Nope, I’m Not Supporting IE6
June 18th, 2008This is my last post about my blog, I swear. I thought it was important to share since I’ve gone back and forth on the issue a lot in the last week or so. This site now breaks in Internet Explorer 6. It breaks pretty bad too. And further more, I don’t care.
I’m not the only one. When it’s safe to stop supporting IE6 has been an ongoing debate for a while but up until recently I’ve been hesitant to stop designing for it. It’s always been to large an audience to turn my back on. One of the things I paid the most attention to while redesigning was how people were using my blog. How did they navigate? what other pages did they go to? I also looked at their monitor resolution and browser type. On average about 10% of my audience uses IE6, that’s lower than most sites. I also looked at how these people found my site. A lot of it wasn’t core audience traffic but folks who were searching for something completely different and came upon my blog.
I should point out all the client sites I build will still support IE6 fully, but this is my personal site so I can run it however I darn please. I also know I’m putting out some really good people (sorry Beth) who are stuck on IE6 at work.
What do you guys think? Is it a good move? Bad move? Completely arrogant?
Terra
June 18th, 2008 at 8:47 amARROGANT!
I am stuck on it at work…you don’t care!
Josh Drake
June 18th, 2008 at 8:49 amGood move! IE6 is just a pain in the back, and I think it’s time we took a stand against it.
On another note, do you think you could put some kind of message saying “Are you using Internet Explorer 6? Get the newest release here!” (with a link to the IE7 download page)? That might get more people to get the newer version at least.
rob hawkins
June 18th, 2008 at 8:51 amIt’s your site, do as you will imo.
You might want to add the little script from savethedevelopers.org to help address Josh’s request:
http://www.savethedevelopers.org/
brad
June 18th, 2008 at 8:52 am@Terra – Actually I’m doing this just to spite you
@Josh – That’s a really good idea, I might do that.
Nate Klaiber
June 18th, 2008 at 9:20 amWhile I wouldn’t exactly compare this site to a rich application like mobileme, I fully support your decision to do so. It is your site. You have done the research. You know your user base. And, finally, it protects your time a little bit as you don’t have to use workarounds to get it to look right.
I am sure your client work takes precedence, so it’s good to focus your energies there.
Josh Walsh
June 18th, 2008 at 2:17 pmGlad to see you’ve done your research before making this decision. Many people would just be too lazy.
I tend to agree with Nate, that comparing your personal site to an intense web application, like MobileMe, is a bit far fetched.
On a low to medium trafficked website, 10% is still a lot of people. The ratio may be smaller compared to others, but 10% is still a large audience. Maybe they aren’t your in target audience…
Thanks for sharing your redevelopment process. I’ve picked up a few new tricks.
Bridget Stewart
June 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pmIt appears that someday in the future, IE6 won’t be a concern. How far off that future is, though, is still anyone’s guess.
Now the Microsoft has stated that they will be discontinuing WinXP (effective June 30th) and now that companies like Dell, HP, and Lenovo will be required to use Vista for all computers they produce IE6 will slowly begin to phase out as older computers crash and die out.
Again, we know that takes a bit of time, but it provides a ray of hope since Vista only accepts IE7 at a minimum.
Dana Kashubeck
June 18th, 2008 at 9:17 pmI don’t think the answer is as important as the process you went through to get there. People are going to come to different conclusions for different sites. You’ve done The Right Thing and have taken a good look at your stats before deciding. You really thought it out and you made a very educated decision. Only you can say whether that is the right move for you, but I can say this: with what you’ve presented, I would have made the same decision.
Brendan Cullen
June 19th, 2008 at 10:53 amAre you showing the broken layout to IE6 users? I ran into the same dilemma on my last (failed) attempt at a redesign, and was just going to use a conditional comment to give IE6 users mostly unstyled content along with an ‘upgrade your browser’ message.
My thoughts were to let an IE6 user know my ‘broken’ site was intentional and not any reflection on my work.
Might be worth considering in the event a potential client on IE6 stumbles in through a blog post
Will Merydith
June 25th, 2008 at 2:54 pmI spent nearly 3 weeks trying to make a new design for my blog work in IE6 and eventually gave up and rolled back to my old design. My readers include family members and a lot of non-tech readers, so I need to support it.
I envy your decision.
liam
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:16 pmYeah, that’s great news! Its a brilliant move. Something which I’m a little scared to do myself, so I salute you! It makes so much sense, but as I said its quite brave I think. But definitely something we should all be doing.
Sean
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:36 pmI’m so jealous. I want to ditch support for IE6 so badly. I’m on the verge for my own site, but I want to ditch it for client sites as well. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stand too well to boast how great your accessibility skills are, when you throw out >20% of the Internet users. Sad face.
Chris Blackburn
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:41 pmGood for you Brad! IE6 is not standards-compliant. We hate having to deal with it at my firm as well but unfortunately, like you, for our clients we don’t always have a choice.
If I could choose, I would recommend that each of my clients refuse to support it and users not use it.
Eric Wiley
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 amI just wanted to see if my gravatar worked. And, oh yeah, boooo IE6!
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