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Viva La Revolution – Good bye IE6!!
Posted By: admin On - 28 Apr 2009
The IE6 anchor has been lifted! We have decided to power down the life support effort and drop all support for Internet Explorer 6, with good reason too. Here are our reasons for not supporting this browser dinosaur; why not join the revolution yourself.
For those of you who make websites you will understand that IE6 is the cause of major headaches in the development lifecycle of a website. For those of you who are internet users and have had the privilege to use a quality browser, such as Fire Fox will understand how dated, lifeless unsecure and unpleasant IE6 is compared. That leaves the internet users who are still using ie, you need to understand how the worn out bit of software your using is effecting your internet experience. A whole world of technologies awaits you – RSS feeds, Social Bookmarking, Increased performance, drag & drop multiple browser tabs. The list goes on.
Why have we stopped supporting IE6?
This is our little bit towards the finish of IE6. If our actions have inspired one more person to do so then it’s been worthwhile. Personal desires aside, we do have good reason to drop support. Not to bore you with the finer details i have listed the more important reasons.
• Over 7 years old and way past its sell by date
• Un-secure with hundreds of compatibility issues
• Last month’s Google analytics’s showed 8 visitors came from ie6 to 843 from Firefox
• All Internet Explorer browser versions together only makes up 10% of our monthly traffic
• The lack of support for modern technologies our site uses
• With the release of IE8 we cannot justify the time and effort for all three versionsIn conclusion
As web designers we have a responsibility. If the sites that users are on work fine in browsers like ie6, the user has no need to upgrade. Our long hours, coding hacks and workarounds so that sites look and work in ie6 are actually the cause of ie6`s prolonged life. Need some convincing, do a little research – find out if your majority share of users is from modern browsers, research the percentage of business you will gain from ie6 support against the hours of work you will need to invest making it possible.
Check out what other people have to say on the matter, if we haven’t, then these may convince you.
• I dropped ie6
• Drop IE6 Support — Give People a Reason to Upgrade « Usability Post
• Should I / Could I drop IE6?
• Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals products
• Overly Judgemental IE6 Splash Pages
13 Comments to “Viva La Revolution – Good bye IE6!!”
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how much time I wasted trying to hack ie6…
the worst thing is to work with some marketing people who don’t know the difference with another browser…
Thanks for the post!
bookmark u
Hello. I think the article is really interesting. I am even interested in reading more. How soon will you update your blog?
I use IE6 and I want to hire you… But if I’m not able to see my own website on my home computer you are not the right webdesign partner for me.
Think about IE6 support untill it’s really dead. Your Client is king. (just like Elvis is)
Good read. Also spend hours hacking IE6 but to say the least that 7 and 8 are still a piece of work. I will more then likely follow you in this fight to rid the world of IE6.
good post
Cheers
Rob
Oh thank you! IE6 is the biggest headache, I’ve stopped optimizing for for almost 6 months now, and convincing all my clients to either upgrade to IE7/IE8 and Firefox. IE8 I feel like is almost on the same level as Firefox and the rest of the browser world.
Awesome post.
@Elvis so this article or any other linked has in no way shape or form convinced you that ie6 is bad and that you would be doing yourself and everyone else who enjoys using the internet a big favour by updating?
@KonstantinMiller Soon hopefully, just need to find time between client work – which isn’t allot at the moment. Any ideas for the next post?
We are together in the Revolution.
Here a little code to help it:
http://jerusalemstyle.com/blog/dropping-ie6-no-more-ie6-support-appeal-webmasters-revolution-20090714-38
You convinced me…no hack for IE6. If my clients have IE6, then they should pay for my workshop called Firefox is our Friend
Like your style Elena! Cool as a cucumber – as always!!
Here’s one more person “inspired by your actions”! I’m a web designer down in Santiago, Chile, and will not support IE6 any longer (although good design ethics lead me to still let sites degrade gracefully).
I wish I could follow suit. I have one client right now that is holding me back from abandoning all support for IE6. As soon as they upgrade, I will celebrate and burn an IE6 effigy.
I still support it, but not for free. IE6 support is now part of my quotes “extras”.
Very nice website and copywriting btw, congrats.
Great article. Although microsoft have extended their own support for the dreadful IE6, I have to agree, we cannot be expected to have to deal with 3 versions of Internet Explorer, especially the archaic IE6.
Unfortunately some larger businesses seem to have software that rely on IE6 to work efficiently (NHS and some mortgage advisors I know)and as such we cannot drop suport for this ancient monster of a web browser. We can however charge heavily for the work we do to support IE6 so just make sure that your turnover warrants the end of IE6 support.
make money of you can people.