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!
Comments
Sep 4th, 2008, 1:31 am
I’ve been using a script from this website for my latest project:
http://goodbyeie6.org.ua/
It displays a big fat warning if the browser ist too old.
My reason to do so was that I – like you also said – realized that the amount of time spent is just not worth it. So I agree that the best way to improve this situation is to ask the user to update his software.
rich
Nov 10th, 2008, 10:27 am
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/November/browser.php
the counters stats for november, 35% IE6.
if you’re happy for that 4 out of 10 visitors won’t get a good experience, then by all means drop support :p
Nov 10th, 2008, 10:57 am
The Counter? If you take their stats as reliable. But my own server logs tell me to the contrary. What I’m arguing for is for site admins to look at their actual visitors and make decisions based off of that. And so far, all of my sites show too small a percentage of IE6 users for me to justify supporting it.
Dec 15th, 2008, 4:37 pm
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
There you go, reliable browser statistics. As of now IE6 is used by 20.0%. To me the solution is obvious, do not drop IE6 support. 20% is unfortunately still too high. Maybe in one more year… we’ll see..
Dec 15th, 2008, 4:56 pm
But my point was to use your own server logs to determine which of your user base is using IE6. I have yet to see on any of my sites, or my clients’ sites as well, anything bigger than 14% IE6 traffic, and frankly, the costs are too much to maintain backwards compatibility to support that. Moreover, even 20% seems too low for me to take seriously, when the software is so easily upgradable. Again, if the web devs don’t insist on better browser software, who will?
Dec 23rd, 2008, 1:51 pm
For me, it’s not that hard to keep compatibility for IE6. And 20% percent is one out of every five people. That could affect your revenue from $500 bucks to $400 bucks per day/week/month/year. That’s a lot.
Companies like Google are in fact pushing IE6 users to upgrade. The other day I was on my dad’s roommate’s computer with IE6 on Gmail and it told me I should upgrade to Firefox, Chrome or IE7.
Apr 27th, 2009, 9:30 am
Here’s a great little tool you can add to your site, tells users to upgrade to the latest versions of their browser, or you can specify a certain one to show up.
Apr 30th, 2009, 11:36 am
I understand your pain, I remember what it was like before Firefox, when you had to code for IE6, IE5.5 on Mac, IE5, and even back to the days of Netscape vs. IE.
Now, playing the devils advocate here, IE6 makes up 14% of your visitors, at some large phone companies, 20% of their services make up 80% of their profits. In this case I don’t think that is the case, but it could make a detrimental impact of commerce sites.
Second, a lot of larger corporations, I wont mention names, but one of the top 5 fortune 500 companies uses IE6. Their network admins have made it so you can’t download or install anything. So you have 350,000 employees using IE6 at work all day.
Imagine my hell working their as a web developer. Granted it made me a kick ass IE6 dev, but thats beside the point.
I use to find it infuriating that people used scripts to block the accessibility of their sites to IE. After, we are trying to build sites that are standards complaint, and accessible right? blocking IE6 is like making your sites invisible to screen readers, and just plain lazy.
If you want to make your point do it with CSS, and make the site black and white.
Matthew Johnson
Jun 1st, 2009, 5:26 am
I have been a professional web developer for a number of years. The bane of my existence is backward compatibility with Internet Explorer 6. Why do we put up with it? Because our clients want their sites to appear consistent across all browsers and they pay us accordingly. If you know what your doing, its not so hard, just test test test during development and if any serious issues occure, simply create another style sheet for that specific browser; using gifs rather than pngs for instance.
Nov 15th, 2010, 6:03 am
It’s November 2010 and I’ve just read this blog..and we’re all STILL having issues with IE6 being used.
Whilst its true that clients want full cross-browser compatibility and as such, to an extend, developers hands are tied – but the point is why on earth is IE6 still being used in major companies full stop?
Whilst I am at liberty to do so on my sites however, I believe suggesting an upgrade as mentioned in this blog is the way to go. One day corporate IT has to upgrade? Doesn’t it?!
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Anthony Damasco
Aug 27th, 2008, 2:43 pm
IE 6.0 blows, I’ve seen computers die in 2 years in direct result of IE 6