IE6 Getting Served with Industry Wide Death Sentence FINALLY!!! #dieIE6die

Overview

A little known fact to most who are not web designers/developers is that Internet Explorer from Micro$oft has long been a thorn in the side of developers hoping to utilize the latest web technologies and standards available. The main culprit, IE6, has long been out dated and does not support a majority of the technologies used in most the websites you use. It was a long, loooooonnnnggg time before IE7 hit the markets and really began incorporating some of the standards that browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome utilize. Still, since microsoft still ownes a large market share of the online browsers used, they still were seemingly trying to create still create their own standards still with either their noses in the air to dismiss a whole community coming together for web compliance, or as I typically feel that they just have severe internal problems and they can’t keep up with the industry.

Wasted Hours

When we design or develop internet sites, we can pretty much feel confident in using the latest technologies within a few months and all the browsers will be capable of handling and displaying the content the same except Internet Explorer. After a site is built before release we have to go back and load an instance of windows with IE6 on it and view the site and then add scripts to the current site that includes hackes and custom style adjustments so that the site will work and be viewable in IE6. Over time this is a severe burden and a lot of time wasted and money wasted all around.

Why Cater to IE6 Still?

The problem is frequently that many people still have older windows operating systems that don’t support IE7+, they don’t have the privileges to install an upgrade, corporations wont allow the upgrades or have the time and resources for it, or people are affraid of the technical requirements with regard to the windows system potentially crashing afterwards requiring a call to geek squad and money out of their pocket. Hmmmm, I wonder where that fear came from? *bias sarchasm*

An employee of Digg.com wrote an article about their analytics from visitors to the site with regard to IE6.

The Death Notice

If you have visited our site before with IE6, you would have seen a notice alerting that IE6 is a security risk with a link to even the federal government warning that it should be updated and a link to download firefox. We have done this for years with full conviction against suggestions that it might cause a loss in business. I recently saw a post on Mashable shedding more light that this is becomming an industry wide movement. It brought visibility to a website dedicated to this movement called IE6NoMore.

The website also provides code snippets for viewers to copy and paste into their own web pages and templates, as well as information for corporations on the importance.

As well if others tweet on the subject, it is being published to include #dieIE6die in the message to help bring visibility.