IE6 Is killing me slowly!

[noonnope]

Not a myth at all. Like many other branches of UK national and local government, the office where I work has only one browser available on the network, and that is IE6. While certain websites like Facebook, warez, pr0n etc are blocked, we have unrestricted browsing apart from that.

i can tell you need better security advisers much, much better! it's a disaster waiting to happen. i had the same conversation over this forum, and i've argued: even if the workstations are blocked and are erased on reboot into an initial frozen state, the servers are not.

How do I know my client's target customers? They are people, out there. Hundreds of them, thousands of them. They come from all walks of life, they have all sorts of different backgrounds, profiles, needs and wants. Some of them, I have no doubt, will use IE6.

even pr0n sites don't have the entire world as a target there is a target audience for each website, and using other similar sites stats you can make a decision regarding the browser set you code for.

[deathshadow60]

One of my sites still sees 20%+ IE6 use... almost as much as it sees from IE8. Admittedly, that's the same site where Safari shows 1% and Opera 10%, so it's numbers are all screwy, but that kinda proves the point of so called numbers... You can't trust them. Whenever I see low number reports on Opera, I always have to ask... Is that because your page doesn't work right in it in the first place, or because you have some garbage scripting or faulty browser sniffing making Opera users use "mask as firefox" to make your **** work? (It's entirely possible around 5-10% of FF's users stats are actually Opera users, and another 40% or so is prefetch artificially inflating the numbers!)

The point I'd make about it is you can make a lean fast site with little to no extra effort that works fine all the way back to IE5.5, so why not do it? Just sleazing crap out any old way? Too lazy to bother learning how to code properly? I know, think that there's nothing wrong with using a WYSIWYG to make the layout?

"oh it's too hard to support"
1) BULLCOOKIES.
2) That's why it's called WORK and not "Happy Happy Funtime" you lazy lackadaisical loafing unindustrious apathetic foyl beybek laggard marmots!

To be brutally frank, the 'problems' people have supporting IE usually stem from broken methodologies and this "code for FF hack for everything else" mentality, instead of using MODERN coding techniques with separation of presentation from content and testing every layout element as you code it in the CSS. (the lion's share of the markup should be completed before you even THINK about writing the layout using CSS)

That simple change in philosophy can help avoid all those headaches in the first place...

Either that or you can chalk it up to dumb-asses trying to deploy specifications not even out of draft on production websites or bloating out the page with "gee ain't it neat" javascripted and/or flash bull that does nothing but be more hindrance than help to the visitors.

[noonnope]

you are right that it's premature to "respect" drafts in code, however shiny they present them self.

but extending endless support for ie5.5, ie6 defeats even the html 4.01 purpose

i'm sure that from some point on the efforts can be better used in promoting newer techniques instead of supporting old flaws.

i'm not as good as ie5.5 or ie6 are "permitting" me to be with my coding. i'm not coding for the exceptions as a rule, but i'm coding separate rules for the exceptions, that's all.

and a productivity tool is just that: a productivity tool. wysiwyg can be a productivity tool. i just haven't find yet that right tool for html/css, that gives you more than some "water in the wine": auto -complete, auto -tags, auto -whatever.

a tool really useful like the ones i remember when i started the use of new desktop IDEs instead of keep going over and over the same hand coding for the interface i did in pascal or foxpro or clipper for dos. took me a while to stop with the old way of coding all objects from instance to behaviour by hand and start using the ide as a productivity tool.

and i still remember the biggest gain was that i never had to wonder if i've misspelled some properties or methods when i was looking for a bug, or scroll through endless lines of code to change something in the interface. not only some wysiwyg apps give productivity a bad name but also the abuse some do using such tools. the lack of knowledge is something no ide or wysiwyg or productivity tool can compensate for.