IE6 obselete?

tim

Senior Member
very quick thread, school is 13 mins...

ie 8 has recently been released, and ie 6 is having constant windows updates telling everyone to move on...

does this mean we shouldn't cater for ie 6 anymore... or should we?
 
Unfortunately, the majority of corps and larger businesses are still using ie6, and with the credit crunch (if you believe it) will force business not to upgrade thier terminal systems with a new windows/ie, now, although the number of users actually using ie6 is dropping there is still significant numbers to make developing for ie6 a real need.

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I should add that catering for ie6 is dependent upon your target audience. Of course you will know this from you project brief / spec and research.
 
The irony is that IE7 is free to upgrade to, so I do think businesses are running out of excuses so not sure how the credit crunch can really effect it that much to be honest.

We have just completed a website for a large charity, now works a treat in IE6/7 and Firefox, but for IE6, the website had to have a feature disabled, and annoyingly when I went to their offices they all used IE6 lol so I have insisted they upgrade haha.

Brett
 
Yep ie7 is a free upgrade, but if your a network manager with hundreds if not thousands of client terminal spread over several geographical locations its a lot of time and money to get all of them upgraded, patched up, and secured. Just think BT.

Im not saying that its correct to keep ie6 going, far from it, i just can see why large coprs cant justify the change, when after all ie6 does everything they need it to and also/probably the companies are no doubt, tied in to machine licensees with Microsoft or supplier.
 
Hi Sunburn,

I do agree with what your saying, but I guess the example you gave is the extreme, there a heck of alot of businesses out there that are a lot smaller and more then capable of upgrading, but hey....its one of those things I guess...

Either way im still very hot on designing for IE6, I think we should leave it to all the big guns to stop supporting it, its only that way things will change.

Brett
 
yeah i don't see why people don't upgrade... i guess it's because people don't adapt as easily as us..?
 
tim-ater said:
yeah i don't see why people don't upgrade...?

As mentioned earlier in the thread by Geoff I think, there are some major businesses that run IE6 on their large networked systems, it's not possible to 'force' these users to upgrade simply because of the systems they're running, and the costs involved in upgrading. It will have to happen some time I guess, it's just going to be a slow transition!
 
oh right... i also meant individual users... i still know people using IE6 even though you're less secure and websites are viewed less well in lots of instances. Oh well.
 
oh right.. well i dunno how my friends still have it then. maybe they just denied them.
 
Ya it is a really strange situation with IE6...I work for a pediatric dental design company and according to our google statistics we still have at least 25% of our visitors coming to us from IE6...which is odd considering people such as doctors you'd think would upgrade when prompted to...but we still have to cater to it since we have such a large number using it.

I wish they would just self-destruct the computer when IE6 is found installed :)
 
I agree that I would love to let IE6 rot away, but even with Microsoft's pushing of IE7, a huge number of users still are using IE6 for whatever reason. On just 2 of the sites I monitor analytics, around 15% of visits are still from IE6. Why? No idea, but it saddens me.

I still code for IE6, because it really isn't an issue for most things, and with the addition of the google IE6 > IE7 conditional code, IE6 gets a lot of the CSS and functions it normally lacks. I've debated on some sites adding in a large box if a user is using IE6 telling them they should upgrade to a modern browser, but haven't had the balls to go through with it yet.

Granted, I don't really care if a couple of cool features aren't present in IE6 because the # of users is low. However, I do try to make sure the site at least looks right and functions.
 
had an idea... i think i'm just going to make it clear it's best viewed in the new IE at the top of the page, and link them to the microsoft website if they still have it.
 
Tim I think thats a good start. But I can't help but mention, that I personally would never recommend anyone use ANY version of IE :)

I'd consider changing it to "You are using Internet Explorer 6, an outdated browser that has many security risks. It is recommended you upgrade to a modern browser such as Firefox, Opera, or Safari" .

Of course, thats just my opinion :)

And of course, only include it if the person is using IE6. You can do that with a simple conditional in your HTML:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
Put your html/div/text or whatever you want to display here
<![endif]-->
 
Yeah, but for the target audience je suis on about... a load of old railway boring people, they won't understand the word firefox, thinking it's something completely different to a browser. worth a shot though, and I do agree.

Thanks for the wording as well, completely forgot about the security risks.
 
Yeah my wording is probably bad, but it's a good example. Most people could care less about upgrading, but if you point out the huge security risks/virus prone, that will grab their attention enough to do the upgrade (at least it should!).

And you know your end users better than anyone, so if you don't think they'd understand firefox or other browsers, I'll take your word for it :)
 
61pixels said:
And you know your end users better than anyone, so if you don't think they'd understand firefox or other browsers, I'll take your word for it :)

Yeah, most of the users use PCs at their workplace to view the site, and because of the lack of server upgrade (thanks whoever told me :D), they only have that one.

thinking about it, i won't make any difference giving a security message, will I. Gutted.
 
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