All of us who have ever had to optimize a site for the bane of our existence, the infamous Internet Explorer (IE), just want it to go away! I mean seriously Bill Gates? There has to be a better solution?!? The worst of the “still existent” versions of IE being the dreaded IE6… dun dun dun!!! IE6 is the proverbial gums stuck to the bottom of the shoe of every web designer and developer out there. Everyone of us has turned a little grayer and a little more crotchety due this browser. Many people have taken the stance of “screw it”, or prescribe to the “who uses it anyway” ideology. So what is the right path to take and will things ever get any better?
IE What?
Internet Explore, Microsoft’s internet browser first debuted in August of 1995 with the original IE1, lets not even go there. Fast forward to August of 2001 and the birth of the now dreaded IE6. IE6 has since been replaced by IE7 in October of 2006, later still by IE8 in March of 2009 and is soon to be replaced yet again by the expected 2011 release of IE9. So you can see how this 9 year old three version old web browser is more then a little dated. Current statistics (from the W3C) estimate the current usage of IE6 to be at about 8.9% (as of March 2010) and still plummeting.
It would be natural to think that if this browser is so old why is it still around at all, right? I mean how old is the computer you are working on right now (I would guess it is not 9 years old…)? Well this is an interesting question. If you look that the percent of the market that still uses IE6 it is mostly the corporate market, and of course those few people who are convinced that the little pop-up that keeps telling them to update their browser is a message from Satan trying to drag them to hell. Many of these corporations are reluctant to let go of IE6 because of some sort of proprietary software that they had developed that relies on IE6 and that will not work in a later version of IE. So say that company X paid $100K for this application, they really don’t want to have to pay that again because of a new browser that came out, especially when it is still working fine. Think about all of the times that you go to a store like Filene’s Basement where the check out register looks like a computer that was dropped right out of the 80’s. Well that is because the software was built for that specific computer and will not work on any other computer. Filene’s does not want to pay more money when what they have is still working perfectly. Same with IE6 and the corporations
Yeah I’ve heard about this, what exactly is the issue?
How much time do you have? There are quite a few. Some of the biggest issues are: Lack of support for PNG transparency, IE6 interpretation of the Box Model, Double Margin Bug, No Min-Height/Width, Hover Pseudo classes, and others… All of these in one form or another break your layout and destroy your design. If you are interested in knowing more about these issues, what they are and how to fix them, I would be happy to do a post on that should I receive feed back requesting it.
F That! No wait, I was just kidding, come back…
“Well forget about those corporations!” you may say, and there is nothing wrong this mentality as long as they are not part of your target market! If you are trying to target big business and major corporations this may be more of an issue… What is this project and who will be looking at it? Many of us designers out there are, shall we say, particular about our designs, and rightly so, down to the pixel. Being this OCD/anal, the violation of our exquisite designs by IE6, (you would think) would hit the pride cords never mind the fact that it reflects poorly on us as developers and designers, since the viewer does not know that the horrible mess in front of them is a “browser” issue and not a design issue. Remember, about 10% of population will be using IE6.
So suck it up and deal?
Basically you are telling me that I am doomed to always code for IE6 even though it is a fading browser? Well no. What I am saying is that if your target market still uses the browser you don’t want to rule it out and you may still need to code for IE6.
The good news
Clearly IE6 is fading and it is fading fast, woot! More and more we are seeing lack of support for IE6. Major design firms are adding hefty premiums to debug for IE6 and web giants like Google have stopped supporting IE6 for YouTube, Google Docs and the Google Sites hosting services. The pressure that the major players are putting on IT departments by putting their foot down and reducing support for IE6 is forcing corporations to upgrade from IE6. Seeing as there were so many issues with Windows Vista, many companies are skipping the Vista upgrade and jumping right into Windows 7 (and thus IE8). So at least when the corporations do make the switch, they will skip IE7, which though better then IE6 is still not all that great either!
The take away
No need to fret, IE6 has one leg in the grave. Lets not turn our backs on it completely as this may bite us in the butt, yet the end is on the horizon (yay)!
Tags: Tricks of the Trade, Web Dev, What's Hot
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