my way or the highway".
A big system, the Defense Travel System, injected up our arses by DoD continues to require an IE browser. I found the company that produced that pile of stinking shit. They took some system intended for some other use, and somehow got DoD (probably via Congressional influence) to afflict the DoD proles who must use it. They have no intention of not requiring to use MS inspired CrapWare.
The Joint Naval/Marine IT infrastructure organization has "standardized" on MS technologies. With this kind of government inspired stupidity (does security mean anything to these compu-weenies?), there's no getting rid of the malevolent influence of MS.
Popular sites should tell users [...] to revisit with a real browser.
Please don't start a sentence in the Subject and finish it in the Comment; it makes quoting more difficult.
So how can a user do what the site says if the user is not an administrator? Install Firefox; don't have the privileges. Download the portable edition; it fails to execute because it hasn't been signed by the IT department.
The web stats of the sites you manage should be dictating your support of any browser, not just IE6. For instance, I work as the Lead Designer for a government agency, and - depending on the target audience of the site - IE6 ranges anywhere from 9 - 15% of our users.
As such, I just don't feel that we can drop IE6 support from our websites yet. And I would encourage you not to rely on what Slashdot tells you, but instead look at your web stats and go from there.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
A somewhat more realistic motto would be: support only browsers which have a built-in update mechanism.
Internet Explorer is part of the Windows operating system. Windows has Automatic Updates. So why isn't the built-in update mechanism in Windows XP recommending an upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, unless perhaps the administrator has set a Group Policy for the PC in the office break room to block this update?
Drop IE6 support but not IE7 support if your company (like most) are short on resources these days.
not only that but users don't exist so you can dictate their needs to them, you exist to provide a service.
If only those users knew that clicking on that IE7 thing over there would save the world a *lot* of hassles. But sysadmins don't grok that.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
As a web developer, I hate supporting IE6. It lacks so many things that make the web a better place today (poor CSS support, no PNGs -- yes there are fixes).
I've found it depends on your target demographic. If you are looking at business people, IE6 is still in the ballgame. Offices are still lagging behind in their conversion to modern browsers. This is probably because the IT staff just doesn't care.
In talking with user groups, I've heard people say (frequently) that they prefer Firefox or Chrome at home, but at work aren't allowed to install those browsers -- so they are forced to use IE6 during work hours.
We code to standards, however we identify which browsers the site will be tested in and will be targeted upfront. When clients request specifically for IE6 we then quote them how much it will cost to make the necessary changes. You can "drop" support by clearly identifying which browser you will test in and support and then leave it up to the client to pay for the additional work that it requires to support a browser that most people won't or don't want to support.
Forget the issue of IE6 (and IE7? I can only imagine that the site is some kind of "cutting-edge" javascript/css abomination if it fails utterly in IE7.), how do you imagine this guy's website is going to perform on cellphone and other mobile browsers? If fewer than 5% of the users are using any version of IE, they must be awfully technical indeed; I imagine that many of them also possess smartphones. I know that since I have started browsing in earnest on my phone, I have run into far too many websites with extremely basic content that nevertheless completely implode in multiple mobile browsers. And if the mobile browsers can render your website, I guarantee that you will also engender rage and resentment amongst users if they have to switch user agents just to placate your naive redirects.
/. is a shining example of many of those pitfalls. While ajax support is indeed more efficient in theory, in addition to avoiding spurious reloads, the /. 2.0 design managed to destroy the client browsing experience in favor of (presumably) server-side efficiency. Whenever there is, say, an evolution article (~1000 posts), firefox more often than not gives me a javascript timeout for the page on a Core2 (I browse at -1, nested, all comments; the "50/100 per page" views never really worked either since it would break between threads, which are sometimes hundreds of comments long, resulting in four or five nearly identical numbered pages--but at least they didn't bring processors to their knees). And while /. does render on my phone, it certainly cannot be said to render well, or with anything approaching speed. At least it doesn't have insulting UA checks and I can read the bare comments (after I manage to log in, anyway--the threaded view is an absolute disaster).
While IE6 is declining in popularity, phones will only increase. Firefox Mobile may be more powerful than IE6, but the same cannot be said for any of the other (currently far more common) browsers, and no phone has more than VGA resolution. Many sites that do render mostly properly have nevertheless brought potent curses to my lips when I tried to use their tiny and/or heavily javascripted navigation menus with a touchscreen. And Flash! I won't even go there...
Of course,
Fail gracefully. Hell, that is the whole idea behind CSS. So what if a website looks aesthetically awful in some browsers? At least it renders! When you start going overboard with javascript, however, and the content of the site (which has, maddeningly enough, been substantially present on the client all along) won't even appear until 5000 lines of script execute correctly...claiming that such things are "necessary" is total bullshit unless you have some kind of super heavyweight web-app like Google Documents; many of pages I browse work and look just fine with scripting disabled; many, however, were programmed by a bunch of assholes.
Salon.com comes to mind: until a few weeks ago, it worked just fine. Then, they had some kind of web 2.0 revelation. Actually, the site looks pretty much the same, except that now only two paragraphs of an article usually displays initially until you click the js link which unhides the rest of the article...and then reloads the page one second later just to make you angry...sometimes in an infinite loop. Ironically, the site works just fine with scripting turned totally off; it is only when scripting is allowed for the "salon.com" domain but not the tens of advertising/tracking partner domains that everything goes to hell. The page reloads unnecessarily because the massive unhiding function blows up in some tracking code before it returns false, and if you get really lucky it then keeps running the function over and over and over again (I can't reproduce that at this moment, but reading the code, I can only imagine that it involves the story ids stored in the cookie, which can trigger instant expansion when the page is reloa
You are epic fail and heres why.
Sometimes the product is a thing. Sometimes a product is eyeballs. For a web developer who is marketing his services, the only product he actually has to offer is eyeballs. The web developer who is marketing his services is charging money for the eyeballs that he will deliver.
You are going on and on about what the client of said web developer should do to make the web developers life easier. Thats not how it works, failboy.
Sometimes a clients can orchestrate a situation where he only needs specific eyeballs. This is most common in situations where the client pays for BOTH the web development AND those eyeballs, pages on the corporate intranet, because they save money that way. Even in your crazy dream world where clients were somehow forced to orchestrate FF3.5 eyeballs, about 10 years from now the web developers would be in the same boat as today: The client needs specific eyeballs that are far away from current web standards.
If you are a web developer, then I declare you a moron for not knowong what the hell your product really is. You are not selling chunks of HTML. You are not selling chunks of CSS. You are not selling chunks of javascript, ajax, or flash. You are selling eyeballs. It is YOUR failure if you cannot or will not deliver the eyeballs that the client wants. It is not the clients failure.
A simple way to visualize the complete stupidity of your argument is to imagine a client using a completely proprietary system not based on HTML, CSS, or any of the other WEB buzzwords. Would you, the developer looking for money, demand that the people with the money switch to HTML? IE6 is right now is the most common proprietary system out there, but it is no different than any other proprietary system, and the latest greatest web browsers will be considered just as "broken" a decade from now.
"His name was James Damore."
I remember that I had to download a big IE8 file from Microsoft site on a computer, which was not behind corporate proxy. Than while installing, the IE8 installation tried to contact Microsoft website again to check if there are newer updates.
But proxy does not allow FTP connection. So instead of giving a message "could not connect" and continue, the installation has been trying to contact the website for about 30 minutes before finally continuing.
But why to check for updates of an installation file while installing it? Why just not update the installation file itself while it is on Microsoft's website? Why not allow a download of an upgrade file via HTTP in addition to FTP?
My point is that while it is relatively easy to upgrade from IE6 to IE8 in normal conditions, it is incredibly difficult to do so if there is a limited connection to the Internet.
If there is one imbecile-engineer it is somehow possible to work with his/her creations, but when two come together, one at Microsoft and one running a proxy, it results in a really tough luck.
I upgraded two IE6 to IE8 behind proxy in this way. Spent about 2+ hours on it.
Security has become enough of a concern for Final Fantasy XI players that browser recommendations and plugin advice abounds on almost every site and forum anymore. Years of playtime lost to a compromised account can go for months before being restored by Square-Enix.
Security became enough of a concern that one enigmatic third-party developer has banned IE6 users from his site for their own protection (IE6 accesses redirect to that page), because even his own site has been hijacked, exploited, and injected with iFrames and scripts to steal credentials and push keylogging and hijacking methods.
I think the standard response to users of IE6 not being able to access pages when the security of their own browser is more important to them than they know is 'Tough Shit'.
Slashdot: Where opinions are just opinions until you have mod points.
For example, writing a site that can be properly rendered by any browser that scores 100 on the ACID series of tests.
Currently, the development of websites and browser software is completely backwards, mostly thanks to Microsoft's failed attempt to use Internet Explorer to take over web standards. Ever since then, websites have been written for specific browsers as the primary objective, and not for compliance with Internet Standards.
Why are they working so hard to make their world more painful for themselves and their users?
Because they think that they are clever. This is a social phenomenon. Web developers say in public how messed up IE6 is and how it restricts their cleverness, and other web developers hear the complaints and agree. They could be so much more clever if they could just ignore IE6. Users who run IE6 must be too stupid to realize how clever these web developers could be if only they would stop running it.
Before you know it they all have forgotten what their job is, which is to orchestrate the delivery of content to eyeballs.
.
"His name was James Damore."
Compile it and install it into your home directory and run it with your privileges.
A lot of office workers' privileges do not include running software that the IT department has not approved.
If your OS doesn't allow that, get a real OS.
A "real OS" can mount /home noexec.
If someone is still on XP and IE6, it indicates one or all of the following:
1. they are locked down by a cheap or technologically depressed corporation
2. they haven't bought a new PC in quite a few years
3. they haven't bothered to patch XP in a quite a few years, so it's probably pirated
In either of these cases, they are less likely to have money to spend. Opera at least indicates that they are somewhat tech savvy, and Safari usually indicates that they bought a Mac.
So, IE6 is dead to me in the sense that it's very unlikely that people who use it have any money to spend.
I updated from IE6 to IE8 simply by downloading everything from Microsoft Update (which uses HTTP for everything AFAIK)
The client demands it.
Bark less. Wag more.
I work for a company that considers itself very forward thinking with it's own products... you know those products that replace products like the telephone and fax with HD Videoconferencing... or 10baseT with 10Gb Ethernet... or dial up networking with VPN... or ancient parallel SCSI with 8/10Gb FibreChannel... or routers that take up multiple racks... or replace PBXs with VOIP.. Our workforce has a choice of lenovo or apple laptops (internal community supported which is pretty amazing btw) ...pretty forward thinking...
yet we just rolled out a new expense reporting system which requires IE6. Ask them why they just announced this new tool that requires IE6... falls on deaf ears.
Even though the software upgrade is free, it requires time from support personel and some loss of productivity to upgrade. In this economy, money for anything that is not essential is tight.
If it becomes difficult for you and your coworkers to do your job with IE6, then you have a good argument that might bear some weight. If there isn't a compelling business reason, they are likely to continue to put it off until cash flow improves.
I cannot bypass "Cisco Security Agent"! I cannot run any executables! Although the silly fuckers still let me write VB that lets me hook into almost everything!
Oh, yeah, I have to use IE6 too.
How can I disable "Cisco Security Agent"?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
i wrote a post about this a couple days ago http://j.mp/aEJZnO i point to http://ie6nomore.com/ and agree with the first comment. im not going to bend over backwards to try and get ie6 when im also dealing with quirks of ie8,firefox and chrome... write it as best to standards as i can and unless the client wants to pay more let those few little rendering errors slide
We can't upgrade large parts of our corporate network to IE8 because SAP and Hyperion - two very important tools - have told us they won't be supporting IE8 for a few months. In general, I think you should support the latest and the version just before that.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
What kind of site has fewer than 5% of its visitors using IE? linuxrulez.de?
No browser-specific filtering, but If your browser fails to render the site correctly, then thats for you to fix.
Does anyone have tips on how to convince them to move to IE8?
Tell them that Google has stopped supporting IE6. That's the straw that broke my financial services co.'s back. We still "support" IE6 in the sense that it *should* work, but through the transitional period we're throwing an alert (through browser detection) that basically tells users, "IE6 support is ending, so if things look wacky... upgrade."
I'm a web developer for a top 100 online retailer. I hate IE6 like most of you. I realize that IE6 has caused millions of man-hours lost on a global scale. I also know that I was hired and paid well because of my expertise in working around IE6's many flaws. But it what boils down to is money.
In the past month, according to our Google Analytics, we have had 5,279,955 visits. That's visits, not pageviews. Of those 5.2m visits, 3,716,805, or 70.39% were users running some form of IE with javascript enabled. (no javascript, no countie) Of that 70.39%, 12.73% were running IE6. That's 473,168 visits from customers using IE6 in the past month. That's about 8.96% of our total traffic. Would we like to stop supporting IE6? Certainly. Would we like to encourage IE6 users to upgrade to a better browser? Certainly. Can we tell 473,168 users that we don't want their fucking money? Absolutely fucking not.
So, as much as we hate IE6, we'll make damn sure that our stores look good in IE6 because it's about the money.
-- aero2600
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
We seem to be looking at this the wrong way, from the POV of the end user rather than the programmer. The programmer is making the decision, the decision should lean towards ensuring the website is W3C compliant. If IE can't handle the W3C compliant website, then that's IE's W3C compliancy problem. Opera, Konqueror, Firefox, Epiphany should all be able to handle it just fine.
And when your employer finds out you have a netbook there, maybe you can hang out in the coffee shop and show it off to all your friends. While you peruse Monster and Dice looking for your next job.
Best viewed with browser X and Y with resolution XY
People still do that?
You have a personal computer on the corporate lan or is your netbook picking up public wifi and using external web apps? The former sounds like termination to me.
This has more to do with Javascript than anything. the Javascript interpreter in IE6 is pretty awful. I've spent many hours coding little jscript workarounds for IE6. It doesn't fail gracefully and in complex jscript environments, it can be entirely painful to have to change a bit of script because IE6 can't handle what every other browser can.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
"You are epic fail and heres why."
When a comment starts out like that, I know there's no point reading any more. Have a nice day ;-)
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Contrary to popular opinion, people do change. Their friends, their habits, but also their browsers.
How do I know? I've been running this website for the past eight or so years. As soon as it got the first CSS bits like six years ago, I decided to not support IE at all, no version of it. Instead, I captured IE users and told them when they were about to access a page that wouldn't work on their browser, told them why (e.g. no support for transparent PNGs, buggy CSS implementation, whatever) and gave them a link to access it anyways (e.g. in case they were using a real browser just masquerading as IE).
My browser statistics show that usage of IE dropped sharply, while user count has steadily increased. Since this is a trend constant over several years (IE is currently at 15.7%) it isn't an anomaly, either.
The summary of it is that if you give people a reason to change, they will. Most people use IE because they are lazy. It came with the system and they aren't really familiar with this com-pu-ter thing, so installing a different browser frightens them somewhat, no matter how easy it is. But give them an incentive and they'll do it.
I'm certain the same holds true for moving them from IE6/7 to IE8 (or any alternative).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"And we're all eager to enable whatever DRM Microsoft deems to push onto our computers. In the form of 'Windows.' Oh joy."
There, fixed that for you. Windows since Windows XP has Windows Product Activation; is Windows Genuine Advantage significantly more draconian?
In this network with very restrictive proxy automatic update from Microsoft website does not work for sure. But file download via HTTP, via browser seems to work.
But why not just give users a possibility to download an installation file of the IE8 via HTTP? Or bring it on a flash drive? And let install it easily?
On my private office computer I almost did not notice how IE8 was installed. But in this real network I would prefer just an installation file, which does not assume this and that.
I saw on this network even IE5(!) recently. A user called and said that they get an error on an web-application page; I could not understand why until I asked them to look up IE version. It was IE5(!).
This what happens when two imbecile-engineers join together, one from Microsoft and one responsible for the network proxy.
A slightly related story:
I teach in Houston Independent School District. Due to a recent change, we are required to use Internet Explorer to log into our online gradebooks when on campus. There is no technological basis for this, as running a user agent switcher with Firefox causes no problems. And yes, IE 6 is an allowable agent.
Of course, when we log in from home via the HISD-provided VPN client, it doesn't matter what browser we use.
Also of course, we can use that VPN client at work, and it doesn't matter what browser we use.
So yeah, it's just been a big bag of bureaucracy.
Allow me to tell you some time about their wireless networking policy changes that start next week. That's a whole other ball of fail.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
OK, in this case I think that we should (gasp!) listen to Microsoft.
Near as I can tell from their convoluted pages, the last update for IE6sp3 was in April 2008; and that MS supports it for two years following that.
In other words, by May of this year, Microsoft will quit supporting it. If they don't support it, then nobody else should feel obliged to either. If you will lose revenue by blocking IE6, then well...make your own decisions. How much money do you spend supporting it to make 'x' dollars of revenue?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
No, there is no reason to support IE6. Your not supporting Mosaic, Netscape 3 or some other historic piece of software. Ask yourself how much work is it to support IE6, how much is overall functionality decreased by limiting yourself that much? Is it worth the effort? IE6 numbers will continue to get lower and lower. Sure there are a few companies out there which haven't yet upgraded their deployments, but they will have to redeploy at some point. The same goes for old software which depends on IE6, there is no future there.
I can see why developers would want to shuffle off IE6, and I fully agree that it should disappear immediately, but here's a twist:
At my office, we do some monthly grant reporting to the state via two web sites that the state developed in house. One of these sites requires IE6; it's barely functional on anything else, especially IE7/8. Just to keep things interesting, the second site, written by a separate developer (sitting less than twenty feet from the developer of the first site) will only work with IE7/8, and Firefox with IE Tab enabled. It's totally non-functional on IE6.
Since we're a grant recipient, we can't just demand that the developers recode for our needs, but it's getting more than a little old being told we have to lower our security thresholds just so some under-skilled government git can keep his employement.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Tripped across this link a while ago detailing with a surprising amount of granularity market share of browsers. Netmarketshare says that 21.35% of browsing is taking place on IE6 or one of its derivative versions.
That's a whole lot of market share - Firefox aggregately across all versions beats it, but not by much.
Dvelopers can choose not to market to those users or ignore them and eventually give them a poor experience, sure. But if the below is accurate, then that would be about the same argument as ignoring Firefox users, as far as market share goes.
Though maybe the data I'm seeing here is wrong - this is the 'net, of course, and there are many ways of attempting to measure net usage.
http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2
On a reasonably large site (a few million pages a month) that I work on, IE 6 & 7 are still used heavily. It is depressing. IE 6 18.57%, IE 7 33.32%, IE 8 48.09%
soon to include XP, I might add. there are millions of users out there whose machines are too old, and whose OS is too old, and who are just freaking out of luck in "upgrading browsers."
if you wish to not be availiable to all those users, fine, drop support.
if you would rather try and persuade somebody to provide upgraded browsers for old OS, by my guest.
oh, there is the small matter of corporations that do not permit browser upgrades for security reasons, who actively seek out and disable newer browsers than the "approved" IE6. like mine.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
what if a client has another web app they spent big money on that only runs on IE6, what if their worldwide network SOE is based on IE6? your going to just ride in and tell them to update or they can shove their money up their arse?
Browser support is a lot like a warranty condition for the site. Manufacturers/designers have to set the bar somewhere.
I smell a car analogy:
I'm shopping for tires. I can get a 100Km warranty on a new set, so long as I agree to rotate the tires every 10Km, for free. Without some minimal diligence on the part of the user, the warranty is void, as the user has abrogated their duties towards security.
Likewise with a simple free browser upgrade.
If a client has specific needs, that's part of the contract, no? However, since IE6 is demonstrably less safe and secure, technically inferior, and more costly to support, there has to be extra justification and expense to support it... somewhat like an extended warranty.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I don't support Microsoft Internet Explorer at all other than where it follows web standards, which it often doesn't. If IE breaks then so be it. I have a note on my web sites warning IE users to convert to something, almost anything, else.
We'd make a lot more progress if everyone could support given standards rather than specific browser versions. I'm not saying we should cast disdain on those that make pragmatic decisions based on real business needs- just idealizing. Seems like we've made progress toward that ideal in recent years.
We don't support IE6 anymore, but we also don't forward people or otherwise make them angry. Instead, we just let the site be a little off in IE6 and move on.
We have a standardized theme/template that we use for all of our university sites now, and it was initially built a while ago when we supported IE6 (using its own little ie6.css file to fix the problems). Thanks to that work, the sites generally still "work" due to earlier efforts, but the newer ones aren't always perfectly laid out. (I usually take a look at them in IE6 in a VM for our group to be sure they're "good enough", and that's it.) Like other commenters here have said, the only reason we ever support IE6 now is if a picky client uses it in their office (and that is rare in our University environment thanks to a central IT department that has been pushing people to upgrade for years).
On IE7, however, we can't ignore it. Too many people still use it.. Yes, IE8 is light years ahead of IE7 in standards support (IE8 is what IE7 SHOULD have been), but IE7 is much more manageable in Standards Mode than IE6 ever was, so we tolerate it. Dealing with it is cake when compared to IE6 pain and suffering.
We will drop IE7 support about when the Google Analytics tell us that IE7 usage is between 5-10%.
IE6 - No new work to support it. IE7 - Support it fully.
I mean, really. You're NOT a designer. You're not a programmer. You're not an engineer.
Would you say that about the developers of WordPress?
That's not what I meant at all. I was replying to weicco's suggestion that "web sites should have less (X)HTML/CSS/Javascript masturbation." But say I want to make a web application that allows the user to draw a picture. Am I supposed to send a copy of the user's entire picture in a <input type="image"> every time the user clicks a point on the picture? Or should I use JavaScript and HTML5's canvas element?
I'm inclined to think that for most sites IE6 support isn't worth bothering about. I think IE6 users probably fall into two groups: 1) People using company hardware where the IT department hasn't upgraded IE yet. 2) Non-technical users who've disabled Windows updates because they made their computer slower. In respect of the second group I think nagging reminders such as IE6nomore are a good idea, since if every site shows those then maybe these people might get the message eventually. The first group are more difficult since it's not their fault and many of them no doubt would actively like to upgrade since IE6 is such a bad way to browse the Internet today compared to a more modern browser (they certainly do where I work), but often legacy web apps prevent that. Probably the best way is to stop supporting IE6 and it'll make it harder for companies to keep using IE6. If someone can't use a website on IE6 at work but can that evening on Firefox at home, then they can do that. I guess for an e-commerce site then they'd probably need to find out which users actually buy anything as if IE6 users visit the site but don't buy anything, then they can do without supporting them. Personally, I do actually have one netbook with IE6 on but I use Chrome as the browser on that and I figured since I never use IE anyway then might as well stick with the smaller IE6 if I have to have IE on there at all, and it makes sense to have a copy available to test sites in IE if I need to.
Before you know it they all have forgotten what their job is, which is to orchestrate the delivery of content to eyeballs.
... in the best way possible.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
It makes sense to be forgiving with bad HTML. At least to the point of rendering well. You could still report errors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
Standards hijacking (which Netscape also did) is IMHO the far worse influence. If you couple standards pollution with the fact that Microsoft held back advancing web tech (they let IE6 rot for five damned years) and a developer and user population that myopically don't care beyond how their website looks, and you end up with years of dev backflips and pain, lost time and money, and exploited machines.
Developers are the ones who suffer the most, so you'd expect they would have some sense about the matter. Still, you find yourself arguing on Slashdot when they say things like "IE is the standard." These folks feed the zombie. Please do not feed the zombie.
Can I just make a comment here? All of you who failed to recognize the importance of standards are to blame for IE6 lingering. And I'm rather sore at you. And you continued to trust Microsoft and thought that using IE7 and IE8 was a good idea. As if somehow the past 9 years weren't a righteous mess of painful web development and technological retardation. It could be that MS is in a corner finally, with a fifth to a third of browser share going to standards-compliant browsers, and so can't leverage IE to quash competition via protocol pollution, but that's no thanks to you.
What sites need to do is support IE6 users but with little effort. Give them an alternative view of the site that's effectively just black text on a white background, like a print style sheet and put a warning at the top that they can't have the full experience until they get a real browser.
Most people not upgrading are likely pirates who are too thick to get around WGA or use Firefox or backwards companies. Most websites don't really need to care about these people. If sites would stick together and give IE6 a bland but informative experience they'd be more likely to upgrade. As it is there is no real reason for these losers to upgrade.
what if a client has another web app they spent big money on that only runs on IE6,...
If it's well designed, it should be easy to update the html, css, and javascript. They should be easy to find, and there should be good documentation. They did spend "big money" on it, after all.
what if their worldwide network SOE is based on IE6?
That's just a sign of incompetence at this point (or laziness, or both). And no, I would never phrase it that succinctly to a client. The rule of thumb is to develop pages to the latest two versions of each major browser. IT should therefore strive to be at the current version, but should never get more than one version behind.
in most contexts, the customer is right. it's only in the event they aren't paying or that you don't NEED those users...
If someone is waving actual money in front of your face, and insists on IE6 support, it still doesn't make them right. Oh, it can be negotiated, don't get me wrong. Doing so is just ignoring the real problem (whatever it is). Helping them understand what's really going on and building an upgrade plan is in their best interests in the long term. Most will appreciate the candor. Besides, it might mean more work for you in the short term (undoing whatever mess they've gotten themselves into).
oh and the reason ie 1-5 isn't in use has nothing to do with websites removing support - it's because MS forced everyone to upgrade.
Read what I wrote, please. And no, MS didn't "force" anybody to upgrade. At least, no more than they're doing now with XP and IE6. My point stands.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
We have reached a point where a degraded experience is justified is IE6. (IE7 is a whole different vat of acid - how can you justify not supporting the world's most popular browser?!)
As a front-end developer, where once I would have doubled my workload if necessary to perfect layout and behaviour in IE6, now I am satisfied with a layout that isn't completely broken, and where the site is navigable.
What a shame that it's utterly impossible to run another browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Opera on the same computer as your legacy IE - then you could use that for everyday browsing and just stick with IE for your proprietory app/intranet. Perhaps someone could work on that. They could even - and I know it sounds insane - create a virtualised computer so you could when needed run your old, insecure browser inside it on an old version of Windows, and have a modern OS with a more modern browser for everyday use.
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Google Chrome Frame plugin for IE6/7/8. It's the easiest way to handle IE6 insanity and it gives the user a great experience. We've had good luck getting people to install it for TwitGrids. We were concerned about peoples' willingness to install a plugin to access the site but our worry was totally unfounded. Users could care less. A couple clicks and they're getting a zippy Chrome experience inside their dumpy old IE6/7 browser. The people who actually care which plugins are installed are already hitting us with Chrome or Firefox.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
... in the best way possible.
"His name was James Damore."
You seem to be confusing "web design" with "website creation". It's the job of the creator of the content to draw people; web design is simply designing the layout of a site in the best way possible. This shouldn't be compromised by having to "dummy down" the website for the slow little brother of web browsing, IE6. It'd be like eliminating the regular English Wikipedia in favour of Simple English, so that everyone could understand.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
You could also consider prompting IE6 users to install ChromeFrame instead of completely ignoring them.
No, I will not work for your startup
THERE IS NO FUCKING EXCUSE for a browser not to follow web standards. If it fails to do so it should be promptly uninstalled. Anyone compelling to do otherwise should be shot. The end.
One of our four Core Values is "Be Pragmatic." We're a custom web development shop. For us the decision was easy. We figured out what supporting IE6 was costing in terms of extra time and effort in development and testing up front, what it was costing in terms of features we weren't able to deliver to clients, and what it was costing in incompatibility bugs and fixes going forward. This was a cost that we would have to pass along to our customers. It just didn't make any sense, even if IE6 use stayed high, it wasn't worth the cost. Eight months ago we dropped support for it, put the language in our contracts, and build IE6 detectors to notify users of IE6 in a friendly way that they shouldn't expect the site to function properly, but they were welcome to try to fight their way through it. We make sure we point it out to customers before they engaged with us and when challenged on it we explained that we were doing it to save them money and deliver a broader feature set to the majority of their audience. It has been a resounding success for us and our customers.
It's good to see that I think "redirection" is a dick move. Seriously, I fucking hate that. When someone is at work and HAS to use IE, or if someone just doesn't feel like upgrading, or is running a computer that can't run modern browsers, asking them to upgrade is okay, but telling them that this site isn't accessible from their browser is just straight up pissy.
Learn the following riddle:
ftp releases.mozilla.org
cd pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest/win32/en-US/
ls
get "Firefox Setup 3.6.exe"
And you don't even need to memorize the dir structure, since ls is right there. I've used this on just about every Windows XP/Vista machine I've had to bootstrap for a user. I heard rumors that built-in ftp isn't included in Windows anymore; in that case, you're out of luck. (or you could use the ftp client in Windows Explorer or whatchamacallit, if they kept that.)
It hasn't helped your spelling, though. You need to be standards compliant there too.
That's well-paid .... and by comparison, my well-paid day job is in a large corporation where they use IE6 on XP. And they seem a bit stunned anybody would use anything else.
But I have managed to get the testers to use other browsers, so progress is being made.
Your spelling, though, I despair of.
"Cats like plain crisps"
You seem to be confusing "web design" with "website creation".
You seem to be confusing "more effort" with "dumbing down." Hitting the most eyes possible DOES require more effort than being a lazy shit crying about web standards.
"His name was James Damore."
Worthwhile effort? Not ultimately. You think too much in the short term and towards personal benefit rather than improving the web as a whole.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
I build web interfaces for use by employees of state & county governments. Most users in large counties like Santa Clara or San Diego are using cookie-cutter machines that are 5-8 years old, locked down at IE6 on Windows 95. One is just getting ready for a bulk purchase of WinXP/IE7 machines (wow!) which took 3 years to plan for and are supposed to last for the next 5+ years.
Sadly, IE6 support must continue for a few more years in many arenas, especially when dealing with slow governments.