Ask HN: What % of users are still on IE6? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What % of users are still on IE6?

3 pointstwelvedigits6 comments

And if we're running into constant snags with CSS that is killing us in IE6, should we ignore it in the spirit of efficiency so that we can get a version up, or always work to get it right?

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37Signals will begin phasing out support for IE 6 today as it happens (http://37signals.blogs.com/products/2008/07/basecamp-phasin....). I note that even they had originally planned to phase out support for IE 6 in August this year, but extended the deadline.

I think this is a decision that you really need to make after analysing your particular market. If you have a lot of government/corporate clients who may be slow to move to new technology, then possibly the extra effort to get things sorted for IE 6 may be worth it.

But if like 37Signals, your market is more made up of small/medium business and tech savvy users who move relatively quickly to new technology, then possibly the time to say goodbye to IE 6 is now.

Only you know for sure.

It's usually better to get something out sooner. You can always go back and "tweak" IE if you have time.

Companies can thrive on less than 100% of the market; look at Apple as one example. You don't have to win everyone over to succeed -- and in this case, IE6 share will continue to decrease with time, so your market segment will increase likewise.

Don't kick IE6 users out, but don't go out of your way to make the experience flawless. If the issues are fairly noticeable, you can put a note saying "You're using an outdated browser; for the best experience please upgrade."

As I'm far too lazy to find my last comment re: IE6 let me dazzle you with stats for this month.

For a classifieds site with broad appeal:

UBs: 4,828,839

IE6%: 24.82%

As a point of interest -

FF%: 17.17%

Safari: 3.97%

Chrome: 0.70%

Unless you are catering to a predominantly tech audience, you've got some pretty hard decisions to make in not explicitly supporting IE6.

If you're working towards your first release I'd be inclined to trade IE6 compatibility for velocity.

Still a pretty decent chunk, unfortunately. For their sake, I have adopted using a separate stylesheet for IE6 in most of my designs.

Best of luck!

At the company I work at, we are gradually inching down towards around 25% IE6 usage out of all IE users. Overall, about 75% of total traffic is Internet Explorer. IE8 is about 1%, IE7 is about 74%. Firefox is around 20% overall. The other 5% contains Safari and other minor browsers, which includes Opera, old IE versions, Chrome, Netscape, etc. Our site gets about 3.5 million hits a month. My coworker and I are the lead front-end engineers for the site and we are actively pushing on all fronts to abandon IE6 support entirely. We are making gradual headway, but its a long slog. Unfortunately for us IE6 users still comprise too large a percent of our audience to abandon completely.

That adds up to 125%. Maybe you meant that IE7 is 49%.

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