Ask HN: Are there creative rejection pages for IE6 users? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there creative rejection pages for IE6 users?

I am looking for examples of cool-designed pages that users see when they visit your site from IE6 but you just don't want to support it because of any reasons. I mean it should be something like a 404 page. So it's a rejection page that says something like "You are too lazy to update your browser so why should I care about you?" When the user visits the site, he just can't use it and sees that page instead.

There are a lot of creative 404 pages but I didn't yet see something like what I described. These can be pages not specially for IE6, may be for other legacy browsers that are just pain in the ass for developers and designers.

Please list some links if you saw anything like that.

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I have sometimes seen messages displayed, which told me to upgrade my browser to something more contemporary - I'm using the latest version of Opera.

I have sometimes seen messages, that IE6 is not wanted on a site - but I was not using Internet Explorer :-(

If you want to see cool designed pages, you could look for any pages that are cool designed, independent of the purpose.

Maybe you were looking for some compilation of "not for IE 6" pages, like the many collection articles of cool or funny 404 pages. I have not seen any compilation of "not for IE 6" pages so far.

Most 404 pages I have seen listed in these collection articles do miss a very important point: they do not help a lost visitor at all. They more or less plainly state, that something went wrong, and possibly show an error number, which most visitors may find mysterious. It is ok to put something funny on an error page, but I would recommend to give the error pages the same layout like the rest of the website, showing the main navigation, and put something on it, which really helps those lost visitors to get back to existing pages and to be happy. A sitemap might be a good idea and a search input field.

Generally, I'm not a fan of websites telling me what kind of browser I should use. Cool design is a matter of taste and ultimately the visitor has the last word on this matter.

In the cases, where I have seen a message intended for IE6 users, the design was never cool. It was often just some additional text box or a pop-up, recommending a browser upgrade in the less annoying cases, and telling the visitor to leave in the worst cases.

Several bloggers have been experimenting with the proprietary design features supported by IE6 (the CSS filter extension), like putting a blur on the whole page or flipping the content upside down. You can find some information on these filters here:

http://www.ssi-developer.net/css/visual-filters.shtml

This may lead at least to some special design, which only Internet Explorer users can see. But this is not a nice thing to do, since many IE6 users may not have a choice.

>>pain in the ass for developers and designers<<

I think, that it is just wrong to let personal frustration caused by difficulties of the design process have an influence on the website and the way a visitor will see the website. One of the worst messages I have seen was:

Not for stupid old browsers.

What will a visitor think, if this is the only text on the page?

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