It poses a special challenge for me, having redesigned our website just a few months ago. Some companies can argue that IE6 is not relevant because of their user base, but when your entire organisation uses the website in IE6, it damn well better work in IE6.

It is not a bad idea however to inform your clients (and users, where you can) about the perks that come with sticking to IE6 for them in the first place, and secondly for us. I have asked dozens of them and most simply are not aware of improved browsers and the security threats IE6 poses to them. When I inform them about this most of them show surprise, and ask me what other options they have. Regardless of their user experience with the browser, security should always be one step above usability.

You called it turning customers into idiots, in short. It’s not reprimanding them for being ignorant, but <i>informing</i> them, making them <i>aware</i> of why they ought to change. If I go to a garage to get my car fixed I can only hope to be treated as someone ignorant of car mechanics, because frankly that’s what I am. It’s not a question of superiority, this is just our line of work and I can only hope we’re better at it than the average Joe.

We try so very hard not to be ‘yes men’ in what we do at the office here, but try to aid our clients. Not doing so would be doing them a disservice, in my eyes.

Versailles, Mon 19 Jan 2009 09:05:00 +0100 (Melbourne 19:05:00 +1100)

Don’t you agree though, that if people are actively refusing to upgrade to a better product, it assumes they are informed about said product. This implies that they are a little more savvy than the “average” web user (forgive me for stereotyping here). By assuming that the consumer is informed and smart, I can only wonder why they do not upgrade to a better product.

If you like, I’ll compare it to the car salesman. A user takes his old Skoda or Fiat to a car dealer to get an upgrade, the upgrade on offer is a Mercedes. Don’t forget, the upgrade is free.

If someone would refuse this offer, they would be told for sure that they are an idiot, sure they would have to spend some time getting used to the new controls and the fact that the car handles slightly different, but they will have gotten a great deal by upgrading to a far superior product.

I of course don’t believe users are stupid, but I will try to help to inform users where I can :-)

About tab browsing, I was just replying in advance to eventual questioning me why I didn’t use or mention it: I just meant that tab browsing in its current state does not fill the need I had explained (to allow fast and easy comparing pages and DnD-ing between them, with still showing large enough screen spaces for each page). BTW I do use tab browsing in FF3.0.5 and Safari 3.2.1 – for what it does, and with regretting what it doesn’t.

About the statement I quoted, I do find it too authoritative and disregarding to customers, because it (IMO) implies from them an ignorance and lack of interest that is IMO inaccurate. I think most people are interested in, and saving their time for, tasks more important than diving into browser versions and techniques; if they feel the need, they will dive; if not, they won’t. In case of IE7, upgrading from IE6 is just what happens silently if you don’t bother controlling what http://www.update.microsoft.com does; hence the ones who DON’T “upgrade”, are actively refusing it, hence surely have good reasons; those reasons are often the ones you recall (corporate PCs), but even more often IMO that those people know, by self experience or by people they know and trust, that IE7 will NOT fill their needs as well as IE6 does. And of course most won’t waste time discussing it on forums (as you and I are doing), whence our possible perception that they were inexistent or ignorant or stupid – which IMO they are NOT.

Versailles, Sat 17 Jan 2009 15:12:50 +0100

As professionals in our industry, we don’t just want people to upgrade to the latest products because we think they should because it makes our lives easier, we also understand that – in comparison with IE6 – browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 7 give a far better user experience and *far* better security.
To claim that people sticking with IE6 are more educated and instructed than webmasters could be described as nothing more than a very limited and personal view.

Your example of a user that needs multiple windows open to perform their web browsing, that is a personal choice for the consumer, they do not need to use the tabs, they can simply open a new window to do their browsing. I have a colleague at work who has upgraded to IE7, but she still prefers to use multiple windows rather than tabs, so she does just that – open new windows for new pages.

The quote you tried to debunk, “The majority of the users on IE6 just use it because it’s WinXP’s default browser, and they don’t realise there are updates/alternatives”, it is a sad reality, this and the large number of corporate users who cannot upgrade because of corporate requirements and/or policies account for a large number of IE6 users. People use IE6 because it’s the default browser and they don’t know/realise that there are better things out there.

I’m sorry if this sounds like I’m having a go at you, I’m not – I just can’t bring myself to agree to any of the points you made in your post.

Plenty people, on this page as everywhere on the web, are confidently repeating what some self-appointed gurus have ordered them, like (e.g. above in message http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/09/sitepoint-podcast-6-what-to-do-about-internet-explorer-6/#comment-859542 posted Sat 10 Jan 2009 at 4:06 GMT): « The majority of the users on IE6 just use it because it’s WinXP’s default browser, and they don’t realise there are updates/alternatives ».

Such “compliment” to customers (the ones who should be kings) is easy to endorse since by making customer an idiot, it makes you feel superior.

As is well known in more mature markets, the reality is the opposite: when you go shopping for a new car, or your wife for curtains, the sales person will immediately know that you or your wife are probably far more instructed and educated than themselves, hence they probably won’t try to teach you what life is.

In the IT market, new and swift, but immature so far, it’s the opposite: the salesperson is very often too low educated and instructed to guess or discover or understand how far his customers are ABOVE them in life in general, and in understanding the real problems; that young short-equipped person will often feel superior just because they know JS or C# or CMS or whatever bits-and-chips-level technique.

Now let’s come back to browsers: IE6 is the result of an evolution where MS, sure too slowly, finally understood users’ needs and implemented many badly needed fixes and improvements .

Unfortunately IE7, whatever its qualities at the bits-and-chips level, is a disaster – from the important POV that is, the one from the CUSTOMERS. Sure IE7 is good for little experienced people (numerous in webmasters, gamers); but for people who like check everything before posting, they need to have at hand a couple dozens web pages open, some with encyclopedic contents, others with ongoing discussion to check or research something. For this, IE6 was OK; IE7 with its uncustomizable interface, its buttons too large and unmovable or unhidable, is an insufferable back step; tab browsing is not a workable option in such context (and won’t be until tab systems get an upgrade). I personally intensively tried IE7 twice (in 2006 and 2007) and came back twice to IE6.

So please, it’s OK for webmasters to be interested mostly in opening just one window at a time on their screen, OK for them to do everything in the instant hence use no human or machine memory or intelligence; but for regular people, being forced to act like this is just unbearable. And if most people are sticking with IE6 and don’t “upgrade” to IE7, it may be they just are *MORE* educated and instructed than webmasters.

Versailles, Sat 17 Jan 2009 01:49:20 +0100

So a lot comes down to how much of your business are you willing to lose? 1%? 5%? 30%? And that number don’t seem high until you figure that if your talking 10,000 hits a week, 5% of that would be 500 hits a week. That’s a lot of potential sales to be avoiding.

Personally, a site I maintain has users that are still running windows 95 and dialup. They aren’t heavy users, and what they have still works for them, so they’ve never bothered to upgrade.

Replacing those systems would be expensive and there’s little motivation to do it. So all of the thousands of computers here have IE6 installed as default. Very few people bother to download an alternative, even if they do have the privileges to do so, which most users don’t.

Now, it’s perfectly valid to run a site that says ’screw you’ to all those corporate/institutional visitors, but if you want to sell them something, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.