Dropping support for IE6
Posted by Rob on 10th Jan 2009 in Web Design
Mention IE6 to any web designer and they’ll turn very pale and probably sprout grey hairs! Why? In a nutshell IE6 simply doesn’t render web pages correctly, and more times than not it requires extra time and effort to get it to do so.
But it’s worse than that…
- First released in 2001 (it’s old, very old!)
- Unsafe to use - over 142 security flaws, many still remain unfixed
- Exposes the user to scams, viruses and other nasties
- Superceded by IE7 in 2005 (4 years ago!)
An inherant problem
Until now every web site has to be tweaked just so IE6 displays pages and content correctly. Naturally this takes extra time during a sites development cycle and can, in some cases, add many extra hours to the customers final bill. With IE6 usage dropping it’s time we started looking at phasing it out - not completely, but having a serious look at how we cater for it.
The future
If web designers continue to offer support for IE6, why should anyone want to upgrade to a newer, better, web browser? It’s time to look to the future…
I’ve decided to add IE6 support as an option for the customer;
- Customers will be asked if they want to support IE6
- Development for IE6 will be charged as an “extra”
- Where a site has significant IE6 usage I will recommend support, but it’s up to the customer to make the final choice
If support for IE6 is not required the site would, of course, still continue to function, but the layout might not be pixel perfect and some oddities may be experienced.
Now let’s do our bit to make IE6 history!
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