Decaflon Thread: When can we really start ignoring IE6?

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Ozone42 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:08:14

Good advice all. Doesn't really get me anywhere, but it's nice occasionally to complain/preach to the choir.

I wonder if this is enough to scare admins into upgrading...

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Oli — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:46:27

But if you're on the inside, making sites for companies that do have this problem, you might have more luck by actually talking to them and explaining how having you hack your way around IE6 could cause serious maintenance issues further down the line.

Reading through somebody else's (or even your own, months down the line) hack or workaround -filled CSS is a horrible prospect. I'm sure you know how much extra time it adds to getting something relatively simple done.

I recently had to bring an in-development site up to production standards for its release, fixing several cross-browser hacktastrophes. The code was horrible and massively convoluted because it used a combination of workarounds and plain hacks. It was impossible to tell what parts certain browsers were using and what it they were ignoring and by the time I was done, I reckon it would have been equally easy to dump the original and start again... But it's hard to tell when you start off with just a short list of required fixes.

Conversely, fixing things on a standard-embracing site that doesn't care too much about IE6 is a dream. You can target the issue with Firebug, change the one part in CSS and you're done.

If they're just paranoid, the prospect of wasting that much time and money on maintenance issues should heavily outweigh any doubts for an upgrade.

And if you can explain that to somebody who has ultimate control over the IT jockeys, perhaps you can make a change.

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Mike — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:31:16

Tyme's definitely got a point about people at work not having control over their installed browser. IT departments may be lazy but it's not the users' fault, they have to deal with whatever decisions are made by other departments.

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Scrivs — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:27:57

I guess it comes down to what your stats say and if you are willing to push a couple people out. Having the site not be perfect in IE6 might be a subtle hint for them to upgrade.

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Ozone42 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:22:11

A lot of my audience is in the big corporate world, where IT is ... almost always a problem. It's a lot like you say, they have constraints either due to legacy apps, paranoia, or just negligence. Once something gets in place as a rule, it takes quite a lot of questioning to really get to the why and affect change.

I'm not really at liberty to list all of the corps I'm talking about here, but you would be surprised how prevalent this is. It's well over 50% still.

I think I will work up a strongly worded recommendation. Maybe along the lines of "while we do test for IE6, we cannot guarantee performance or compatibility based on the age of it's technology and widely known problems."

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Oli — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:10:33

There's no reason for people to be using IE6 any more. You should feel no guilt in kicking them off (or at least giving them a strongly worded recommendation).

Well... There's almost no reason. Some people are locked into it because their poorly-built internal apps only work on IE6 (so it's an IT constraint). They're in the cant-help-it camp but they could pester their IT guy(s) for an upgrade.

Then there are the people who installed (or had installed) XP SP0 when automatic updates weren't on by default; paired with those that turned auto updates off when MS started breaking illegal copies of Windows. I wish I could remotely reformat all of these computers, killing IE6, spam bots and all sorts of other mucky crap too.

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Tyme — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:04:49

It's one of those things - you know your crowd. People are used to the "required" message (not saying it is irksome or not) with JavaScript, Flash, Silverlight, etc. It's almost become common for sites using newer technologies. Particularly with Flash requiring a specific version or higher.

In your case the worse would be the page didn't display properly and a message explaining why vs. the page not displaying at all as in the examples above.

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Ozone42 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:49:56

Setting a requirement instead of a recommendation seems a lot more harsh and irksome.

But I do like the year angle, that could help motivate.

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Tyme — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:39:24

In my experience the people using IE6 are on computers they don't have control over, like work computers. I'll send them a link and they see the message I don't see and it irks them (recommending the upgrade) because they don't have control to upgrade. When I see statistics like this I wonder how many of those IE6 users are home users vs. work users. Instead of recommending an upgrade perhaps something like "this site requires IE7, released in 2006/7" and a link if they don't have it? That might cause employees (or anyone) to question why they are using software that is so old.

Edit: Of course there are probably a ton of people who have auto-updates off. The people I interact with daily upgraded to Firefox personally for the adblocking and are stuck using whatever is on their machine at work.

Did you look at your stats to see how many people use IE6? For me it's 9%.

When can we really start ignoring IE6?

Ozone42 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:08:44

I know I'm not in the minority here. Going back into web pages and web apps and "fixing" them to work in IE6 constitutes the bulk of my development time (after initial concept/backend). It's absurd.

I have seen campaigns in the past to encourage people to upgrade their browsers. At first I thought that was a bit tacky, but I'm starting to think the time is right. IE7 has been out quite a while, and while it's far from a great browser it is a massive upgrade. I think the main reason IE6 continues to exist is ignorance of better alternatives, or perhaps laziness. In larger corporate environments I know at times sysadmins block updates until they've been proven in the wild for a good while. Well... how much longer do we need to wait?

I'm considering putting a message/warning on all of my apps that reads something like the following:

While IE6 is supported by this service, we recommend you upgrade to a modern browser to take advantage of performance and usability features unavailable in terrible terrible browser programs.

Ok, I wouldn't say terrible in the real message, but I am thinking it. What do you think? Is there a better approach? Maybe "Look what you could be missing out on!!"