Do you pay attention to IE6 anymore?

I fired up IE6 to test a recent MODx site upgrade today. All looked good in IE7 and IE8. There were a few gotchas in IE6 though. It took me about 5 to 10 minutes to add some conditional styles to the main CSS file to get IE6 rendering correctly.

I have noticed some chatter on design and development blogs that pros are ignoring/sidestepping ANY IE6 consideration these days. Made me wonder how most MODx folks are dealing with this misery? I know some will only mess with IE6 if there is extra payment involved. Some still fix IE6 issues as a matter of course though.

What do you do?

At work we do for some clients but always consider basic things like PNG transparency etc, for personal sites I couldn’t care less however I always have a look at the sites in it, if it’s a quick fix I do it if not I don’t.

For client’s they want it to work in all browsers, however, most will never see it in IE6 so don’t know of any issues.

It really depends on your site traffic. I found this article really topical on that subject this week: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/01/how-to-support-internet-explorer-and-still-be-cutting-edge/

I live in KY.

so I HAVE TO support IE 6.

Honestly, most of the people I work with? have no idea how to update their browser. Really. Honestly I promise you if I do not test in IE6 then the client will only have IE6, it is a Rule. I laughed my rear off when I saw the Hubspot guy talking a about how people won’t even visit web sites soon because they will all be RSSing and I just thought... dude, you have no idea what this place is like. And I live in the Big City. Seriously. We’re at least 5 years from Average Joe knowing what RSS is. Average Joe here doesn’t know how to update his browser, is suspicious of it, and just found out what the word Blog means.

..shaking my head....

I hear you.

When I ask "what browser do you use?" one of the most common answers is, "I don’t know what you mean, I just use the internet."

If you’re building a site for a large company, you’re dealing with the company’s tech department, but if you’re building a site for a small business, church, local political group, etc., you’re lucky if you get someone who even knows that different browsers exist.

A few years back all my wife’s family in Canada would look at me funny when I explained why I could not see the pics they sent us in an email attachment. I had a Mac and they were in the habit of forwarding Windows based EXE files. They did not know that other browsers existed or why I could not open these files. Their eyes would roll over when I discussed appropriate file formats etc. They also all thought I was strange for using a Mac as well.

Fast forward to today and they all use the cool sites (Facebook etc), explore different browsers, shoot digital pictures, shoot video plus edit their own digital images and video. And most of them use new Intel iMacs and MacBooks.

Times sure have changed...

Latest W3 browser usage:

2009 IE8 IE7 IE6 Firefox Chrome Safari Opera
November 13.3% 13.3% 11.1% 47.0% 8.5% 3.8% 2.3%

Amazing FF usage!!!
this conflict with reports (as of March 2009) that 60% of corporate
clients still use IE6...

... but who else but web developers/programmers go to W3?

Few tweaks here to get it looking ok in ie6. These days it’s usually a bit of an afterthought, I don’t worry about it too much and it’s never been an issue with my clients. It does depend on the type and size of client though as mentioned above.

Chrome is my primary browser now, fast and stripped down. I still love FF but don’t use it so much anymore.

Right! these are the people that create stuff in the internet,
so should have a heavy influence in the general public by
supporting or unsupporting a browser version.

If you use some kind of javascript blocking software like Ff
addon no-script, you can see that a huge amount of websites
let you know, the user, that you should (some say must) enable
javascript to experience the site.

I think that a similar thing should be done with IE6 and other
non-compliant, non-developer-friendly browsers.

Net Applications lists IE with 63.62% and FF with 24.72%
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 22.08%
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 19.34%
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 16.86%
- Firefox 3.5 15.16%
- Firefox 3.0 8.13%