There’s always been a lot of talk online about Internet Explorer 6, and more specifically the perils it brings to web designers.  It seems that when creating IE6, Microsoft decided it knew better than the W3C (the consortium who sets all web standards) and decided against following any rules, instead building a browser that renders code however it sees fit.

Since that day, developers have collected a vast array of tools to combat the problems that IE6 brings, from conditional CSS to javascript browser sniffers.  It still seems that any time a site looks perfect in Firefox, Opera, Safari or even IE7, there’s a developer in tears next to an old dev box displaying IE6.

Here’s a site we’re currently developing, and have not yet ‘hacked’ for IE6, as seen in IE6

Here’s the same site as rendered by Firefox

Notice the differences? Not just the obvious fact that the main image is in the wrong place, but the blue box around the bottom left section?  That’s because IE6 doesn’t support transparency in PNGs.

I’ve read a couple of articles lately discussing when we should set a cutoff for IE6.  After all, IE7 is here, and there’s a wealth of other browsers for users to choose from.  All are free, costing most users nothing to upgrade (unless they’re on a pre-XP operating system) and take a couple of minutes to download.

A lot of the arguments against dropping support for IE6 focus around the fact that the user doesn’t care.  The user couldn’t care less why something doesn’t look right, neither does the client most of the time.  In my opinion, it’s time to educate users that they should care.  The easiest way of doing this?  Drop IE6 support.  Every obsolete technology is depreciated at some point.  Analog television is approaching it’s switch off, no-one makes VHS tapes and it’s become increasingly difficult to find medieval weapons these days.  People accept these because they’re educated that there is something better available to replace them.

It should be easy to explain to a client that it’s worth them dropping IE6, just by showing them how much of our time they are paying for just for us to hack up our beautiful, standards compliant code to make it work on your Nan’s PC.

Here’s how I’d do it:  some kind of alert to users that use IE6 that is a clear and obvious call to action that their browsing experience IS being hindered by their choice of browser.  Direct them to a page explaing that things have moved on, showing them what they could be experiencing and giving them the options of what browser they should upgrade to.  Maybe even mention that if they’re on a pirated OS, they can go for an open source browser and not risk getting in trouble.  Educate them that it’s their stick in the mud attitude that is killing web developers souls.

DID YOU KNOW: these things are YOUNGER than IE6

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