I’m creating a site for an audience that is probably mostly over 40, not particularly tech-savvy, and based in the UK.
I’ve tested in IE7 and 8 and it’s fine, however it’s pretty messed up in IE6 and I’m wondering whether to invest the time and effort in it.
Does anyone still test sites in IE6, or is it pretty much deprecated now?
It depends on you audience. There are companies in the US that still use IE6 for their intranet. But yes in the western hemisphere IE6 usage is rare. However ASIA still has a substantial %age of IE6 users.
Normally, I charge extra for developing to cover browsers that old. If it’s that important to the client then they’ll pay… which justifies the extra time and effort.
It looks like in the past 6 months or so, IE6 usage even in Asia has dropped off. According to StatCounter, it currently sits at 1.46%.
I agree with Dresden’s approach. Don’t support it unless the client explicitly requests it, and charge extra to do so.
It’s probably worth noting that IE7 has been dropping off right along side IE6. I don’t think we even need to test in IE7 anymore.
[FONT=verdana]An interesting discussion. I do in fact test my sites in IE6. But that’s more out of habit than for any other reason. In the light of what’s been said above, I might stop doing so.
In any case, I wouldn’t go out of my way to make a site pixel-perfect for IE6. It’s enough just to be sure it works.
Mike[/FONT]
Thanks - I don’t think I’m going to test it on IE6. I know IE7 is dropping off too, the only thing that keeps me testing on it is that some large organisations like the NHS are still using it, I believe.
Only when necessary (e.g. client specifically requests it, ie6 users are a significant percentage of the demographic, etc.). IE6 is so outdated at this point and especially in the past few years, it has really started to drop in usage to the point where even large websites (such as YouTube) have dropped support for it.
In fact I’d say it won’t even be necessary to code for IE7 for much longer. I believe Google has even started dropping support for Ie7 for certain things.
I’ve stopped testing IE6 and 7 now. They get what they get. 
For work our major client dumped support for IE6 along time ago which is great for me because i hated the extra hours been invested in something that simply broke the web, I however still am developing for IE7 as while it does suck like IE6 as far as performance and standards go a lot of corporate types still use it so i can’t say no.
BUT…
Just because i support them for work doesn’t mean i do at home, for my own personal projects i don’t even look at IE7 and i like working on high performance apps that IE8+ can support.