Who are you disappointing with IE6 support?
Posted by System | Thursday, March 26, 2009
Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is not getting any younger. With a initial release date of 27th August 2001, it's one of the oldest things touching the internet with its slimy fingers. Since then, surfing has taken great leaps forward. In all areas: Web standards, Security, Usability, Rendering speed, Debugging, and more. By working hard to maintain back-wards compatibility all of us are missing all of that progress.
Over the years, IE6 has had 142 security issues uncovered. Still 22 of those are not patched. Most IE6 users have no idea of this, but you do. You don't want these people do to their online banking with that kind of browser backing them. You should help these users by educating them, and making it easy for them to upgrade!
If people are paying you do build websites for them it's even worse. By not pushing for upgrade, you're holding their website back. You're downgrading features since "they won't work in IE6"", you're over optimising your javascript because "the site gets slow in IE6"", you're hack around CSS issues with extra style-sheets because "IE6 just don't get your styling right". Each hour you work with IE6 backwards compatibility, is one hour less work on new features. Many developers agree that about half their time goes to planning, testing, and patching IE6 issues. That means you could be twice as productive to your employer it you did things differently.
Some people will call me and Microsoft-hater because of this article. You're right, I don't like most things Microsoft do. But that doesn't have anything to do with IE6. I'm fine with people upgrading to IE7. In fact, I prefer people upgrading to IE7 over them switching to Firefox. Why? Because IE7 replaces IE6, making it impossible (or too hard for beginners) to switch back to the IE6 junk.
In fact, I'm certain that just like me, most Microsoft developers would be delighted if IE6 just stopped working today. Just consider, how much of the code you wrote 8 years ago are you still proud of?
By simply reading this post, I can only assume you care about web standards. You have lengthy arguments with table developers over why their way is outdated, you have already talked about Firefox with your friends, and your parents have switched long time ago. But what looks good when you open your mouth, you throw away as soon as you start doing real work. You hack, hack, hack, and patch for IE6. Despite you knowing that this is the wrong way of doing things, despite the pain you feel doing it, despite everything you've read.
By no means, am I saying that you should stop supporting IE6 immediately - we have a strict protocol regarding browser testing at Illusion Media - and I'm not going to pretend that IE6 is not included in that process; I think it is important however to balance your priorities effectively, and spend more time focusing on what can be achieved in the future, than what can be fixed from the past.