Allan & Steve are the chubby founders of LessEverything. This is their blog, hear them rant, praise, give advice and talk about Just Stuff, Less Accounting, Lovd by Less, More Honey, Less Memories, Code, Business, Design, Marketing
IE 6 has been a plague on the internet ever since IE 5.0 came out. IE 7 promised proper CSS support and eased development. Did Microsoft live up to their promise? No, all they gave us was <!—[if IE 7]>. Pathetic. But now with IE 8 just released into beta, we have a new hope (although I think Mark Hamill could create a better browser). Not that I am excited or optimistic, but it is a great excuse to stop supporting this pile of refuse that many Windows users are subjugated to using.
As I said, we should have stopped supporting IE 6 a long time ago. But I don’t mean Less Everything, I mean we all should have stopped supporting it. We should have stood up for all that is right and just in the world and spoken with our fingers.
Because we don’t want to impose ourselves on everyone, for certain client work, if the client still feels it is important to support IE 6, we will.
But for all Less Everything applications:
We will only support the following browsers:
- Firefox 2 (until 3 is released)
- Safari 3
- IE 7
Please join us in saying no more and abandon this browser with us.
Couldn’t agree more, Steven!
I’m sure you have seen http://www.savethedevelopers.org/
Firefox is the way I go!
Could not agree more, I am doing the same. We all should, start a revolution :-)
http://twitter.com/brupm/statuses/807592695
I hate IE6 just like any other web developer, but part of the problem is that (if I recall correctly) MS isn’t going to drop support for Win2K until 2010 and you can’t install IE7 on it. And getting Sys Admins on corporate networks to install additional software like Firefox or Safari is often painful. :(
I don’t support IE6 on my personal sites anymore, but for clients it’s a bit different. My mate Neil (dotneil.com), has come up with ‘IEeek’ – it’s when you have created something that works fine in FF, Safari, Opera, IE7 and you then test it in IE6, I think you know the common result.
I share the same opinion as Ryan above – any of my projects designed for the web-savvy will have no IE6 support. However for any client website, especially ones with a fairly unsavvy audience, IE will be dealt with (while uttering a few expletives in the process).
Firefox eats Internet Explorer for breakfast! We’re definitely with you! We’ve decided to change our browser compatibility guarantee to eliminate all but IE 7+ (for now).
But here’s the big question: how do you tell a customer: “You can’t use anything less than IE7 because it sucks”? On more than one occasion I’ve gotten from customers the sentiment: if you your stuff doesn’t work in every browser, then you’re not good at what you do. We web guys know how wrong that thought is, but how do we explain that to our clients and prospective clients?
@Travis I think the way to illustrate to clients that IE6 is so bad is simply to charge extra for compatibility. So you’re saying “I can do it, but it may often be a waste of time, so it’s something to consider”.
Sadly IE6 still has a high percentage of users, I really wish MS would release a forced update for any users of Windows XP Home (because businesses with important internal web apps will be on Pro), and keep suggesting it as an update to Windows XP Pro users for every set of updates that is released to XP.
@Travis,
I agree with @Ryan. Make the client pay for it. Allan’s so good that IE 6 isn’t a big deal for us, it’s usually just a few hours of work, so I wouldn’t loose a project over it, but so far we haven’t had to cross that bridge.
steve
I hate IE6 as much as you do. But on most of my sites, IE6 usage still hovers between 20-30% so I simply can’t afford to just say “screw you” to that many potential customers. I’ll probably only write it off when that numbers gets below 10%.
Isn’t a lot of the way current standards work a result of the desire for graceful degradation? I don’t care so much that it looks the same, but it should work. Slightly OT, I used to care about it working without JavaScript. I’ve been teetering on dropping that conviction lately; fucking phones support JS these days.
@Norman,
I wonder how many of those IE 6 users would upgrade if you sent them an email with a link to firefox, detailed instructions and a promise to answer questions? Just a thought.
steve
@Brennan,
Even screen reader browsers for the blind support ajax. We don’t do graceful degradation and have never received one complaint.
steve
Funny, I was just discussing this tonight with a friend. I think SaveTheDevelopers.org is great in that it tries to encourage people to upgrade browsers, and makes it easy to do so. But I’m willing to take a stronger stand. I’m willing to flat out refuse support for IE6 in any way. Client or not. Not in a Firefox is better, you should use Linux, get an Apple logo tattooed on your butt kinda way, but rather that enough is enough. Fixing bugs in IE6 is the single most painful thing I have to endure as a web developer. It’s inconvenient, slow, stressful, expensive, and a waste of my talent. IE6 has caused enough unhappiness in my life and I’m not going to take it any more!
Anyone else with me?
@sean murphy,
You are my new hero!! Well said.
steve
“Anyone else with me?”
Me.
It’s time we do something about this.
One of these picoseconds, some Web dev is going to get so frustrated with having to do his work three times (once to do it right, the second time to do it for IE6, the third time to make it work right in IE6), he’ll come up with a bit of macabre genius: hack into a high-traffic site like Amazon or goatse, add a little JS that tests for IE6, and then drive-by downloads a little bit of lovin’ that wipes IE from the face of the luser’s disk – after a suitable delay. Get a few media executives nailed by this, word goes forth to the management-by-magazine faithful: get rid of IE6! One problem solved, another created.. or how do you think braindead misfeatures like DMCA get started in the first place?
Great article!
I don’t support IE6 anymore in my sites, Im so tired of that #@*#!!, tired of patches, hacks, and all those thing.
You got my 100% support! hehe