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Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 5:16 pm
by JellyFish
It's October 2010, nine years after the release of IE6. Should we care about it still?
I'm not asking if we should not support it. I'm asking if we should care if our sites functions to it's fullest extent, given that it at least functions. For example, should we care if PNGs work properly in IE6; should we care if our styles work completely in IE6; should we only care that IE6 users just get the content of our site, without the worry that it "looks good"?
I'm mean common, it's 2010. That is 9 years after
2001: A Space Odyssey and when it's sequel was based (
2010: The Year We Make Contact). How much support do you give IE6?
[EDIT]
According to
Wikipedia, IE6 still has 16% market share. IE7 only has 10%. That's still a pretty large number of people. What I'd like to know is how these people cope with IE6?! They have to be aware of other newer browsers, Chrome, Firefox, IE8, etc. Maybe the corporation is the culprit, but even then, what's wrong with these corporations?
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 5:18 pm
by John Cartwright
I haven't cared about IE6 for a long time. If we receive bug reports from users based on that version, then I would take a look at it.. otherwise... blah.
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 5:55 pm
by Benjamin
Actually, It's rare that I even test sites in IE at all anymore.
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 6:59 pm
by Jonah Bron
<my-opinion>
9 years or not, it still depends on statistics. And not just internet-wide statistics. If a good percentage of your users use IE6, and not supporting it means turning people (customers?) away, you must pay attention to it. The good news is, it works the other way too: if a super-small number of your users use IE at all, ignore it.
</my-opinion>
I'm not disagreeing with the two previous posts; just elaborating (I think).
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 7:26 pm
by John Cartwright
IE6 has about a 5% market share these days. I would rather cater to the 95% other "customers" properly, rather than divert time and money dealing with a disproportionate minority.
I mean seriously.. 9 years time in Internet land is like ... a billion years. At a certain point the energy (money) involved in keeping our sites completely cross browser compliant, there is a diminishing return. I think that diminishing return hit about 3-4 years ago which was about the time IE lost majority market share (for all their IE versions combined).
Currently IE in total has about a 30% market share across all versions.. and has been diminishing by ~10% a year.
So again... Do I support IE6... Blah!
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 8:56 pm
by Jonah Bron
5%???? Hallelujah!
How time flies.
Cheers

Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 9:07 pm
by Eran
Actually, it's still neck and neck with Chrome -
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_vers ... 909-201009
Personally, my answer is this - it depends. Is it a content site or a web application? what is the target audience demographics? how much effort is needed to support it?
As a thumb rule we try to use cross-browsers libraries such as jQuery that support IE6. For visual aspects we give a functional but degraded look in IE (7 included). It should still work and look not completely broken. IE though is the last browser we check, so probably (~100%) has more issues than other browsers.
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 10:58 am
by josh
IE6 is the default browser that ships with Windows XP service pack 3. Microsoft broke a lot of stuff in Vista that is still broken in Windows 7. But most people that would be running it are techies and would install firefox as their first step after formatting their computer.
So if your target audience is people that just installed Windows XP, you may want to consider still supporting IE6
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 11:59 am
by Reviresco
Yeah, we still support it, as much as it galls me to have to. We're still in the double digit percentages for most sites, and with many thousands of users, that's a lot of people, and the client isn't interested in our technical explanations of why IE 6 sucks.
Fortunately, having dealt with it for so long, and with various helpful websites about dealing with it, it has become rather routine. I keep a dedicated old Windows machine just for testing on IE 6. The double float bug, the expanding box bug, etc. etc. -- you just learn to avoid them when possible, and when you can't, use alternate style sheets with conditional statements.
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 12:22 pm
by Monotoko
A lot of people still use IE6 because there workplace forces them to in the corporate environment. Likelyhood is, the people accessing your site will not be using IE6. I personally have PHP check there header and throw a nice notice out if they are using an old browser telling them that it might not work properly because of the age of there browser.
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 12:25 pm
by Benjamin
I think the reality of the situation is that people using IE6, and even further Windows in general, are used to "things" not quite working right. I certainly don't mean to come off as brass, but it's the truth.
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:29 am
by flying_circus
Benjamin wrote:I think the reality of the situation is that people using IE6, and even further Windows in general, are used to "things" not quite working right. I certainly don't mean to come off as brass, but it's the truth.
That's an interesting stance to take. While I dont exactly disagree about IE6, I am primarily a windows user, and things just seem to work for me (I know, it's crazy, right?).
Generally I try to follow the same model as yahoo and their graded browser support. I figure that their network of websites see much more traffic than mine, and have no reason to distrust their data collection.
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/articles/gbs/
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 5:53 pm
by JellyFish
What if you're developing for a client and don't know what kind of users they will have?
Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 7:16 am
by josh
Benjamin wrote:I think the reality of the situation is that people using IE6, and even further Windows in general, are used to "things" not quite working right. I certainly don't mean to come off as brass, but it's the truth.
Are website owners also used to not making sales

Re: Should we care about IE6 now?
Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2010 7:44 am
by Benjamin
josh wrote:Are website owners also used to not making sales

You'd be amazed at the sites I've seen make (lots) of money. I'm talking animated kangaroo gifs and marquees. As far as rendering issues go many users assume the issue is with their computer, which in a sense it is if they are using IE6. JS on the other hand is a different issue completely. The entire site should still be functional with JS disabled.