Do we really need to continue developing for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6)?

(pdf download) 2009-06-06 12:35:37

IE6 was released at the end of August 2001 and yet is still being used by so many today 8 years on and even after Internet Explorer has gone through two major releases since then. It suffers from many weaknesses: slow, insecure, not compatible with modern technologies. An upgrade is completely free, so why is it still being used? This is a good question and a difficult one to answer; it could be because users are afraid of slowing down their machines even more with the newer version of Internet Explorer. There is reasoning behind this as Microsoft is renowned for requiring the latest hardware for each of their version upgrades, take Windows XP and then Vista for example, the same game on each platform almost requires double the hardware specification on Windows Vista.

So how can we move these users on and what is in it for us? When a good developer develops a website or web application they would test it on multiple browsers: Internet Explorer, Fire Fox (FF), Opera, Safari, Google Chrome etc. However, that is not enough, multiple versions will need to be tested too. For example IE6 displays a page drastically different to IE7 and IE8. Now not only do we have multiple browsers but multiple versions of each browser, this can go even further with different Operating Systems (OS). To recap there are multiple operating systems, which run multiple different browsers each with multiple versions. A good developer is not just developing for one browser but potentially 10 to 20.

Where do we draw the line? This depends a lot on the client, if the client specifies their requirements then you as the Developer need to adjust the time line accordingly. I have worked on projects with a range of views, some clients could not afford the time spent styling the pages for each possibility and asked me to develop against the most popular one - even after my best efforts to find a compromise. Yet at the other end of the scale a client did ask for the latest two major versions of each popular browser to be covered (Internet Explorer, Fire Fox, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari) on Windows, Mac and Linux. If left to my discretion or working on one of my projects, I attempt to go for a balance of IE6, IE7, FF2, FF3 and Chrome, Safari, Opera latest release - which is still plenty to keep me busy. Whichever OS, browsers and versions you decide to support it does not stop there. A decision needs to be made will the website or web application downgrade gracefully (work with javascript)? Personally, 9 times out of 10 I would say yes. What I am trying to establish and make others aware, and what most good developers will already know is that our work does not stop at just making a website or web application work only on the browser which we develop on!

So what does the future hold? Well it is not going to stop there, Internet Explorer will continue to bring out more versions that require more computing power so not everyone will upgrade causing more work. Other companies or open source communities will bring out new browsers. So potentially this number of 10 to 20 mentioned above could keep increasing. Well it is not all doom and gloom, most modern browsers with the exception of Internet Explorer display the same results with only a minor tweak or two. The biggest difficulty is IE6. As I have mentioned previously, I recommend supporting IE6 because it is widely used; however there comes to a point where enough is enough, we cannot keep supporting out of date web browsers that are not even supported by their own company and developers. If we all stop developing for IE6, users will have to upgrade or change their browser to view any modern website and to benefit from web 2.0.

As of now I am no longer supporting IE6 unless specifically required by a client. I appreciate many of the big companies will not support this idea immediately and will wait until the majority of websites and web applications do not support IE6. The more developers who do not support IE6 the sooner everyone will take the same view. However, there is a difference between not supporting it out of choice and not supporting it because you do not know how to make a website and web application cross-browser compatible.