For the past few months I’ve been pondering the idea of not supporting Internet Explorer 6 when developing. I thought I should do some research to see how other designers and developers feel about the version in question. What I found was a large following to no longer support IE6, not only from small companies but some well known.
37signals, creator of Basecamp and Highrise, eliminated their support of IE6 in October of 2008 suggesting that continued support wouldn’t allow them to optimize their interface for enhance customer experience.
In June of 2008 Apple rebranded their .Mac service to MobileMe and sent an email to its subscribers instructing them to upgrade to other browser services such as IE7+, Safari, or Firefox.
I personally have run into issues where design layouts don’t render correctly or content management systems won’t function correctly, all due to IE6. Most clients understand when they’re educated on why the browser causes issues and they’re required to upgrade to a newer version or another product all together. According to Sitepoint, 1 in 5 people are still using IE6 and their thoughts on why are;
- IE7 and IE8 can only be installed on Windows XP SP2+ or Vista. Many people continue to use older versions of Windows or avoid automatic updates.
- Many large corporations have legacy applications that only support IE6. Upgrading these systems incurs significant costs which may not be justifiable - especially in the current economic climate. As a result, their employees have been unable to switch to alternative browsers.
- Many IT novices are ignorant of what a browser is, how to upgrade, or why they should.
- Some users simply prefer IE6 to IE7 and the competing browsers.
I can see points 1 and 2 referring to government and educational institutions in Nova Scotia. There’s been many times where I’ve tried to fill out an online application through a government site only to find that it’s not compatible with my current browser. I recently had a NSBR representative tell me that I had to use IE to apply for their online tender notification system. Well, I’m using a Mac and IE hasn’t been available for mac since 2003 so what do I do in that case? It’s plain ignorance to suggest that everyone has to use one browser to use their service.
I found a great website - I dropped IE6 - where people have posted their site and explained why they no longer support IE6. I will admit that some of the comments are pointless but most are valid and follow a common theme.
Jeff Zeldman has coined IE6 as the new Netscape 4. He points out that designing with web standards should not exclude any device or browser but required CSS hacks are considered excess freight. Like Netscape 4, IE6 is perceived to be holding back the web. With the growth of SAAS products and future versions of IE8+ we can only hope for the death of IE6.
Tags: design, development, IE6, linkedin
#2 holds very true for us at Capital Health, and the other district Health Authorities here in Nova Scotia. At Capital Health, we have approx. 6,500 PC’s all of which should be running IE6. The reason why we can’t upgrade is due to a Clinical Web Application that will only support IE6, and no other browser.
As a Web Developer, it’s extremely frustrating to be stuck within these constraints. What has helped me a ton is a combination of the 960 grid framework and JQuery. They both seem to support IE6 reasonably well, saves us a ton of time on coding, and allows us to share a common standard for layouts/functionality.
I’ve done a few projects now with this tool set and overall, the experience has been much more pleasant than trying to do everything from scratch. i look forward to the day that IE6 is officially dead in our organization, but until then, 960gs and JQuery are saving me a ton of grief and making my life a whole lot simpler.