To Kill or Not to Kill IE6
It’s dying, but it’s not yet dead. No, we’re not talking about the zombie lurking in the subway. We’re talking about Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). It’s nearing a decade old and is the absolute bane of a web developer’s existence. So, what do we do?
First, you have to understand why you want IE6 to go away. There are lots of reasons for this, but I’ll name the two big ones:
- Security Vulnerabilities – Malware, virus infections and lots of exploits, make this browser an easy target for hackers and scammers.
- Lack of Web Standards – Designers hate building websites for IE6 because you have to make special hacks to make the design work. It might work seamlessly across any number of other browsers, but rarely will it work in IE6 without special coding practices.
Point two is a bigger problem than it might seem on the surface. Not only are you more limited in what you can do with your designs, but it also means doing anything with IE6 costs more money to develop. To make sure IE6 works properly, it needs to be thoroughly tested, the design must be carefully worked around to display correctly, and in the end there are many special scripts that either don’t work or are incredibly slow.
The Good News
According to the W3Schools.com, who tracks global browser statistics, IE6 currently has an 8.9% share of the browser market (as of March 2010). One year ago the share was 17%, which shows its numbers decreasing quickly. This is great news for developers, but that leaves you with almost 10% of potential visitors using IE6. That 10% could translate into a lot of leads or sales you’re losing if your site doesn’t work with IE6.
Your own statistics might show a different story, one recent client had approximately 15% of its visitors using IE6, higher than average, so it’s crucial that you or your tech provider install and monitor your browser statistics to make an informed decision about when and how to scale down developing your web materials for this browser. The savings could be quite large depending on the amount of sites you’re maintaining.
The Bad News
Unfortunately a lot of developers out there simply don’t consider IE6 worth their time and if you don’t ask them, they probably won’t even consider testing and fixing errors in IE6. Depending on your circumstances, you could be losing out because of this glaring omission in development. If you’ve had a site recently developed you might check into whether IE6 was even considered for testing, even better yet, test it yourself using a product called IETester (free download here). You can get a lot of insight into your current provider’s mindset by viewing your content through that simple software.
Back To More Good News
The web development community is finally letting people know that IE6 is no longer welcome. Google, Yahoo, YouTube among others have either reverted to a scaled back iE6 experience, or stopped supporting the browser entirely.
In fact the sentiment is so strong that a group of developers have recently began a project aimed directly at ending IE6 support and are offering a simple copy and paste solution you can add to your website in minutes. You can check out their website here and a grab a code sample to add to your website!
There are any number of tech solutions to accomplish this and you might require a more robust solution. However, no matter what method you might choose to let your visitors know you don’t support IE6, it’s always a great idea to give clients the opportunity to download a better browser. We recommend either upgrading to Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.
The decision of whether to keep it or ditch it, is very important, but that decision can only be made after inspecting your individual situation. In most cases you can safely discontinue IE6 development, so long as you put in place a piece of technology to make sure your visitors have a way come back and access your site. It’s not an optimal situtation, but by taking these steps today, you’ll be help to usher in the technologies of the future. Technologies which can help you increase future ROI.
For more information about current browser stats, visit the W3Schools website here.