IE6 is slowly dying; shall we pull the trigger?

[simsim]

Slowly dying, however, he's still fighting his fate:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/brow...e.aspx?qprid=2

From a 95% market share in 1999 to 23% in 2009. Ten years of the web's age, Internet Explorer 6 has been the most used browser. With 2010 on the doors, don't you think web designers and developers should decide to pull the trigger and announce 2010 IE6's coup de grâce?

YouTube has dropping support for IE6, IE8 is just released and yet again IE6 is falling rapidly. Isn't the time appropriate to push the envelope of the web further?

What are your plans for IE6 in 2010. Please vote.

[AlexDawson]

As long as there is a majority of people using such browsers, it's only prudent to keep supporting them, I would argue that any person who drops support for the browser when that version alone still holds arguably a majority share (more so than Safari, Chrome AND Opera together) is ignoring their audience. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea of perpetuating the cycle however it's simply a numbers game and as it stands 23% of people is just under 1/4 of all your traffic (if those statistics are accurate), and that's a huge number of people your potentially inflicting the issues upon. Most IE6 users cannot do anything about their predicament as it's entirely down to business environments

[Dr John]

Is this the 20th or 25th such thread this year?

Alex's answer is perfect.

[mlok]

No, I think all good designers should practice graceful degradation. It doesn't have to look exactly the same as IE7 with all the flashy bits, but it should look half decent. I at least look at sites in IE6 to make sure it at least works. I don't care so much if a padding is off or something

[felgall]

Originally Posted by Dr John

Is this the 20th or 25th such thread this year?

I think you lost count back in February or March.

[Karpie]

Originally Posted by mlok

No, I think all good designers should practice graceful degradation. It doesn't have to look exactly the same as IE7 with all the flashy bits, but it should look half decent. I at least look at sites in IE6 to make sure it at least works. I don't care so much if a padding is off or something

Unfortunately, that isn't practical when your clients use IE6 and your clients want to see the site as presented in the design. Otherwise, I'd agree with you.

[AlexDawson]

Graceful degradation may not be practical but progressive enhancement is, as for the clients, its more impractical for them to expect their website to look identical across every browser, especially an 8+ year old product which is no longer being supported and is officially labelled as deprecated. It's absurd for them to even want such pixel perfect cross rendering. I don't know a single expert who would say it's a reasonable thing to ask for

[Stomme poes]

Smashing magazine recently had a redesign. Not only did they ignore all their own advice re progressive enhancement, but they also chose to ignore graceful degradation in their quest to "not support IE6". Instead of doing the Right Thing and making the content 100% available to users of any browser (like they advise the rest of us to do and is a Good Thing), they pretty made their site unreadable and unusable to those users.

I believe "not supporting" a browser should mean something to the effect of, no extra work making it look pretty, but still making sure the content is available and the site still functions. I don't test in Nutscrape 7 or IE5, but I believe my sites are generally still readable and usable in those browsers.

In that way, I do not support IE5, and in 2010 I may not support IE6, but users of those browsers will always be able to access the content.

[andrewhayn1]

No one is greater and no one is weaker in this ever fluctuating web market.
Its really hard time for IE6. However, ignoring that percentage of market is not a good idea I strongly believe.

[mlok]

Originally Posted by AlexDawson

Graceful degradation may not be practical but progressive enhancement is, as for the clients, its more impractical for them to expect their website to look identical across every browser, especially an 8+ year old product which is no longer being supported and is officially labelled as deprecated. It's absurd for them to even want such pixel perfect cross rendering. I don't know a single expert who would say it's a reasonable thing to ask for

My apologies, you're completely right there - I managed to muddle the two up, seems I didn't have my morning coffee when I posted that!

[Ryan Mortier]

This is my opinion: If everyone wants to keep supporting the browser then there is no reason to switch. Anyone using IE6 doesn't care about or have the knowledge to upgrade their browser. Most users don't know what a browser is if you asked them, they would say is it the little blue 'e'? If we all stop supporting the IE6 browser, users will be forced to upgrade due to websites not functioning correctly.

[AlexDawson]

Originally Posted by Stomme poes

Smashing magazine recently had a redesign. Not only did they ignore all their own advice re progressive enhancement, but they also chose to ignore graceful degradation in their quest to "not support IE6". Instead of doing the Right Thing and making the content 100% available to users of any browser (like they advise the rest of us to do and is a Good Thing), they pretty made their site unreadable and unusable to those users.

I like Smashing Magazine's new look, and I do sympathise with their hatred of IE6 (most web designers do), however their website does work in IE6, it just doesn't scale properly, the content is still visible. There's no "get a better browser" message so I don't see the problem, arguably I would say they should just disable ALL style within IE6 to cease it's support. I know other people who are doing that and it makes sense in respect to depreciating the browsers by making it "code naked".

[Stomme poes]

People complained about not being able to type in comments properly or read all the articles. For everyone who says it's "bad accessibility" to have lines longer than 80 characters, how can it be okay to have some articles having lines of 3 words or less? Isn't that just as hard to read? (I wouldn't know, I don't have any dyslexia that kicks in at x-words-per-line; for me it's only annoying at worst...)

arguably I would say they should just disable ALL style within IE6 to cease it's support.

That's a possibility, so long as the naked text is in logical order before styles are applied. Or bascially remove all CSS so IE6 users see plain text and images. A magazine like that would I think still be usable (just ugly) with zero styles. But I think their point was, they didn't even want to type in hacks for IE6 even to remove styles. While I understand that, they have a decent (or maybe just vocal?) readership of designers who are (for whatever reason) on IE6 at work. Yeah, why are they reading a magazine at work, I can't answer if their reading at work on IE6 is ligitimate...

Of course, I only know about those comments after switching to a Javascript-enabled browser, since there are no comments unless you are javascript-enabled. Which is total Bull for a so-called "web designers' magazine".

I don't give a damn how they make it look— they could make it magenta and yellow and cover it with daisies and more oversized Twitter birds. I care more about how their site works when they supposedly set a standard re advice for web developers.

Then again, overall it's not important to the cosmos what Smashing does. It just irked me how flippant they were about what they did.

[markbrown4]

Alex is on the money. The question has to come down to stats. You can also try and educate users about the benefits of upgrading (speed/security) but whilst Your users are Choosing to use IE6 you should support them.

[felgall]

Originally Posted by markbrown4

Alex is on the money. The question has to come down to stats. You can also try and educate users about the benefits of upgrading (speed/security) but whilst Your users are Choosing to use IE6 you should support them.

Of course if you use progressive enhancement so that those using more modern browsers get a better experience then those still using IE6 who actually can upgrade will be more likely to when their friends tell them how much they are missing out on.

[evilunix]

I think it's worth the small amount of effort needed to check your site is at least functional (forgetting about minor visual isssues) in IE6. You would be suprised how many people still use it, especially in the corporate environment where systems aren't updated every often. I've found a lot of libraries are still running IE6 too. If you want to be lazy, on your own head be it

[simsim]

I never meant that users who use IE6 should get a blank page with a "Browser Not Supported" error message when they visit websites using it! Also, I don't get the "corporate environments" argument. First of all, if employees are forced to use IE6 to access business applications that will only work in IE, why not use other browsers for off-work browsing? And if they cannot, then why the IT teams on these corporations won't upgrade users' browsers to IE7 or IE8?

This by far has been the only excuse given to continue fully supporting Internet Explorer 6. I would at least argue that corporate user to use a modern browser when gets back home.

[NathanaelB]

I can't ... I just finished another project last night where IE6 was the PRIMARY browser!

[markbrown4]

Originally Posted by NathanaelB

I can't ... I just finished another project last night where IE6 was the PRIMARY browser!

I work on a web application where IE6 is still around 60% of the users.
With IE7 30% and IE8 10%.

Let's just say it's a good challenge.

[kohoutek]

There are simply too many people using that browser.
I've had quite a few clients who didn't even know they were able to update their browsers. And these people would most likely not be my clients, if I didn't code my sites to be IE6-friendly.

[stonedeft]

The reason why the b\astard is still plaguing the web is because web developers continue to support it. If all websites in the globe will stop supporting it then visitors/users will think twice when using it.

I hope MS will package IE 8 in their windows xp OS instead of IE 6.

I stopped my support for IE 6 when youtube did. I already un installed my stand alone ie6 .

A call to arms, PLEASE STOP THE SUPPORT FOR PETE'S SAKE !!!

[SpacePhoenix]

When your trying to decide if your going to drop all support for ie6 just stop for a moment to consider who the bulk of your site's user base are. if they are in the work place or an educational establishment then chances are that they have no say at all as to what browser they use. Most of those who wanted to upgrade to ie7 and ie8 have probably done so by now, chances are those still using ie6 are doing so from locations where whoever manages their computers has no intentions of upgrading to IE7 or IE8.

People using ie6 in a network environment are probably using Windows 2000 or a few might be using Windows NT.

[stonedeft]

Originally Posted by SpacePhoenix

When your trying to decide if your going to drop all support for ie6 just stop for a moment to consider who the bulk of your site's user base are. if they are in the work place or an educational establishment then chances are that they have no say at all as to what browser they use. Most of those who wanted to upgrade to ie7 and ie8 have probably done so by now, chances are those still using ie6 are doing so from locations where whoever manages their computers has no intentions of upgrading to IE7 or IE8.

People using ie6 in a network environment are probably using Windows 2000 or a few might be using Windows NT.

Then it's real pathetic that these establishments are way behind latest web technologies...don't you think?

[KevinChisholm]

If their current OS suits the companies needs it would be hard to sell management on the idea of spending money to upgrade to a new OS.

I didn't mind Windows 2000.

[NathanaelB]

Originally Posted by stonedeft

Then it's real pathetic that these establishments are way behind latest web technologies...don't you think?

Pathetic? If they can't afford to employ system and network administrators to look after their hardware and software then it's unfortunate ... not pathetic.