It's one thing when techie sites such as Reddit claim to no longer support IE6 (since their redesign). There have been heartfelt pleas from designers the world over to drop support for IE6 for years, but only sites with particularly techie audiences have actually made the jump.
However, in the past few months there have been mounting examples of more mainstream sites following their lead. 37signals have announced they are now phasing out support for IE6 across all their web applications.
And the most surprising example (to me at least) was Facebook. Facebook visitors with IE6 are now greeted by an "upgrade your browser" message, and recent features will not work for them.
Although the vast majority of Litmus' users are using Firefox, we see 9% of visitors using IE6. We still test in IE6, and try our best to maintain near-perfect compatibility.
In our case, a lot of our customers' clients may still be using older systems to view the published compatibility reports, even if our own users are very savvy.
What do you think? Have you stopped supporting IE6 on any of your sites?
Comments
I think it's great Paul. About time too.
It is unfortunate for corporate end-users/workers who have no control over their browser choice and ultimately cannot view certain websites, but any company still using IE6 needs to wake up.
And home users have no excuse. They should upgrade for their own benefit.
Why advantage is there to be using the out-dated, inferior and vulnerable browser that is IE6..?
IE7 was released in October 2007, and the forced upgrade was rolled out by Microsoft in Feb 2008.
Now I'm sure Facebook's non-compliance is more laziness than some desire to be an industry-leading example. 37Signals on the other hand, I fully respect, and regardless of their motives, take my hat off to them.
I hope every corporate and consumer ends all support immediately.
Is there some reason why they shouldn't..?
Posted by dawnprofies on July 28, 2008 1:06 PM
You can always tell IE6 to behave like IE7.. I plan to implement this when market share of IE6 falls below 20%..
Using Deam Edwards's JS:
http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2008/01/ie7-2/
However, due to the large number of corporates that are still on IE6, and depending on what site you are building - you may be causing more problems for yourself, and harm your client relationship at the same time..
Posted by Jim Callender on July 30, 2008 11:51 AM
Thanks for the comments.
Jim the IE7 script looks particularly interesting. I remember reading something about it a year or so ago, but hadn't looked recently. That could be really helpful!
Posted by Paul Farnell on July 31, 2008 10:52 AM
I'd like IE6 to go away, but just can't ignore 20-30%% of the market. We at 5pm are still supporting IE6, though it takes us extra time. But a lot of our users just don't have time or knowledge or drive to upgrade (unfortunately). So we have to do what we have to do, waiting for the % of IE6 to go down.
In meanwhile, we added the Basecamp-to-5pm data import, for all the users who want to try 5pm:
http://qgsoftware.com/blog/2008/08/15/migrating-from-basecamp-to-5pm/
Posted by Sergei on August 15, 2008 5:11 PM
I'm rather sick of css hacking for IE6 to be honest, a lot of my development budget goes on it (too much in my opinion).
I don't see why we should pay to support an outdated browser when there are better alternatives out there. Can someone answer me that?
Why should my (small) company have to take a hit because large corporation won't pend money upgrading their systems? It's all the wrong way round.
Posted by Mark Hankins on June 30, 2009 6:40 PM
I think it depends on your visitors. I think it's logical to look at the stats regarding incoming traffic to determine this for a site or project.
However, in the case of web-based apps, there is no reason to support IE6 unless your client demands it. After all, any software you purchase has "minimum system requirements" and if your machine is too antiquated to run said software, well I guess you'd better upgrade.
With IE8 out now, I see no reason to support IE6 for any apps. However, it's still tricky for public-facing sites. But, if Facebook is dropping support, then we know it can't be long until it's safe for everyone else to.
Posted by Jason Glover on November 30, 2009 9:21 PM