Stop Supporting IE6?
This is really one of those subjects that is highly personal to each and every designer/developer and I don’t think I have ever met one that hasn’t got a strong opinion on it. So here is my own opinion on IE6 and while it probably won’t add anything new to what is already out there at least now my voice is in the crowd :p
IE6 is one of those thorns in a web coders side, it rarely plays nice and it does seem like it would be easier to just throw in the towel and stop supporting it, as after all running away from a problem often makes it go away.
Dropping support of IE6 = People upgrading their browser.
Err no it won’t, if I go on to a site and it doesn’t work I don’t change what browser I am using just to see if I can view it correctly, I move onto a different site slightly annoyed that the developer didn’t cater to my needs as a user. So I don’t see why most people who use IE6 would be any different to me in that respect.
While informing people to upgrade is all well and good, stopping the support altogether isn’t a wise business strategy, as all this would do is drive people to a competitors site who could very well support the needs of IE6 users. Even Microsoft, has stated that while it wants people to stop using IE6 that it cannot force people to do so. This is why they have said that they are still going to keep support IE6 until 2014.
But Google, facebook and (insert a large company here)…
It has been well publicised recently that some big sites such as google and its subsidiary Youtube are going to phase out support for IE6. With this obviously comes the designers and developers that think that because Google are doing this that they should also stop support.
However the question that should be going around their minds is “can this site I am developing really afford to not support IE6?” As while big companies can afford to take such steps, smaller companies really can’t and it could be very damaging for them not to support a major browser.
It’s only 10% to 20%
One of the stupidest arguments that I have heard recently is that it is that on average only 10% to 20% of people browsing the net use IE6 and that is a such a small percentage compared to a couple of other browsers.
A problem with this is that the statistic is based on everyone and not the target for an individual site. So while 10%- 20% of overall users may use IE6, one site might get virtually none and another could get a lot of it. Take for example this site, looking at my stats show 0.8% of users over the past month viewed it in IE6, while a site I designed for a client had 72% of its visitors using IE6. So it really does vary from site to site, and can be a big variation, so unless there are stats to back up not supporting IE6 on a site, surely its better to be safe than risk a lot of visitors not being able to use the site.
Another issues is that even if every single website in the world did get 10% of its visitors using IE6, then that would still be 1 in every 10. Now as overall averages seem to be so important within this argument, the average conversion rate of a website is between 0.5 and 4% of users that visit a website. If a site isn’t supporting 10% of its visitors that mean potentially it is loosing 10% of its conversion rate as well, and with that being a low percentage to begin with can a site really afford to not support 10% of its user-base?
What is a browser?
For those that haven’t seen the what is a browser video on youtube it is well worth a bit of your time. While it is funny to watch it is sadly very true, a lot of people out there don’t actually know what a browser is. I have had many clients who state that they use google as their browser, while some do mean chrome the majority of them do mean the search engine. So its scary to think that some coders out there are taking on a new rule that they will only make a site work in IE6 if a client tells them to do so, if a client doesn’t know what a browsers is then how are they going to know to request their site work in one?
Don’t open that new window!!
Accessibility and usability is really important, for example, we shouldn’t open any links in new windows, it should always be left up to the user to decide as we should never ever tell them how to browse a site. Yet in the same breath it is perfectly fine for us to dictate to a user what browsers they shouldn’t be using…yup that makes perfect sense.
Graceful Degrade
Its true technology is advancing and its only natural that with these advancements the way websites look and function will develop and change too, but again that doesn’t mean that we should neglect people just because they haven’t upgraded.
So the site doesn’t look exactly the same in IE6 as it does in other browsers, the end user isn’t to know this, and they can’t really miss what they don’t know. So as long as it functions and the user can do what they need to on the site then that’s all that matters.
Rather than thinking about what has been taken away from the site in IE6 and how it isn’t how you vision the user’s experience, think of it more like rewarding those that have upgraded with the full experience of the site, while still allowing it to function for those that can’t upgrade or are non the wiser to what a browser is.
Get over yourself!
Here comes the analogy… IE6 is very much like my boiler, its old and newer, better and more efficient models are out there. Now I will be the first to admit that I don’t have a clue about boilers, mine warms water and heats my house so I’m happy as it works the way I think a boiler should work. When it came time to get it serviced last year a part needed to be replaced, the workman who came out even made a comment about how old it was. Then what he did shocked me, he replaced the part and then he left. I know how odd is that, he actually did what he had been paid to do, he didn’t refuse on the grounds that I needed to upgrade.
Ok really it didn’t shock me as in pretty much every other profession there are parts that people love and parts that they don’t. With web design and development, developing a site so that it functions in IE6 is one of those things that most don’t like as it requires a lot of extra effort and hacks…however, its part of the job and if it is a site someone is paying for they deserve to have a site that is fully functional in all major browser, not just the ones that play nice with a certain coding style.
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I’m with you on this… a web designer/ developer is there to provide what the client NEEDS not what the designer/ developer WANTS. You can’t ignore a percentage of potential customers because it’s awkward, more work or against your principles! IE6 compatibility isn’t the hardest thing in the world – like you say a design can degrade gracefully so you still get to serve-up yummy ‘extras’ for modern browsers.
Just this week a client of mine was approached by a BIG household name and a local council… both use IE6 and both are worth thousands per annum to my client… a ‘no IE6 ever’ designer would have cost them tens of thousands.
I’m in two minds about support of IE6, I tend not to have too many problems with it (or any other version of IE for that matter), I don’t use CSS hacks or conditional comments and normally it’s just the odd padding/margin issue that takes a couple of seconds to resolve so I’m happy to sort them out to get everything displaying ok in as many browsers as possible.
On the other hand if developers continue to support legacy browsers we ultimately shoot ourselves in the foot as people/businesses aren’t going to upgrade their browsers if they continue to work and websites display correctly.
For the moment your right in that a websites target audience should be the primary factor in deciding on IE6 compatibility but we need to phase out support sooner rather than later, we need to subtlety persuade users into making the decision to upgrade, slowly drop support for new sites that don’t require it and on sites that do, inform users of the benefits (both functionality and security) of upgrading to a “modern” browser.
While informing people of the risks and that upgrading is a wise choice could be a good idea, as long as IE6 has a large share in the market place it still needs to be supported. As lets fact it there are lot of browsers out there so holding 10-20% of the market is a huge percentage compared to a lot of other browsers out there. So turning your back on that many potential customers and sending them right into competitors open arms seems silly to me.
I also don’t think that supporting the browser will mean that less people/business will upgrade, they will, it will just take time like it has done with other evil browsers such as IE5.5 which was still popular up until a few years ago, and I remember all the fun times with Netscape Navigator, they were days that seemed like they would never end. So while at the moment it does seem like something drastic needs to be done, I really don’t think that punishing those that just don’t know any better or businesses that can’t afford to upgrade is the way to go about it.
(wizely we seem to be agreeing with each other a lot lately, how odd
)
A lot of people forget that accessibility isn’t just about peoples differences, it’s about technology as well. So if a designer neglects IE6 they can’t claim that they build sites with accessibility in mind!!
I stopped supporting IE6 last year, We have to be leaders as we know about security issues and by supporting IE6 all we do is tell others that it is okay to use these outdated browsers when it isn’t.
I agree with Wizely on this one. We as web designers/ developers provide a service. People use services, so if their experience of our service is poor, we won’t get any repeat business/ recommendations.
For my own projects, I still support IE6 as a matter of course, largely because (as said above) it’s actually pretty easy if you develop with it in mind from the outset.
If you’re doing something really flashy and swanky, you could always use the universal IE6 stylesheet. http://stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/universal_internet_explorer_6_CSS/
Thanks for the link !b that was a really interesting read. I think its a shame that a lot of designers feel that they can just neglect the clients needs just because they don’t want to keep supporting for IE6.
Im down with neglecting IE6 muahahahaha
At work we create our clients sites for IE7 and above. To be honest i dont think any of our websites support IE6 and neither us, nor our clients care since its less that 3% of all our clients site’s visitors. One thing I have found though is thanks to the rise in popularity of more modern browsers (chrome in particular) Its very rare these days that I find anyone with only internet explorer (any version) installed. Most people seem to have IE6 or IE7 and either chrome or firefox. I’ve tried to get my boss to put a mechanism in place in our clients websites that blocks out IE6 users and displays a simple step by step guide showing them how to upgrade their browsers but to no avail!
When I wrote this the percentage was around 10-15, which to me was a huge amount of people to neglect. Since then with browsers now making people aware of the choice, I agree that people do have a bit more of an awareness when it comes to browsing then they did a year ago, though there are still some companies that still use IE6 and don’t give the people using those systems the choice to upgrade/use a different browser.
I’m still very much still an advocate of downgrading gracefully instead of neglecting them I don’t tend to shout at designer/developers that opt to support IE7+ these days :p
Yeah. The only problem I have with supporting IE6 users is A) its too much extra work and B) you have to becareful not to break the site for more modern browsers. I just think its time to let go of the past and look to the future. ^_^ That said, I was checking my site statistics earlier (bear in mind i started my blog on the 25th) I had 1 visit from an IE 8 user, 2 from IE 7 users and 3 from IE 6 users so today, 50% of my internet explorer using visitors were on IE6.