Internet Explorer 6: It’s Time to Go
By David Golding
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I don’t understand how developers and designers still insist on making their sites compatible with IE 6. All over the place, as a computer user, you come across compatibility issues, why should your web site be any different? For example, Mac users have known this one all too well, with software companies categorically refusing to support their system. What do they do? Well, they live with it and look for another way to get the same thing done. I could go on with examples here of other platforms and incompatibility.
Not only do better alternatives exist, they’re free! Download Firefox or Safari, they’re both available regardless of your OS, and they’re both free, and they’re both eons ahead of Internet Explorer, especially IE 6. Every developer knows my pain and all of the deadweight loss you encounter from coding a site and then refactoring the whole thing to work with IE 6. Why do we go on with this piece of junk?
The reason has always been because it’s the most popular browser. Really? I know that the market researchers are telling us that such is the case, but in my own server logs, I’ve noticed that it doesn’t hold true. Even if IE 6 is the more popular browser, at what point do we cut it off and say that we’ll no longer support it? Heck, Microsoft has already released beta versions of IE 8…
I know what you’re thinking… This is a tech blog, and techies are always more Firefox prone, in fact it’s likely a sin for a techie to show up using IE. And I’m noticeably a Mac fan, so the Apple fanboys that come here are likely to use Safari, or at least Firefox since there isn’t a Mac version of IE. So my server logs are bound to show a discrepancy.
The Stats
Well, you my faithful readers, do consist of Firefox and Safari users by a margin of ten to one. Around 10% of visitors to this site use any version of IE. All I can say is that I’m proud of you for making an educated decision in which browser to use.
But what about a more common site with a smattering of folks from around the globe? One of my sites, Piano Public Domain, enjoys consistent traffic from folks mainly from the U.S. and Europe, but with a fair amount of traffic from pretty much everywhere.
You can see from these numbers that there certainly are more IE users on Piano Public Domain. But IE 6 only has about 32% of all IE users. For all users this last month that have come to my site, only 14% of all users, then, are using IE 6.
Business Decisions
I have noticed about a 1.5-to-1 ratio of time for coding in IE, sometimes downright 3:1. In other words, getting my site to work in IE 6 versus Firefox and Safari takes that much more time, sometimes three times as much time. Is it worth it? Cost effective?
For 14% of my user base? Goodness sakes, no!
All of you shareware developers out there, say you’ve upgraded your software a couple of times and you notice that you still have some users out there, 14% of them, still using an older version. Do you spend more of your time (and resources, and money) giving support for that older version? Everyone I know in this situation would say to urge the user to upgrade.
Why is this so hard for web developers to do? I’ve seen little notices telling me that the website doesn’t support Safari, and I get that (though I have my ways of getting around it most of the time). Why not a notice that says “I’m sorry, but you’re using Internet Explorer version 6.0 and this site doesn’t support this version. Please upgrade to version 7.0 or use another browser, like Firefox or Safari, instead.”
Imagine if someone like Google were to do that. They’d probably hand over to Firefox a commanding lead in market share. And if more joined in? Like EBay, Yahoo, Facebook…
I’m not calling for the end of IE, though I personally don’t appreciate that it refuses to be standards compliant, just an end to IE 6. It’s time came, and it went. As the guys behind the websites, let’s call an end to it, and urge people to upgrade. And not pull our hair out trying to get it to work :)
Update
I guess Facebook has already done this:
Wonderful! Now you do the same!
Web Standards Education
By David Golding
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Personally, I appreciate good documentation efforts not only because I’m a believer in education– especially the self-help kind (it’s the most cost-efficient way to learn)–but because well-documented projects reduce dead weight loss and inefficiency. In other words, when everyone better understands what the experts know, simply put, there is much less hassle, especially when it comes to programming.
Possibly the worst of all coding smorgasbords is HTML/CSS. I mean, no other markup language has been so terribly implemented (Internet Explorer! Gasp!) and at the same time so widely used (can anything top the world wide web in terms of developer base?). Yet, surprisingly, web standards are slow in coming. Sure, they’re there, and who can doubt the number of web standards evangelists out there urging us all to improve our markup? But until the powers that be (namely, the big four: Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Opera) all subscribe to web standards, we all get to continue finding hacks for creating a three-column layout or using transparency in graphics and rounded corners.
I came across Opera’s web standards curriculum and was impressed. Clearly, Opera is fighting for dear life when considering their market share compared to other browsers, and I think it’s fairly obvious that their strategy is to ride the web standards wave to try to grab customers. Heck, they suedMicrosoft over web standards and anti-trust. But the need for a consensus on web standards is still sorely needed, and Opera’s push to educators to more effectively teach web development is certainly relevant. For instance, I was shocked how often at my alma mater, the top professors in Information Systems were teaching outdated methods for web development, and this was at a top-ranked business school.
Though a life where web standards are fully implemented across all the major browsers is one I don’t think I’ll ever experience, I still appreciate when somebody makes the effort.
New Blog, New Book
By David Golding
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The Beginning CakePHP: From Novice to Professional book I’ve been working on is finally finished! Next week it goes to the printer and will be available for purchase shortly thereafter. You can pre-order the book through Amazon to get a copy the soonest possible.
To my knowledge, this will be the first published book on the CakePHP framework. I’m thrilled to offer something to the Cake community, especially since so many folks have remarked that one of the only drawbacks to learning Cake is a difficult supply of documentation.
To commemorate the launch of the new book, I’ve given the blog a new design. In the future, please correspond with me here through comments and posts. I’d love to connect more with readers, and hopefully this new design will allow me to do that. Any suggestions? Keep sending ‘em my way!
