Is It Time to Ditch IE6?
Internet Explorer 6 still accounts for 42% of browsers visiting an NHS site that I manage, this is an amazing figure for a 7 year old insecure and broken browser that cant render the modern web.
The web has not stopped evolving in the last 7 years. The article from Sitepoint below, highlights that web developers jump backwards through hoops so that sites still render reasonably when viewed by IE6, perhaps it’s time to move forward without this monkey on our backs. My latest site drops a lot of features for IE6, I see no reason to add-on many layers of complexity simply to include some minor page styling. But with such a high percentage of users, basic page layout in IE6 is still, of course, a high priority.
One has to wonder why IT departments are not upgrading browsers? IT departments are the ones to blame, they make the decisions for most people, and they seem to have a poor opinion of IE7. There seems to be some prevailing notion that IE7 is not an improvement on IE6. One opinion I heard recently; was that IE7 was very slow. But I think the real issue is that a lot of people simply don’t like the UI (“User Interface”).
I believe Internet Explorer 7 made a major mistake when it changed the UI – If IE7 still looked the same as IE6, I think the upgrade process would have proceeded at a much faster pace. Your average user doesn’t want to learn to drive a new browser, and most people think the features of the browser are all in the UI. If both browsers looked the same, most people would not have noticed the major advantages of IE7, the increased security, the better rendering of CSS layouts, and painlessly dropped IE6.
On August 27, 2001, almost exactly 7 years ago, Microsoft unleashed Internet Explore 6 upon the world. Despite version 7 having been out now for almost two years, and version 8 already in public beta, usage of the 2001 release remains strong. W3Counter reports that it is still the most popular browser in the world at 34.6% of all visits, while TheCounter.com has it second to IE7, but only barely and still commanding a whopping 36% market share.
Because so many people still use the older version of Internet Explorer, many web sites have made the choice to continue supporting it (including SitePoint — where about 12% of our visitors still come to us using IE6). But is it perhaps time to ditch IE6 support and start forcing people to upgrade?
Web application developer 37signals made the decision to drop IE6 support in July (actual support for Microsoft’s last generation browser ceased on August 15). “IE 6 can’t provide the same web experience that modern browsers can,” wrote 37signals of the decision. “Continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress.”
According to 37signals, supporting IE6 was holding them back. And 37signals isn’t alone in their dislike of IE6. In 2006, a few months before Microsoft released their last major browser, PC World magazine ranked Internet Explorer 6 as the 8th worst tech product of all time, citing its terrible track record when it comes to security.
Security is such a big issue for IE6, that one blogger recently reported that 95% of all bots accessing his site use Internet Explorer 6 as their user-agent. “Most blog spam comes from bots that either fake or, as a trojan, use Internet Explorer 6 of infected systems,” he wrote, ultimately deciding to block IE6 completely to alleviate the blog spam problem.
Of course, security isn’t the only reason web developers are sour on IE6. Internet Explorer 6 is also dismal when it comes to standards compliance. So why do people continue to use it? As Nick La wrote a year ago, the reason people still use IE6 is that developers go out of their way to make web sites work in it. So most people don’t realize that IE6 isn’t a good browser.
“We all know that IE6 is outdated and has horrible CSS rendering engine. However, most average Internet users haven’t realized that yet. Why? Because we put our hard work on it and patch the bugs by various IE hacks,” La wrote, urging people to drop support for IE6.
Tags: browser, internet explorer, standards
January 13th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I agree that the Upgrade process may have been faster, because the less technical users don’t know how to setup IE7, or get back their top file menu.
I was myself annoyed by this, but have later started to enjoy the new interface. And even though i hate to admit that this was the reason, it actually made me start to remember the shortcut keys.
I’m doing some searches to see how many are starting to recommend not to support IE6, or other older browsers.
I’m just throwing in my advice, and which is also the advice i give people from http://www.brugbart.com, that is to stop supporting IE6.
There are many alternatives for XP users, and even though microsoft has stopped supporting win98, those users are still able to shift to opera.
I generally stopped careing for IE6 when IE7 was released, none of my websites officially supports IE6, and i would highly advice any clients ageinst supporting it.
We as web designers need to start telling users to upgrade their browsers, just as they would upgrade any other software.
We should also understand our place, and we should not be afraid to tell our client that they are wrong, should they insist on support for such browsers. After all we are more in a position to tell whats best to do then they are.