Time To Stop Developing For IE6?
January 20, 2010
Internet Explorer 6 (or IE6) was released over 7 years ago, and with the advent of Internet Explorer 8 I think it is finally time to stop developing for IE6.
What difference does it make?
The problem with IE6 (from a developer’s point of view) is the hurdles that need to be jumped over and workarounds that need to be created to make a simple website, one that looks almost identical on all other browsers, look right in IE6. It is a thorn in all the side of all developers and one (I’m pretty sure I’m talking for whole web development community) that needs to be removed.
What tends to happen, is one of a few things:
- is that due to limitations of IE6, developers usually restrict the visual capabilities and features of a site to accommodate IE6, thus holding back the true potential of the other browsers.
- they create a different looking (usually nowhere near as good) website that is served to the viewer only when using IE6.
- they don’t make the website fully IE6 compatible making the layout break and look out of place when viewed in IE6.
The underlying factor is that to properly account for IE6 costs time and money, that being the developers time, and hence the clients money.
Why should we upgrade, what’s in it for us?
The question should be, why wouldn’t you upgrade? – the fact is that to upgrade to IE7 (or even IE8 now) is completely free, it doesn’t now or ever did cost anything, and is very quick and painless… better yet and even easier (and still free) to do is to use a different browser entirely:
So, in terms of “what’s in it for you”, they are vastly superior browsers… websites will look much better (really they will), there will be extra functionality in websites that you wouldn’t have even know was there before and the software itself will simply be nicer to use.
There is in fact, no reason to keep using IE6.
What can we, the developers do about it?
This is quite simple, we just need to stop developing for IE6… Its all well and good us telling people why its such a bad browser but people won’t actually budge until we make them. Other websites such as SaveTheDevelopers.org have tried to impose methods such as using pop-ups prompting people to upgrade (although that site has since been bought by Microsoft and converted to a download page for IE7/IE8 – no comment) so I think we just need to make the tough decision to simply stop developing for IE6, if enough websites look broken and unusable in IE6, people will just upgrade.
The end is in sight people, we just gotta have one big push and we’ll be there! I know this post won’t change the world overnight but if it prompts just a few people to change to a proper browser then it’s been worthwhile 
Couldn’t agree more, why everyone doesn’t just use Firefox is beyond me!
Although from a business sense, if people are still using IE6 whatever the reason, developers should still develop for it…
Saying that, its an interesting argument that if sites more and more become unusable, they they kind of have to upgrade to a sensible modern browser, which is an idea I like.
In fact, I can think of no other sure fire way of seeing the back of IE6 for good, but will you get other dev companies following suit? I doubt it unfortunately