Browser compatibility Issues: IE6 is the Devil

Travis McAshanDevelopment
Dec 2009

Making the Hard Choices

Recently, Chris, my partner in crime (or coding really), were having a tense negotiation about what browsers deserve our continued support and which browsers deserve to go the way of the dinosaurs, Jimmy Hoffa, and your keys when you’re in a hurry. What I’m getting at is that certain browsers, while still holding a decent portion of the browser market share, deserve to die an awful rotten death.

Diminishing Return and Backward Compatibility

Give me a chance to explain before you label me as violent and angry. It all boils down to two basic principles, the first is the POINT OF DIMINISHING RETURN and the second is BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY. The first principle, the point of diminishing return, states there is a “point” or moment in time when the effort you spend doing a task or project costs you more in time, energy and money than the benefit you gain from said task. Second, backward compatibility, states that as technology progresses, there are always going to be “slow adopters” and “non-adopters” who will cling to their ancient technology like it was the last box of Twinkies in some tragic post apocalyptic future.

Full Steam Ahead… Browsers Be Damned

The skinny of the whole deal is that as much as the web as a whole and it’s committed developers wish to forge ahead into uncharted HTML5 and CSS2 territories, we’re FORCED to support browser technologies that were made close to a decade ago. Now, some industries might scoff at that amount of time, but if you think in terms of the web to a world where just 10 years ago the likes of Google didn’t exist and everyone thought that Apple was about to go bankrupt, QUITE a lot can change… and it has.

IE6 is the DEVIL Reincarnated as a Browser

Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001. It also came out a few months before one of Windows most successful operating systems ever released, Windows XP. What this meant is that more people came loaded with Windows Internet Explorer 6.0 than any other browser in history. Fast forward 10 years and NOT much has changed, Microsoft still has yet to trump it’s success with Windows XP and the browser share is now evenly split between IE6, IE7 and IE8. What does this mean for developers?

Drawing a Line in the Sand

Go back to my previous point about the principle of diminishing return, Chris, made a great point that after looking at the statistics there’s quite an interesting trend that forms. What we saw NO matter what website browser statistics we chose to analyze, IE users simple DO NOT upgrade their browsers like other more modern browsers. My theory is that the kind of people that never bother to venture out from the IE umbrella of familiarity simply don’t care what browser they are using. These types of people are perfectly content with their 1991 Packard Bell computer running Windows XP and IE6. The thing is who’s to fault them… if the masses can access their email, look at some funny photos on www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com and check their Facebook, what else do they really need? What REAL motivation do they have to take the time and energy upgrading their browsers? A small little bouncing icon in the toolbar might NOT be enough. Perhaps, we (internet developers), as the noble protectors of web standards need to step up and MAKE IT HAPPEN (as I like to say to our team).

Browser Statistics (Month by Month)

Firefox Browser Version Statistics (Month by Month)

Statistics are taken from W3Schools Browser Stats

The Death of Internet Explorer 6 on the Web

As you can see the market share of IE6 has been steadily dropping by roughly 1% per month over the last 10 months. This is GREAT news and it means that as we move forward, less and less people are using a browser that I would compare to having a cathode ray television or rotary dial telephone. In my humble opinion, it’s time to put our arm around the little browser and take it on back behind the shed.

Doing Our Part in the War

We here at Glide like to think that our #1 priority is helping our clients reach their goals online and that their online goals help them reach their company goals as a whole. However, our belief is in BEST IN CLASS work, this sometimes means that we will need to do our best to walk the balance beam between doing work the RIGHT way and doing work that MAKES sure our clients are reaching their customers. With that said we have decided to END support for IE6 and while ALL of our sites will still render properly and degrade gracefully, we will no longer guarantee to our clients that sites will look, act and function 100% correctly in IE6. This was a big decision and something that we have NOT come to lightly. At the same time for the sanity of my coders and for the benefit of the web and all of our clients, we feel this is the best and ultimately MOST profitable decision for everyone.

No MORE IE6… so what’s NEXT?

Just because we’re not supporting IE6 does NOT mean we plan to crash the users browser or show a blank BLACK screen, or worse some rude message telling the user how ignorant they are of the technology on their computer. However, we do feel that a polite message encouraging the user to upgrade and notifying them of the available alternative choices is a great idea. With that end we’ll be using a banner that appears at the top of the page on all browser running IE6 that features a simple “call to action” highlighting the users plight and encouraging them to download a more modern browser. They can still browser and visit every page on the site and all forms and functionality will still function as it should… hopefully. Hopefully, because as of NOW we’re simply not going to spend any more of our time focusing our efforts supporting such an antiquated and error-prone piece of software.

Last Words

Are we making the right choice? I think so and believe this is the best decision for the web. However, I’m not the only one with an opinion about this. What are your thoughts? Is this something you agree with?

UPDATE: Just read this article on a non-tech site today… www.cnn.com.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/04/ie6.funeral/index.html?hpt=P1

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