Is Internet Explorer 6/7 Support Required Now? 512
k33l0r writes "Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, I find myself wondering whether we (Web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and IE7. Especially when creating Web sites intended for technical audiences, wouldn't it be best to end support for obsoleted browsers? Would this not provide additional incentives to upgrade? Recently I and my colleagues had to decide whether it was worth our time to try to support anything before IE8, and in the end we decided to redirect any IE6/7 user-agent to a separate page explaining that the site is not accessible with IE 6 or 7. This was easy once we saw from our analytics that fewer than 5% of visitors to the site were using IE at all. Have you had to make a choice like this? If so, what was your decision and what was the reasoning behind it?"
Why redirect them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I consider myself a technical user.
On one of my systems I still use IE6 because (A) my employer requires us to use Sharepoint, and for some "inexplicable" reason Sharepoint only supports a JS HTML editor in IE browsers and (B) because IE7 and IE8 don't allow me to access briefcase folders while browsing the files in those folders at the same time, which I need to do on my laptop.
I wouldn't have a problem with IE6 support ending, but no support != banning.
OTOH, how interresting can a site be for a, if it tre
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
THERE IS NO FUCKING EXCUSE for not being able to support multiple browsers. if you're not supporting links, you're doing it wrong (seriously, how the hell are supposed to work blind's web readers if your site is a javascript meatball?)
now: no need to fix your site every time to have it working with every browser out there.
USE A CROSSPLATFORM LIBRARY
http://dean.edwards.name/IE7/
http://mochikit.com/about.html
http://www.prototypejs.org/
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Well, this is why I did set up the Internet Explorer Awareness Initiative [pieroxy.net].
IE6 is mandatory as it is still in use by more than 5% of our audience. But warning them gently is one option to try and push the users to upgrade !
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> It is a bit ridiculous that the world is paying zillions in development costs so these companies can avoid it. They are parasites.
Uh, how are they holding you hostage?
If you are the one who wants their money or for some other reason want them to use your site and they use IE6, it seems strange to call them parasites.
You don't care about them just drop support for IE6.
If
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Updates to IE6 can be had for absolutely no charge, have been for half a decade now. IE7 from Microsoft, Firefox from the Mozilla Foundation.
The software may be available at no cost, but upgrading to IE7 or Firefox could be an extremely expensive business. A lot of companies have web apps and intranet pages that do not render correctly in anything other than IE6. Who pays to update all of that?
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They drank the koolaid, and the piper's come a calling. Shortcuts inevitably wind up costing you sooner or later, and that's what web sites created solely for IE6 are.
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It is woefully out of touch with reality to
- use IE6 on public Internet, ever. No matter how many proxy condoms you wear, you will be infected.
- use a nine year old browser with so many serious flaws for mission critical purposes
- not even think about free, better, safer, faster alternatives.
That your customer has 25000 employees in 30 countries is impressive, but being large is no excuse for lagging NINE YEARS behind the outside world. Being a multi-billion dollar business should yield them enough resource
Re:Why redirect them? (Score:5, Interesting)
I (primarily) developed and currently support an international business site that gets 18% IE6 visitors. Cutting off IE6 visitors would make a tangible difference in the millions of dollars - the competiton is stiff and finding a nonfunctional website would cause the customer to go directly to someone else. IE6 support was basically an afterthought - I didn't go out of my way to support it but I made sure the site's still usable, even if it doesn't look quite right. I did have to make some changes to the code vs. not testing with IE6 at all, but I didn't have to do any dirty hacks, change the site's appearance or sacrifice any features in the process.
So let's say it took me 10% longer to make sure the site's still accessible with IE6, which cost the company somewhere between "peanuts" and "precisely dick" and didn't affect any other users. Would cutting off almost 1 in 5 users be a good business decision?
Re: (Score:2)
If there are web developers/tools out there to meet the desired penetration for browser X without needing to bother on ensuring cross platform support, expect browser X to be targeted.
I'm sure the LAST thing on a corporations mind when launching a new site is "oh, oh, we need to cater to the 0.2%
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Supporting links isn't really a problem, supporting IE and NS4 is the problem...
Links will simply ignore features it doesn't support, so if you write your page conforming to HTML specifications it will degrade gracefully when browsers like links or lynx don't support various features.
The problems occur when you have browsers which claim to support features, when in reality that support is extremely broken. IE and NS4 fall into this category, and make it very difficult to produce a standards compliant page.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
THERE IS NO FUCKING EXCUSE for not being able to support multiple browsers. if you're not supporting links, you're doing it wrong (seriously, how the hell are supposed to work blind's web readers if your site is a javascript meatball?)
This is a great rationale, but 'supporting' often means 'layout' and IE6 screws bacis JS as well...
now: no need to fix your site every time to have it working with every browser out there.
USE A CROSSPLATFORM LIBRARY
Erm, no... From my experience there are still issues btw browsers even using these kinds of libraries.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
THERE IS NO FUCKING EXCUSE for not being able to support multiple browsers. if you're not supporting links, you're doing it wrong (seriously, how the hell are supposed to work blind's web readers if your site is a javascript meatball?)
IE 6 has unique CSS layout issue, both bugs and less tolerant reactions to dodgy things in your CSS. There are some standard/recommended web design practices which tend to cause IE 6 rendering failures. And if you're unlikely, the failures are of such a kind that it makes part of the web site unusable. And even with templating and uniform page layout, such bugs tend to show only on specific pages, so you really need to do full tests with IE 6.
Links support is easier in comparison, except that some text-m
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have one user who is still on a Windows 2000 platform. Last I knew Win2000 didn't support IE7 (and I assume IE8 by extension). He's been bitching about "certain" websites not working properly, which I am about 99% certain is because a lot of websites just aren't bothering to support IE6. I told him to use Firefox, he bitched about that, I threw my hands up in disgust and left him to rot. Then he installed Firefox and bitched about Firefox not doing what IE does.
Some people are beyond redemption.
Re:Why redirect them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. This is why browser sniffing is bad. Just design it to be standards compliant, and let the browsers that can't follow the standards fail, hopefully gracefully. Blocking IE6 users completely is just pointless.
Re:Why redirect them? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Why redirect them? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's even worse than pointless. I'm typing this on IE8, but it identifies itself as 6 to appease some of the dreadful apps used on the intranet. So even though the browser should be perfectly capable of rendering the site, filtering based on browser version will lose yet another set of potential eyeballs.
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Don't be ridiculous. Unless it is just a vanity site where you don't care about your users, you support any browser that is popular. This still includes ie6.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
***Agreed. This is why browser sniffing is bad. Just design it to be standards compliant***
You reckon that the folks who design web sites are even aware that there are standards for HTML? I've never seen much sign of it.
Other than that, you are 100% correct and will continue to be 98% ignored, because doing things in the usual bizarre, gonzo fashion seems to be ever so much fun.
Unfortunately, I have no mod points today.
Well, actually, it wouldn't help if I did have mod points because Slashdot's mod point s
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If only it were that simple. Users (a) aren't always aware that they're using an outdated browser and (b) will therefore simply blame your site rather than their browser. Unless you tell them explicitly their browser is at fault, they will not know.
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There are a LOT of sites that do the same thing, only in reverse...The site demands you use IE (or netscape 4 etc) but works just fine after you fake the user agent. One particular site (http://www.raveshack.com - but it appears to be down) used to assume that anything that wasn't ie was netscape 4.x and displayed an insulting and rather disgusting picture of an overflowing toilet full of diarrhea with an insulting message saying how crap netscape 4.x is and what an idiot you are to be running it.
A lot of s
Re:Why redirect them? (Score:4, Informative)
For basic websites, I highly recommend Universal IE6 CSS [google.com].
I've decided that I will never design a website that supports IE6, but instead will only server up this rudimentary (if nice-looking) style sheet. As long as your website is standards-based, compliant, and content-oriented, this CSS file works great. You do, however, have to include some of those annoying <!-- [if lt IE 7]>...<![endif]--> tags.
For web apps, which are more complex, then I use a browser sniff and redirect IE6 users away. I don't care how "bad" or "evil" it is. It's better, to me, for users to know why a page doesn't work, than see a partially loaded page or pile of garbage.
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It's fairly easy to put a top aligned red warning message that says "Please not: This site is not designed with support for Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7, and may contain errors when viewed."
Blocking people from viewing your page because they're using a browser you don't agree with really rubs people the wrong way. It shouldn't be your job to force someone to upgrade. More often than not, they will just not bother viewing your page and look elsewhere.
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Directing them away will make them think your discriminating against them, and they won't come back because they think their browser is fine and it works on other sites. Also you will turn away people who for whatever reason spoof their user agent.
Instead, let them see the site but display a big disclaimer indicating your site hasn't been tested with a browser as old as theirs and you offer no guarantee it will work correctly or look as it should, and provide a link to a page that explains the situation. On
Re:Why redirect them? (Score:5, Funny)
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Perhaps if some of those people making the decisions find themselves unable to view the sites they want to, they will realise how stupid those decisions were and make efforts to change them. With any luck, this will teach them the dangers of using proprietary apps which are tied to a single platform and they will take the dangers seriously when making any future decisions.
So long as sites accommodate IE6 it will be considered acceptable to run it, which just continues the headache for everyone involved.
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You can always use a portable version of FF (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable). No install rights required. And you can use the I/T sanctioned browser for sites that require IE6. Best of both worlds.
Re:Why redirect them? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who says that the problem is the organisations running IE6?
Most of them would move off it to IE7 if they could. Really they would. It's not much more (or less) difficult than any other large application - test it, package it, drop it to machines. That's an established and controlled cycle.
The problem is not that they don't want to. The problem is that the enterprise software segment has been very shortsighted.
SAP, PeopleSoft, Seibel. ERP, Human Resources, CRM systems.
Things that organisations put in which are strategic, in a way which deserves block capitals that I'm not quite willing to put it in. But trust me, these things are signed off at board level and cost a truckload of money, so there's a management investment in getting them working at all costs - otherwise they'd have to admit that they were wrong!
And once in, they become very hard to remove. Stuff like PeopleSoft is often tied to processes like leave booking, expense claims and payroll, for example.
Upgrading these systems is not a trivial task. It's one that, even if it's a simple and smooth process, has huge risks. Risks that run towards lost days of business, inability to produce corporate accounts, or handle staffing changes and expense claims. So these systems are upgraded at a glacial pace, with the process being rigorously controlled and methodically run.
Guess which systems a company buys that would require IE6?
I'm sure that they all have versions out now that support IE7 and higher. But the companies running these systems are often one or two versions behind, and have real incentives to avoid change. Incentives that don't even factor in the client web browser's name and version.
And don't forget that these systems are not cheap. The upgrade software bill will be huge, before you even start any work. Another reason to delay, especially once management remembers how expensive and painful it was tweaking and customising these systems to match their organisation's workflows and requirements. Do that again? At huge cost? Barely two years after we last suffered through that? NO WAY!
And so this is how it starts. You can then add the fact that developers then have a standard platform of just one browser, and you soon find any in-house development is tested on just one browser. Which compounds the problem.
It started with enterprise software. It's continued by in-house developers. It has nothing to do with the merits of the client in any way.
And good luck not dealing with such organisations. This, sadly, is the state of pretty much all large organisations...
I'm not defending them, by the way. I'm just trying to help you understand why large organisations are stuck in this rut.
Easy Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
How well do your current pages support Lynx?
Does that answer the question?
And how much code is there that is IE6 specific that IE7/8 isnt compatible with?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How well does page support standards and is it designed that blind people can run it trough voice syntetisator or Lynx to read it with the "blind keyboard".
I would not like that any page is designed for specific browser at all. Was it FF, Opera, Safari, IE etc.
Re:Easy Answer (Score:4, Informative)
Standards compliant pages support lynx pretty well, lynx will simply ignore things it doesn't support and render the alt-tags instead of images etc. So long as you chose sensible names for the alt tags the textual page content is perfectly viewable. I use lynx quite often and find it great for getting to information quickly on well designed sites, without being distracted by any of the fancy graphics.
IE6 doesn't degrade gracefully, it doesn't ignore unsupported features like lynx does, it tries to render them and botches the job totally.
Re:Easy Answer (Score:4, Informative)
Lynx isn't obsolete, it's last stable release was July 5th 2009. It is still in active development.
IE6 has a zillion quirks in it such that the easiest approach is often to have one website for IE6 and another for everything else.
Depends on who you cater to (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on your clients. If you're talking about a mostly technical crowd? No, probably don't need IE6. If you're talking about a site for corporate users, yea, you need IE6. There are many major companies out there still running IE6 on XP. It sucks, they should all switch to Firefox (Or Chrome, or Opera, or anything but IE), but unfortunately most don't have a choice in the matter. Oh and if you're trying to sell people something, then most likely yet again.
Of course it all depends on what your usage stats/analytic say. Personally, I've not supported IE6 for a long time, but then on most of my sites Firefox is more than 50% of the market.
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I try to support IE6 on a "moderate effort" basis. I'll fix major problems (if there are any) and I'll try to make it fail gracefully as others have said. Basically, if I do a site, I want it to reach people, that's my aim and I don't let my browser snobbery make me forget that. But having said that, this guy says less than 5% of his visitors are using IE at all. So I don't know what site he's running but it's clearly not an average demographic. So yes, he might as well disregard it other than putting up a
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely this. I'm the webmaster for a town planning consultancy. The company deals with a lot of councils around the UK most of which use IE so the stats are as follows:
IE8: 25%
IE7: 20%
IE6: 12%
IE total: 57%
Firefox: 15%
Now compare this to another site that I run for a local (trendy graffiti-type) art gallery/shop:
IE8: 16%
IE7: 12%
IE6: 5%
IE total: 33%
Firefox: 40%
I've taken the time to make sure that they both work in IE6-8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera because the site's are simple enough and don't con
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Setup a Citrix box (or equivalent) for running IE6 and use whatever transparent technology to make it seamless for the users of that ONE web app.
You can then move on, free from the security issues still lurking in IE6. You are also free to upgrade to Windows 7 without using the Virtual XP feature which would double the number of windows PCs you'd need to patch.
No more support (Score:2, Interesting)
All of my sites now use browser detection for Firefox 2.* and IE versions prior to 8 and sends the user to a page giving them download options. It'd be nice if more people did the same.
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I should have clarified. My sites are all now built for HTML5 and every attempt is made to stay standards-compliant.
While users with older browsers are redirected, the entire site (short of the few pages with directions) use those standards and are still visible selects the ``I know my browser was made in the 1800s but I still want to see your site'' link.
It's code and pages that I wrote one and just copy into new sites. *That's* what I wish more people would do. We could all gently urge those who either
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My sites are all now built for HTML5 ...
So you build your sites to a draft standard, a work in progress that will change over time, and support for which still varies among browsers (and no, I'm not speaking of IE here)? Good job!
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Let's say I'm running a version of OSX that the best it can do is FF2 and now you are automatically sending me to a page telling me how I'm an idiot or how my IT staff should have bought me a new computer or why your website should cast judgment on policy decisions to stay on IE6 at a corporate level.
I don't care that there is a link to return, you obstructed my navigation of your website and I'll likely never return (especially with an insulting reference to the 1800s). Fine for your blog, not so hot for
Not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
And you'll tell your visitors to browse your site with the W3C Validator?
I'm sorry to inform you that most people that might browse your site exist in a realm called "reality", you should visit it some time.
Re:Not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. But it's still a good thing to code to the standard, because it's also real that a site is easier to maintain the less browser-spesific hacks it employs.
It also matters what kinda functionality is lost in older browsers. If the site don't work at all with IE6, and 10% of the visitors use that, then that's definitely bad. If (to take a random example) border-radius isn't supported by IE-6, so those 10% visiting with that browser, get square corners rather than rounded ones, that may well be acceptable. (especially since supporting round corners in ie-6 means using fugly badly-maintainable hacks)
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Seriously, Google Maps would be a bitch to use that way. I use a site frequently that displays a raft of photos to select from. These are categorized by some feature. Again, it would be a bitch to pop up forty-eight different pics in order to select the one I want.
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But if someone bundles, I mean, releases a popular browser to the world, in which it breaks the standards, what then?
Popular sites should tell users (Score:2)
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And ship'em to gulags if they don't?
Re:Not needed (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, that might work.
Again, not needed (Score:2)
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This would be true in a perfect world.
A somewhat more realistic motto would be: support only browsers which have a built-in update mechanism.
That would help prevent disasters like IE6 to happen again.
Re:Not needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that and my personal opinion is that web sites should have less (X)HTML/CSS/Javascript masturbation. I don't care about the fancy outlook. Content is everything.
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Yes and No (Score:3, Interesting)
At my web development company we officially stopped testing our sites on IE6 last year. However, we do still test sites in IE6 when we know the client is specifically using that browser (so they don't complain). However, IE7 is still pretty common among XP users, so we still have to test all sites on IE7 and IE8.
Though as far as we're concerned, IE6 is dead.
Re:Yes and No (Score:5, Insightful)
My stats indicate more visitor use IE6 than Opera (all versions combined) or Safari (all versions combined).
If IE6 is dead, then so are both Opera and Safari.
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Actually I only have Windows products, so anybody using Safari is either not a potential customer or using Safari on Windows.
Besides, from a commercial point of view, I really don't care how tech savvy my visitors are, I just want them to give me money :)
Since relatively many IE6 users are corporate users and many of my customers are corporate, chances are they are actually looking to buy (atleast much more likely than Safari users or, in fact, average users).
IE6 outdated. (Score:5, Informative)
We're a web company, making different kind of websites for different kind of people. Which means we make anything from small "Mr and Mrs Smith My Pink Pony" kind of sites, to web shops with 5k+ transactions per day.
We recently (within the last year or so) put a note on our contracts, stating we don't support IE6 anymore, unless the customer is actually paying extra for making the appropiate changes. It was just too much a hassle to manage all the hacks and workarounds all the time.
So basically, we state we only support the latest generation of browsers, included IE7 since the migration to IE8 isn't complete yet. A lot of people still on IE7.
And IE7 isn't TOO bad, the work arounds is mainly CSS, the rest is worked out by MooTools, Prototype, etc.
sometimes users don't control their machines (Score:2, Informative)
I worked for a federal agency and just this past summer we were finally upgraded to IE 7 - a lot of places where security is tight the IT people can be overly cautious when upgrading software, meaning employees could be years behind. If your site is something I need to access (technical documentation, etc) I'd be pretty annoyed when it wasn't my fault I couldn't access it because I'm not allowed to update my own machine.
Re:sometimes users don't control their machines (Score:4, Insightful)
If "security was tight", IE would not be allowed at all.
Re:sometimes users don't control their machines (Score:4, Insightful)
What's tight at these locations is compliance auditing more than security.
In many environments, these compliance requirements have the force of law, and it can be a long up-hill battles to change a poor, "hack" compliance regulation, such as "Use Internet Explorer 6 with these settings and patches", to an effective one (use a browser that supports the following security...).
Since the ostensible purpose of compliance is security, many people mix the two concepts.
Corporations. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what it comes down to: corporations. There are still too many 10,000+ employee corporations out there that run Windows XP with the Flash 7 plug-in and IE6. You have to support that or there is no client.
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I'm posting this from IE6. HELP! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm posting this from IE6. HELP! (Score:4, Interesting)
I’ll be an example to you:
I left my well-payed day-job because my boss (who was a very powerful player on the net) wouldn’t let go of IE6. (I had to write webapps for that piece of shit.)
I’m happy and would I have the choice, I’d do the exact same thing again. Just earlier. ^^
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Also in some kind of companies (high tech startups) the argument "Google did X" is often very powerful. Tell them that now you are using a technology that someone like Google does not consider usable anymore.
Re:I'm posting this from IE6. HELP! (Score:4, Insightful)
Measure it... (Score:4, Interesting)
... as you've done. What percentage of those IE users are still running IE6/7? Then ask yourself, "Am I willing to lose X% of my visitors to save Y% of coding effort?"
For any typical website which depends on traffic for revenue, I'd say you'd have to be nuts to cut support for IE 6/7; thats about 35% [wikipedia.org] of the visitors to your site. The fact that only 5% (and not 62%) of your visitors use IE at all, however, indicates that you're not running a typical site (or there's an error in your metrics collection).
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The bigger issue might be caused by corporations holding on to IE6 (as someone above has mentioned). In house we still have IE6 as the standard b
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If it is only a small percentage that are using IE6 (or IE) then you should warn them and then make the page work at least minimally
The same goes for other "minority" browsers ... make sure it is usable, if only in a minimal fashion ...
Standards Compliant (Score:5, Interesting)
I (attempt) to keep my websites standards compliant. If it works in your browser, great. If not, not my problem. I'm not jumping through hoops to help support companies actively ignoring agreed upon standards.
However, I'm also not financially dependent on my websites...
Took you this long? (Score:2, Flamebait)
"Following Google's announcement ending support for Internet Explorer 6, I find myself wondering whether we (Web developers) really need to continue providing support for IE6 and IE7..."
What a shame. It took a move by a large company like Google to get you to wonder about supporting IE 6, rather than reaching this conclusion through your own experience and common sense. Of course, this shame is also a blessing, as I'm hoping that it will get others like you to question the same, and hopefully companies will all follow suit.
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No, the thing is that now that major companies like Google are letting it go, upgrades are much more probable. No one will care if their employees can't access some random website, but if they can't access an important Google service, that will real pressure.
It's not always by choice... (Score:2)
I'd think that most 'technical audiences' would already be running a non-obsolete browser if they had any say in the matter...
Not everyone has the option of installing/running alternate browsers (think: locked down corporate PC's, etc.)
*Especially* with technical audiences, there's a larger than average chance that you'd lock these people out completely by preventing them to
Obsolete? (Score:3, Funny)
Come on. Some people still love IE6. Moreover, I believe IE5.5 is still used by some people.
Well, that's my assumption based on the phrase "These versions include Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service 4" mentioned in http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/980088.mspx [microsoft.com] , but perhaps that's bad logic.
our stats make it a no brainer (Score:2)
We are an agricultural company at cutting edge DNA profiling for the beef breeds industry. Despite this our clients are farmers. IE 6 runs at 60% of browser share for us.
Sorry, but its a fact of life.
Wish we could :-/ (Score:5, Insightful)
Get rid if IE6? Boy I wish we could. But we can't.
Our 4-man startup software company targets medium sized corporate customers (250-2500 seats) and they are still using lots of old computers with IE6. There are many reasons but a few of the most noticable ones are:
1.) a ton of old Line-of-Business applications still uses IE6 for presentation.
2.) a surprisingly large amount of corporate software uses embedded IE6 components in their GUI.
Most of these corporations have installed newer browsers on their machines (some of them even installed non-MS browsers) but IE6 is still there - under the surface - because critical business applications are still depending on it.
All those Line-of-Business applications are extremely hard to remove. They often solve critical business needs so nobody wants to throw them away. They work and "do the things they were built to do". And since they just work there is no budget to replace them with somerhing else. The people who created them have left the company years ago so nobody really knows exactly how and why they are implemented.
But everbody knows this about their old LOB apps: they neeed IE6, they still work as intended, nobody can tell how to make an alternate solution, and there is no budget to analyze or re-implement them (and why would anybody want to - right?).
I imagine this is quite common for many corporations around the world and not just in my region.
- Jesper
Re:Wish we could :-/ (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been on the other end of this: I got sent out to work with a Korean customer on-site. They wouldn't allow our machine to be connected to their LAN without installing some security software (name and shame: Waterwall).
The installation goes halfway through and fails obscurely. Three hours of debugging later they finally realise that I have IE8, but Waterwall only works on IE6 or IE7.
So I try to install IE7. I can't, because IE8 is installed. I try to uninstall IE8. I can't, because our sysadmin is, like, competent, and had set up the laptop with a DVD image with IE8 slipstreamed into it.
I eventually had to borrow an XP disk from the customer and reinstall Windows. Then I installed Microsoft Security Essentials and removed the virus that was on their XP disk.
The real joke? Waterwall blocks web access, enforces encryption on USB keys and recordable media, etc. (It's intended to stop 'information leakage'.) The internet? Wide open. ssh worked fine...
The whole premise is faulty (Score:2, Insightful)
The stuff I really want on the web would work fine with Netscape Navigator 3.x and the correct plugins.
Do us all a favor and get rid of CSS, XHTML, and all the other alphabeet soup. Oh, and stop using target _blank. I've held out quite a while, but I think I'm finally going to install one of those script/tag-stripping proxies just so I can get rid of target _blank.
I wanna new window, I'll click right-click and chose "open in new window". That's what it's there for. Oh, and how's that back button compatab
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The stuff I really want on the web would work fine with Netscape Navigator 3.x and the correct plugins.
Do us all a favor and get rid of CSS, XHTML, and all the other alphabeet soup. Oh, and stop using target _blank. I've held out quite a while, but I think I'm finally going to install one of those script/tag-stripping proxies just so I can get rid of target _blank.
I wanna new window, I'll click right-click and chose "open in new window". That's what it's there for. Oh, and how's that back button compatability thing working out? No? Still not there? Wankers.
Oh, and "get off my lawn".
I didn't even know caves had lawns. Oh well, learn something new every day I guess..
Hell no! (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember: The only thing you can achieve by supporting those “browsers”, is to be an enabler. Basically the only reason those people still use IE, is because they can. And the only reason they still can, is because you still code for IE 6/7. And the only reason you do that, is because people still use them.
Do you see the circular logic here?
Someone has to break the cycle. And you can bet your ass that it won’t be the users. It’s your job. It’s mine. After all we’re the experts for a reason.
Don’t be an ass. Be nice. Don’t push them. Pull them. Coming from IE6 to a full-featured modern browser with HTML5-enabled sites, is freakn’ great! It’s like opening the box of your shiny new electronics device (or whatever you like) and playing with it all day long. Get that feeling across! And you will see them getting dragged in in the euphoria, switching in the blink of an eye.
People don’t change anything if they think they don’t have to. It’s called efficiency. But sometimes it’s bad. E.g. when there is a lack of information.
So if you think that they should switch, then just code close to the standards. If they want to use their site, it takes them five minutes to install a recent browser, and they know it for years.
Still supporting IE 6/7 is similar to acting like those EA managers, who would never dare to do something innovative, edgy, fresh or even slightly offending, to get a target group as big as possible... and then ending up with a shitty target group because the result of your work is bland, average, plastic-fantastic, non-innovative, boring shit that nobody hates but that also nobody loves.
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playing with it all day long.
Something I'm sure at least a few slashdotters are familiar with ;-)
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Still supporting IE 6/7 is similar to acting like those EA managers, who would never dare to do something innovative, edgy, fresh or even slightly offending, to get a target group as big as possible...
How do you explain something like Mirror's Edge then?
I hear ya, but no (Score:2)
I'd love to ditch IE6. But where I work, it's not reasonable. Even if only 5% of our users are running it, quitting support for IE6 would mean tens of thousands of dollars a month. I think some sites have the clout to try and force the users to upgrade, but not us. They can simply go somewhere else.
There will definitely come a time when the cost of supporting those users will be less than the revenue they bring in. Soon, but not quite yet. So, I'm still spending the 11th hour before roll-out pathetically d
Our visitors use it... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not your decision (Score:2)
As a developer, you need to do what the bosses ask of you. You may argue a bit about it at the beginning, especially if you can back your argument up (vulnerabilities, extra costs, missing features...), but once the choice is made you've got to suck it up.
My brother works for one of those infamous IE6-bound large corps. It hurts them quite badly (to the point where most users have installed firefox on the side and try and use it whenever it works), but they've got so much specific stuff (activeX controls, .
Don't paint them both with the same brush (Score:2)
IE 6 is about a decade old, while IE 7 just came out three years or so ago - why are you lumping them together? I'm not fond of IE 7, but from a coding point of view it's far less broken than IE 6.
On a related note, I suggest you shouldn't plan on writing pages that require HTML 5 canvas support for a while yet.
C'mon, I've ranted about IE as much as anyone - but seriously, are you going to hold Firefox or Webkit up to the same standards? Heck, Webkit seems to be pushing the envelope the hardest... so maybe
Squeeze Them (Score:2)
Don't explicitly break IE6/7, just don't kill yourself to making your site 100% compatible.
Use IE6NoMore [ie6nomore.com]
As for corporate sites...I haven't seen much of an issue, honestly. The last few big corps I've worked with that still use IE6 also have Firefox installed. Yes, their desktop machines come with 2 browsers and IE6 is used almost explicitly with a couple of legacy apps that rely on ActiveX.
Could the real geeks please stand up? (Score:2, Interesting)
What happened to the tried and tested option of ignoring the browsers you don't want to support; web1.0 was built on these sound principles. When we could not access the site due to the webmaster (remember them?) implementing the latest Netscape tag, we would assume it was our fault and upgrade.
I blame agile development practices for worrying about what the user can handle: pussies.
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back in the days... (Score:2)
Simple answer to the above question: what's the cost of continued support of $OBSOLETE_BROWSER_X compared with the revenue your website makes from customers with $OBSOLETE_BROWSER_X who won't switch to $SANE_BROWSER and rather abscond tom $EVIL_
Microsoft phases out Netscape 4 support, so there (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft is phasing out support for Netscape 4, in retaliation for Google declaring Internet Explorer 6 a "pustulent syphilitic drunken crack whore [newstechnica.com] with no mates. And bad breath. Who smells funny."
Google has given up bothering to support IE6 on its sites, directing the doubtless hideously virus-infected users of the browser to download another browser. Any other browser. "Lynx will give you a vastly superior YouTube experience. Now it will, anyway."
"The Mozilla Foundation has completely failed to fix problems in Netscape 4 that have been around for years," said Microsoft marketing marketer Jonathan Ness. "Furthermore, Firefox gets just as many hacks as Internet Explorer, and pay no attention to my lengthening nose."
In December, Chinese hackers exploited a weak spot in IE6 that Microsoft had only known about since September. Following this, governments worldwide told people to get the hell off IE6, except Britain, which relies on IE6 to leak data when there are insufficient funds for USB sticks or train journeys for civil servants.
Web designers around the world welcomed Google's move, but have not given up their Bill Gates dartboards just yet. "'That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.' Steve Ballmer said that, you know."
It's our fault, just as much... (Score:3, Interesting)
Though it'd never happen, I'd like to see W3C monitor all web content, and have the power to issue DNS deregistration notices to all non-compliant sites.
Dear Sir,
we have determined that you site, www.microsoft.com, is not compliant with the W3C 'xhtml1-transitional' standard it claims to implement. You are advised that you have 14 days in which to make the aforesaid site fully compliant. Failure to do so will result in the immediate suspension of your Domain Name registration, until such time your compliance is proven.
Have a pleasant day.
very simply. (Score:2)
Regardless of what people actually *need* Internet 7 or below for, it has major security flaws. If it is one thing my customers want to know, it is how to better protect themselves.
Depends on Demographic (Score:4, Insightful)
As a web developer, I hate supporting IE6. It lacks so many things that make the web a better place today (poor CSS support, no PNGs -- yes there are fixes).
I've found it depends on your target demographic. If you are looking at business people, IE6 is still in the ballgame. Offices are still lagging behind in their conversion to modern browsers. This is probably because the IT staff just doesn't care.
In talking with user groups, I've heard people say (frequently) that they prefer Firefox or Chrome at home, but at work aren't allowed to install those browsers -- so they are forced to use IE6 during work hours.
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your thinking is the typical fail thinking that persists here on /. that technology sets the agenda not the customer.
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I respectfully disagree.
The customer is not always right. (especially if the service in question is free) Can users dictate their needs to developers? They can try, but if they want the moon, they're going to be disappointed. IE6 needs to be unsupported eventually. Or do you propose continuing support for IE1-5 too? The only reason we don't see them in use today is because they (and they OS they run on) are deprecated. Stop laughing, I'm quite serious.
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You mean this recent security fiasco was on the frontpage in all the newspapers?
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