July 17, 2009
Slim Kiwi’s Take on Internet Explorer 6 Support & Client Projects
by Mark J. Reeves
IE6 (Version 6.x of Internet Explorer) is the web browser folks like us love to hate. If you haven’t gotten wind of that already, we expect you will.
- In October, 2008, 37signals, provider of products such as Basecamp, which we use for project management, ceased supporting IE6.
- Shortly after that, Sifter, a web-based bug tracking application, released a redesign which broke in IE6, to our client’s disappointment.
- YouTube & Digg recently announced that they would soon be dropping IE6 support.
What does dropping IE6 support even mean? Well, it means that they’ll stop checking their web sites in IE6 to make sure they look good. When we launch a web site, we check it in a broad sampling of browsers: Safari 3, Safari 4, Firefox 3 and up, IE7, IE8 and, to our frequent dismay, IE6. Each of those browsers interpret how HTML should display in subtly different ways, and we need to adjust your web site’s code so that pages match the designs you approve in all those browsers. You’re paying for your designs and content to reach users regardless of their choice of platform and we support that.
But IE6? Well, two versions and ages old in internet years, it’s broken. To some extent, Microsoft ignored important trends and standards when building IE6, that the web development community and other browsers adopted, so it requires extra elbow grease to make sites work the same there as they do everywhere else. In the majority of cases, IE6 users are fringe users, less than 5%, and the costs of accommodating them outweigh the benefits, leading large web sites to announce they’re dropping support, in part to encourage users to upgrade, move on and get on the same page as everyone else. Web design firms announce new policies that they will no longer support IE6, or that doing so will incur an additional fee.
There are a few reasons IE6 hasn’t withered and vanished yet. The predominant reason is corporate IT departments. Some of them insist upon users staying with IE6 because years ago they built very expensive internal web sites that only work in that browser. Upgrading the browser on everyone’s computer would incur costs in redeveloping those sites. Others, like a financial services client we work for, stick with a specific IE6 release because a significant portion of their corporate security policy is based upon it.
Another client will soon be launching a site that may be accessed in Internet cafes anywhere in the world. We’re not entirely sure what browser might be installed there, so it’s a good idea to stick with supporting IE6 until we see some stats come in.
For now, we won’t be dropping IE6 support. We would certainly, for the sake of the web, appreciate it if you would drop IE6. We will continue to assume that we’re supporting IE6 in our work, but for those clients who feel it’s not worth the effort, we’ll discount the project commensurately and include a message on your site letting IE6 users know that a better experience awaits them in another browser. For the most part, those sites will work fine for those users and they’ll still get to the content. The design might come through a little rough, but we’ll collectively be doing our part for a better web by kindly requesting those users join us in the future.