IE6 users and status-conscious creative directors | Hacker News Reader

IE6 users and status-conscious creative directors

clipperhouse.com

11 pointsmwsherman20 comments

The message unnecessarily belittles IE6 users.

However, IE6 will only go away if we actively discourage its use. Do not go out of your way to support it. Do not allow it to suck more time and energy out of you. IE6 will continue to survive as long as its remaining users have no need to upgrade. When sites work, users don't see a problem.

Industries and corporations who use IE6 should not receive mercy: As it ages it will only become more of a burden. Corporations will one day eventually realize that the rest of the world has moved on, and they must invest time and energy into modernizing their own systems.

When the computers that run IE6 die, it will be too late.

Leave the poor, withered IE6 on the side of the road and let's move on. But don't kick it, beat it, and spit in its face, as the original "upgrade message" in this link did.

While I agree that it unnecessarily belittles any specific IE6 user that visits the site, I don't think his message itself is unnecessary.

We need the whole range of messages before IT departments get a clue. We need the very small, one time top banners with a small message, we need the sites that just plain break horribly, we need the sites that have a polite nagging message on every page and we need the sites that are just plain rude.

Until we have them all, until it's clear that every type of web site is sick of IE6, until these messages are very common, the inertia will not be overcome.

So would the point then be that we need to belittle (or abuse or revolt against) IT departments that rest on 20th Century laurels. Or perhaps... embark on educational campaigns aimed at companies that are not mandating/funding their IT departments to join us in 21st Century?

I'm the writer of the post above and a web dev. Generally, I don't test or develop for IE6 anymore. It's down below 10% share and that will keep falling now that the Win 7 upgrade cycle is on.

So I understand the animus towards IE6 as a technology, but not toward its users.

The truth is, an organization on IE6 will become uncompetitive in the same way that an organization using green screen terminals will become uncompetitive. Old stuff gets flushed out eventually.

Depends on what industry they are in. I don't think a browser choice really matters to quite a lot of companies.

IE6 sucks, blah blah, I get it. I still don't think there's any excuse for a web designer to ship a product that doesn't work with IE6. If its a truly huge web app, OK. But for most sites it shouldn't take a good dev more than an hour to fix any IE6 bugs.

Instead, I take an Ellis Island approach: come as you are. If you want to buy my product, I'm going make sure that happens, and no IE6 bug is going to get in the way.

You're either setting the bar way too high for 'a good dev', or you're just unaware of how painful and bizarre IE6 bugs can be. Honestly, why would web devs just arbitrarily hate IE6 if it only took an hour to fix all the bugs for an entire website? You're positing a level of laziness and spite on the part of web devs which is just absurd.

Didn't mean to offend, and maybe I am setting the bar to high. I'm certainly aware of how bizarre IE6's bugs can be, but that doesn't make them especially difficult to fix.

Take for example the double float margin bug, which is undoubtedly one of the weirdest and most common. I definitely spent an entire afternoon on that one the first time I encountered it, and I wanted to throw my machine out the window, but now I know to add display:inline to anything I float that also has a margin. Its inane, but its not a big deal.

My point is that after a year or so, you've encountered all the annoying IE6 bugs, and so fixing them is easy. I don't think that's a particularly high bar.

Honestly, why would web devs just arbitrarily hate IE6 if it only took an hour to fix all the bugs for an entire website?

Its still an hour we shouldn't have to be spending, and I'm not saying I don't hate IE6. Hating IE6 is fine, and when a group of web guys gets together for a beer, its a great subject of ridicule. But its our problem, not our client's, and not our end user's.

The article references this survey at digg:

http://blog.digg.com/?p=878

"This goes directly to why most folks use IE6: they don’t have a choice. Three out of four IE6 users on Digg said they can’t upgrade due to some technical or workplace reason. Giving them a message saying, 'Hey! Upgrade!' in this case is not only pointless; it’s sadistic."

3 out of 4 is not 4 out of 4 so it isn't totally pointless.

Am I the only one who read it as funny satire? For some reason I don't read the author as being serious about his animosity towards IE6 users. It's just taking the typical "you're using an old browser and should upgrade" message several steps further for the sake of humor.

A lot of people don't get to choose what tools they can use at their place of employment. They are at the mercy of the IT department and inertia. Does it really help the world to add one more snarky comment on their day?

The IT department's job is to enable the company's users to do their job effectively, efficiently, and securely. If that job involves visiting non-company-controlled websites, then they'll be well-served by having a modern browser.

The comment described in the post here is definitely overly insulting, but in general, making the users feel pain is one way to give the people in charge incentive to change.

(Edit: I agree that the insults are pointless, so I don't think we're really arguing about anything substantiative. That said, I'm sure this designer guy couldn't give a crap whether it's pointless or not.)

One might think that simply not having content/functionality for IE6 users would be enough incentive. As another poster said, insulting the user isn't likely to prompt a change in software.

Often times, IE6 users don't know that they are missing anything because they are on IE6 and have nothing to compare to. A message of "this feature is not supported on your browser" or, preferably, "this feature requires a modern browser with support for HTML X and CSS Y" would go a long way to communicating that, in a factual, non-confrontational way. I think the latter message is better because it gives those who would use the website a factual rationale to take to their IT departments as to why an upgrade would be good, rather than letting the IT department dismiss the website creators as IE6-hating.

Yeah, IT has a job of optimizing the company's use of resources. I still question the idea that IE6 or IE7 are good for security, but (given more enterprise software) IE6 is generally a business requirement. Truthfully, if your company is still on IE6, then IT should have a whitelist of the sites you can visit (not a blacklist of the sites you cannot).

-- yeah, I don't think we are really disagreeing on anything substantiative

Maybe people can start asking their IT departments why they are still using IE6?

Generally, they haven't upgraded because of some enterprise app that isn't updated, and most IT workers have Firefox on their machine.

I agree but chances are if you work at a Veteran's Hospital or whatever kind of business still mandates IE6 usage, you are going to this guy's website anyway.

Bitching about IE6 is becoming trendy. I don't even bother optimizing for IE6 cause the sites I work on will be blocked by corporate firewalls as soon as someone accesses it from inside and flagged as frivolous anyhow. Adding funny and even harsh stuff to your messages will alienate people but on the other hand will also create a following. Sometimes this is how people chose to be "different" or "original". Look at me...even I spent time to comment on this which means that he arose above the anonimity in my world.

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