Creative Reason » IE6

Death to IE6

Brian Schwartz — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:08:20 +0000

As I’ve pointed out twice (my plea to corporate America here & during a poll here), I’m on the bandwagon of those trying to kill IE6. As a web developer it hurts every time you’re forced to support it. It adds hours of frustrating wasted time to every project and as I point out in my plea to corporate America: It’s old, really old and full of holes. I’ve gone as far as prompting IE6 visitors to this site to download an upgrade by use of a modal popup.

Now more than ever, this movement is gaining steam:

There is now an article at Mashable about killing IE6
News that Youtube will kill it’s support for IE6
And Digg wanted to, but realized that the reason people use it is because they have no choice (locked down XP computers without being able to upgrade).

But by far the funniest of all I’ve seen yet is this – IE6ify any website. This tool will make the site look likes it being shown in IE6 (to a developer). Basically it breaks your page. Enjoy the fun that I and so many have experienced trying to use CSS on IE6 in this replicator. (H/T to Logan)

Do you block or support IE6?

Brian Schwartz — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:22:41 +0000

With the recent launch of Internet Explorer 8 and recent campaigns to block IE6, kill IE6 and end IE6 (this one is even by a .Net magazine), and pleas by countless bloggers (like this one here by me) have people finally relented and either installed a new browser or started supporting IE7 in their corporate environment?

Well…there was 1.6% drop of market share in April 2009 from 17.0% to 15.4%, but unfortunately 15.4% of users is still a significant percentage (see all stats here).

So this begs the question. Web developers – are you helping bring about the demise of IE6? Are you allowed to at your business / corporate environment? My answer is yes and no. I don’t support it here, I use the pop-up, and I don’t support it on our spoken whirred blog. But I do degrade using hacks for IE6 on Spoke’s main site. Love to hear your comments about this as well.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Dear Corporate America,

Brian Schwartz — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:23:05 +0000

Please stop using Internet Explorer 6. It came out in 2001, is riddled with bugs and forces developers that want to use cool tools like MooTools write CSS and HTML hacks that make me cringe.

I understand you are fearful of change. I get it. Don’t upgrade to Office 2007. Doesn’t bother me at all. Don’t upgrade to Vista. Heck that OS compelled me to switch to a Mac. I also understand that your IT support staff is not prepared for the onslaught of calls due to the ribbon replacing menus in Office 07.

But the whole goal of Internet Explorer 7 was to be more secure (i.e. less for you to worry about). Especially now that it’s been out for 2 years. Also, it’s a browser, so it won’t crash your network or cause a flood of calls to your IT support center.

In conclusion, this is my plea to you corporate America, to do what’s best for web developers everywhere and upgrade to IE7 already. The world of tab pages and standards based CSS support awaits you.

Sincerely,

Brian Schwartz