The decision to not develop for IE6 and not test our clients’ web sites on it isn’t one that we, the developers, should be making.

A recent TechCrunch article puts IE6’s browser share at 20%. Depending on your clients’ customers, that number could be more or less.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/internet-explorer-browser-share/

Even if you might not care enough to accomodate a significant percentage of your site’s visitors, you should be upfront in your dealings with your clients if you’re not going to accomodate all of their visitors to the best of your ability. At the end of a project, are you willing to provide a screenshot of what your work looks like in IE6 and ask them if they find it acceptable?

Back before JavaScript was widely supported, developers were proudly touting graceful degradation. Sites that were improved with JavaScript fell back to perfectly usable but less nifty implementations if the visitor’s browser wasn’t up to snuff.

Today, graceful degradation isn’t our only option, because IE6 supports enough JavaScript to allow us to overcome a number of its shortcomings while still developing for more standards-compliant browsers:
http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/
http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:PNG_Opacity_Fix_for_IE6

In my work, I don’t try to perfectly replicate a site in IE6, but I do try to make it pleasant to use and free of errors.

To respond to a few of my fellow debaters: My sense is that the people still using IE6 are largely not to blame. It’s hard to browse without seeing various messages about updating IE – even MSN.com displays ads recommending IE8. Internet Explorer 7 is the default browser for Vista, which was released in January, 2007, and Windows 7 ships with the far more standards-compliant IE8. People still running XP would have IE7 or IE8 if they ran Windows Updates even once since November, 2006.

So let’s forget about why people are still using IE6 and what (if anything) we can do to change that. Let’s instead focus on treating all visitors to a site fairly, because with a little effort, we can do so.

Oliver
ardamis.com

Get rid of it. The most you should do is detect IE6 and give them a screen saying “this website – along with the rest of the thinking universe – is no longer tested for your browser. Go get a new one.”

Yes, I understand that it’s still the mainstay browser of lots of large enterprises. The only reason that their IT departments haven’t switched is because it’s kind of a pain in the ass. I guarantee there are lots of IT admins out there who actively want an excuse to install a modern browser across their enterprises. Just give them a reason.

For me it comes down to one thing: Why should we care about 10-15 percent of internet users that refuse, or are unable, to upgrade? Unless you work on a site specifically targeting corporate clients there is absolutely no reason to care about them. If the majority of your users are non-corporate, then why limit their experience simply to maintain universal operability? I’d be interested to hear any counter arguments to this.

As Jayson has mentioned, Youtube recently made its site inaccessible to IE6 users. Last I checked they’re surviving just fine. If this has taught us anything, it’s: a. youtube is doing just fine without IE6 users and b. IE6 users continue to exist without having access to youtube.

Ultimately, the only way to get rid of IE6 is to stop coding for it. Do your part.

It’s time to cut IE6 off.

I understand.  Really.  Firefox, Chrome, Safari… they’re scary, they don’t have ‘internet’ in their names, and they didn’t come pre-installed on your Dell workstation.  This has always been the hurdle  with getting people to make the big switch.

This time around, the cool kids’ browsers aren’t the only game in town.  That’s right.  IE 8 is actually a half-way decent browser.

I’m not saying we cut IE6 off cold turkey, but don’t spend as much time testing it as you do IE 8 or Firefox.  Chances are, this is already the case anyway.  If you’re feeling extra ambitious, throw a div at the top of your page for IE 6 users that says “Does this site look funny?  Your browser is a bit old, and the latest version is faster and more secure.”

The longer we support outdated browser versions, the more work we make for ourselves.  We’ve stopped designing for 800×600, and it’s time we stopped putting extra effort into supporting IE 6.

I posted this as a comment by accident, but here is my initial opinion

I’m actually torn, its annoying when a site doesn’t work properly and I’m forced to use IE6 because of work. That said I don’t know if that means I think that it should or shouldn’t be coded for. It’d be nice if everything worked, so from that perspective I think that it should be coded for. Another part of me though thinks that the only way for it to actually go away would be if enough stuff just stops supporting it. One of the main reasons that Windows XP stuck around for that long is that support kept remaining for it .. if that had not happened others would have migrated away from it. Same thing could be true here too