Stop IE6 campaign - A campaign devoted to wiping IE6 off the web
stopie6.org
stopie6.org
I don't use IE6, I don't like IE6, I even run an IE "hatelisting" - but the reality is that IE6 is not going anywhere any time soon.
The other issue is that many corporates/educational simply don't support or let you install another browser.
This is the single biggest issue, methinks. Even at my company (> 100 people), the majority of non-technical employees do not have the ability to install software on their machines. Our IT department allows technical users to do whatever we need to do, with the caveat that we have to clean up our own messes.
That said, the base Windoze installation here includes IE7.
Look guys, there are reasons that people don't upgrade, some good some bad. The other day a friend's 386 died, and with it all these Lotus 123 documents, now, do I berate them for using obsolete software or attempt to get them back on their feet?
(And yes, it is annoying to support IE6 and I have burned development time doing so. Mostly its "kind of okay" though, since I haven't run into anything too serious.)
Why bring this "Luddite" up? Well he is an active participant in a number of web communities plus does a fair bit of web shopping - he is certainly not the sort of user I would want to exclude from my sites. He will "upgrade" one day when his current PC dies but that could be a while yet.
In the case of your neighbour with that careless attitude, there is a good chance his computer is part of a botnet or at least infected with some virus. Therefore a source of spam and even denial of service attacks.
I'm sure a lot of people felt the same a hundred years ago with old schoolers refusing to keep their horses away and just leaving manure all over the place. I'm sure car owners hated them the most. (Just to add a colourful simil.)
Anyway, my view is that this kind of attacks the problem from the wrong end. (Ideally people would have up to date software because it just happened for them.) I think telling people their software is deficient just hurts the cause because it makes them angry at the web and not the browser.
(PS: I've worked at places standardized on Ubuntu Dapper. Its so old that getting Firefox 2 was a hack, and forget about Firefox 3... so the other end is similar, though perhaps not as deleterious to webmasters.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-by_download
This is the wild frontier in computer security right now.
Anyway, most people I know which still run Windows 98 don't do it because they like the system, but because newer Windows versions don't run on their hardware.
Voila, Ubuntu installed and a brief, "wow, I'm actually running linux now?", and she was happy. Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice FTW.
Corporations with archaic IT operations procedures will be difficult, but the Windows 98-neighbours and mothers of the world need to start using Ubuntu.
In fact, their hope is probably that their workers don't spend their days surfing the rest of the web, so why would they want to make that a more pleasant experience? It would make little or no sense for many of them to upgrade, and so they won't, no matter how many websites plead with them to.
As we currently appeal to a mainly early-adopter crowd, then it's not a big deal for us: only a small proportion of our site visitors use IE6 (FF is the most popular). Hopefully once we go a but more mainstream, even the big corporations will have got round to upgrading!
Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is".
I support IE6 because that's where the users are.
Sometimes in business, the predator does what he has to do to eat and the prey whines about the state of the world. This is a perfect example. If you're not nimble and capable enough to meet your customers on their terms, maybe you are prey.
Ah, then maybe the question should be, "How can we support IE6 without exacting major costs in terms of support and user experience?"
You may be surprised how good you really can get once you start thinking outside the quadrilateral.
Also, I seem to remember you telling me that you use a computer with a resolution of 800x600. If you also use IE6, then you are, in fact, the lowest technical user on the internet that companies try to support. And that slows progress and means you're part of the problem.
Here we go again, dcurtis. If I remember right, we never reached a resolution (oops) in that discussion and we probably won't now. (By the way, I did enjoy that conversation.)
Yes, I use 800 x 600. I can't see anything larger than that. Period. I already graduated to 19" monitors everywhere and I still need 800 x 600. And many of the 100 million or so people in my age group are in the same boat.
If I have to scroll horizontally, then I don't come back to that site. (Interestingly, I have never had that problem here at hn; maybe pg is on to something - delivering to his users the way they want to see it.)
Over 90% of the people I work with are stuck in cubicles at work on IE, half of them on IE6. They can't change. Their administrators have them locked down. It's not their fault.
You may choose to abandon these people (sometimes by subtly declaring that they're not part of your demographic); I don't.
You may think that I slow progress and am "part of the problem". My customers say otherwise. AFAIC, their vote has priority over yours. That's the whole point.
But you are at the very, very low end of the experience curve. It makes sense for me, as a designer, to cater to the largest number of people possible, and to provide them the best experience I can. If I continue to cater to the outliers, like yourself, or like a friend of mine who runs a 3560x2056 screen, then I am doing a disservice to the largest segment of my market-- the average user.
If IE 6 were to go extinct, I would be able to provide a better experience for a larger number of people. If no one used 800x600, I would be able to provide a better experience to a larger number of people. Therefore, I will try as hard as I can to make both of those things true. Even if it makes your experience slightly less enjoyable; there will be collateral damage.
Yes, catering to outliers sounds like a compromise most wouldn't want to make.
All I'm suggesting is that we use our smarts and cleverness to find a way to deliver to outliers without catering to them and without breaking the bank. Now, that would be a real paradigm shift. (Oooh, I can't believe I said that.)
And I've found that you can really easily make something that sort of works OK in IE6 most of the time if you follow all of these suggestions: http://anthonyshort.com.au/blog/comments/how-to-get-cross-br...
That's not a good shift.
I banned IE on my personal site a little while ago. It's so satisfying not having to worry about it.
The longer we have to support IE6, the greater the cost.
If that's what you're doing, then you do have a problem.
How can you deliver content to IE6 users, irregardless of site, without "implementing that support for every new site design"?
Find an elegant answer to this question and change the way you do business. (You do know what a tradeoff override is, right?)
If, on the other hand, you're expecting every developer to discover this solution themselves, then you're only proving my point.
That said, I hate IE6 as much as the next guy...
Also, the cost of developing for IE6 is being passed on to users, be it in the form of fewer features or loads annoying adverts. They may not know that and are therefore unable to make a deliberate decision.
i.e. change ###img src="120_60.gif" alt="Stop IE6 campaign logo" width="120" height="60"###
to ###img src="http://www.stopie6.org /img/badges/120_60.gif" alt="Stop IE6 campaign logo" width="120" height="60"###
:)
If IE6 actually succeeds on merit (which I agree with the crowd is very unlikely), then you know what? They earned it.
To that end, I say, let it try prove itself - if it can.
Big supporter of this..
I thought we'd moved away from this blind alienation years ago.
That was a pessimistic approach --- those sites were assuming that the page wouldn't act properly in anything other than (say) IE --- whereas this script is optimistic, assuming it will work, except in this specific case (IE6).
I'd (personally) still rather tentatively support IE6. I know for a fact that most of my work clients are running IE6 though, so I have little choice in the matter.