Don't Stop Supporting IE6 | Hacker News Reader

Don't Stop Supporting IE6

tobyjoe.com

18 pointsbisceglie35 comments

In fact, I believe we should support telnetters too. Hell, we should all have a help desk set up so that people that don't have a computer can call us up and interact with our web apps. Any good designer should be able to work within those constraints and still kick ass.

or even lynx for that matter!

Anecdotally, I used Lynx just the other day to find a howto on fixing an issue with x.org I was having. Go lynx!

My monitor is broken and will only cope with "low pixel" modes so I'm using it from the console (on another comp). I've been using links2 for a couple of weeks now - it's amazingly good for a text browser, a few annoyances (no tabs, have to use a second console; no way to cut and paste text and links (mouse not working either!)) but on the whole quite usable. Particular I like the way it gets PNG absolutely right whilst IE hasn't even managed that in IE8 (strictly they did it by the book just they implemented it differently to the other browsers, very MS).

absolutely. and JAWS. oh wait, assistive tech. and accessibility don't fit into your [glib] analogy?

Not supporting someone who hasn't bothered to update his/her JAWS in the last 8 years doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

feel free to read through this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man and re-read my reply to jsonscripter's comment.

I'm afraid I'm not at fault for your lack of clarity, poor grasp of the context of the discussion, or anti-social need to put words in someone's else's mouth to make a cheap shot.

no, you are definitely not at fault for those things. however, you are at fault for re-contextualizing this particular comment thread. the original comment spoke of alternative interfaces, not of outdated software, cheapening the discussion with snarky remarks about anachronistic technology. though, plenty of people still use telnet. and physical help desks.

dismissively makes the wanking gesture

Do the numbers. If you think the money you save in development costs is greater than the cost of pissing off or alienating IE6 users than go for it.

Just hope your competitors are as picky about their customers as you...

Cost: Extremely high

Benefit: Non-tech savy users can check out my tech business

Are IE6 users the kind of people that will buy your product, utilize your social media, read your content? If they haven't upgraded to something better yet and it's FREE to replace and has been for years, what are the odds that they will pay for your service.

Quality of eyeballs matters more than quantity of eyeballs, and I would say that the people running IE6 are rarely the target market for tech businesses.

If they haven't upgraded to something better yet and it's FREE to replace and has been for years, what are the odds that they will pay for your service.

Seeing as the majority of IE6 users are in the enterprise market... I'd say the odds are pretty good.

What is the cost of serving them a plain jane experience, as you do with a printer or feed reader? If you can model your audience and quantify the impact (in other words, prove your theory) for your audience, why BLOCK THEM? Just give them the content, minus the design. Spend the same amount of time you spend on your print.css file.

Anything more restrictive than that is not about income, as you suggest - it's about dogma.

Thats what we thought at first too, (as a b2b startup) - except that if they as a company haven't moved on past IE6 they are not very likely to adopt new technology in general - including the startups products.

I wouldn't push for banning IE6 if you are selling a non-tech product, but if you are a tech company and have a feature IE6 holds you back from implementing or are losing time to supporting it, dump it.

The tone is overly-bombastic, but there's the seed of a good idea in here. Getting the a consistent look in FF3 and IE6 is Sisyphean; making a IE6-only layout much easier.

The author recommends dropping the whole "one app, one look" conceit and shuffling the dinosaurs to a dinosaur pen, with a simpler layout and the same content (you have been separating content and presentation, right?).

There is definitely some bombast there. I've been fed up with folks displacing their frustrations onto users instead of getting creative and practical with the issue.

I've been in this game a long, long time and I saw (and, admittedly, took part in) the "insult and block" approach with Netscape 4. Looking back, it was immature, cocky and lazy. I hate seeing people repeat the same childish mistakes. Instead, we can build an economic model to decide how to classify each user agent for each property we control and act accordingly. It's not emotional or dogmatic - just practical.

To paraphrase a reply to a comment on my site:

I think my approach helps bring innovation while continuing to support the people stuck on less modern user agents.

Reclassifying IE6 into the category of feed readers, screen readers, and printers is a perfectly viable solution.

Oppose that to the childish antics behind blocking content based on user agent.

In each case, you get to provide interesting experience design for modern user agents, but only by reclassifying IE6 for content support do you also retain (some portion of) the IE6 audience.

Is anyone really suggesting going back to the days of blocking on sniffed UA? I don't think so.

When people say "not supporting IE6" I think they mean no longer doing browser specific bug fixing - that's what I mean. Provided the majority of textual content is viewable I consider IE6 done (ditto links2 my only currently tested text browser). If text is not viewable (as in an MS site I visited recently with IE6!) then the client has to pay a little extra if they want to up the support.

Graceful degradation is surely the lowest level of support any designer will accept, no?

So I'm targeting XHTML1-trans and CSS2.1 with enhancements for JavaScript and CSS3 capabilities.

What a crock. Not being a dick to people let them sit in their stupid comfortable IE6 for the last 8 years blissfully unaware that they were holding back advancements that would make their lives better. If I try to run new software on Windows 95, it will slap me in the face and tell me to slag off. The same should hold true for the web.

You go ahead and spend time delivering content to IE6 Toby, but I'm going to hop on the bandwagon that was far too late in coming and continue to tell these people to slag off until they upgrade.

The idea they have been holding back for 8 years is wrong. IE7 came out in 2006, that's 3 years.

As is fairly normal people didn't switch to another browser because they were happy with what they had. They just haven't updated their version in 3 years, which is pretty normal with other types of software.

Internet Explorer isn't the only browser out there.

No, but for large windows installations based on active directory it's the only one they can easily manage. Other browsers need to provide an MSI installer to make it easy, though after 5.5 years of asking, Firefox still doesn't have one:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231062

Also lots of people need IE for ActiveX based intranet webapps - people seem to have a real mis-understanding of the real issues.

JFGI: "firefox MSI".

And before you say but it has to have proper support, yadda-yadda. They're an MS Certified Partner and an established company based in Pennsylvania - if the MSI is messed up you should be able to sue them for losses or pay them for support.

I've never used nor do I have connection with this company - caveat emptor.

They have a "Donate" link and no options for support I could see - It doesn't really inspire you with confidence.

Being a Microsoft Certified Partner just means some of your staff have passed some MS exams and you paid MS some money.

And does this mean we are going to drop other browsers that have had replacements 3 years ago or more? Like Firefox 1.x, Opera 8 (version 7 is on the Wii), Safari 1.x etc.

All IE6 users should be blocked until they upgrade from any and every site. Zero tolerance of terrible browsers.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record:

Serve your mobile version to IE6 users.

Nah, serve something closer to a print version and focus some real time on badass mobile support!

Many sites don't really have anything worth printing. And if they did, few people use the print version unless your main version really is that awful. If you are already making badass mobile support (which includes A LOT of crummy old browsers on many many phones), you might as well save the effort of a print version.

Many mobile devices now use WebKit based browsers and easily kick IE's old ass.

But the vast majority of mobile devices still run crappy linearizing browsers. You'll still need a mobile version for them.

Cross-posted from my comments on the blog itself:

I think the reason for the recent high-profile assault is not zeal on the part of the people actively decrying IE6. They just realize that sometimes, to make change happen (especially change this “drastic”) is to make a lot of noise. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

They want people to stop using it, instead of just refusing to design for it for 2 reasons (and maybe more):

1. As web designers/developers, we are passionate about people having a beautiful and pleasant web experience. If we just stop developing for IE6, everyone who hasn’t dropped it may have a lesser experience, which just wouldn’t do.

2. Many of them may be forced to support IE6 by their respective powers-that-be, so the only way they can stop actively supporting (designing for) it is by getting a significant amount of people to stop using it.

I agree with you in general. I am never a fan of over-zealousness and pushiness, but sometimes that’s the only way to get things done.

Again, what he's really suggesting is this: <http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/universal_internet_ex.... He's just chosen to introduce it with a poor first paragraph.

Can't someone perform an A/B test to see what IE6 users are like?

A quick peek on a webapplication ive got google analytics for shows that they spend 8 minutes per visit on the site but the average is 10 minutes.

A peek at another static site that mainly make money on adsense show that IE6 users click on less ads. However, going by this measure I shouldnt care about FF at all since eCPM is terrible there.

That's exactly what I do: IE6 must work, but I don't care how it looks. And it looks bad - mainly because of lack of support for transparent pngs (and I don't care to play with the workarounds).

But also things are not always in the right place, etc. But everything works.

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