Ethical Dilemma: Should I still cater for IE6 as a web-developer [duplicate]

Answer 1

For my own sites I do not bother with being pixel perfect and having identical functionality in IE6 but I do like to make sure that the site is accessible and functional at a basic level. That shouldn't be too hard and it'll probably be useful for web crawlers as well.

Answer 2

I like this approach: http://morten.dk/blog/ie6-tax-now

Normally I would say that IE6 and IE7 is not supported by default, but the client can pay an extra price for supporting legacy browsers (the website will cost 30-50% more depending on the website requirements).

It might be also a good idea to get information from similar sites. One of our newest deployed site has 2-3% IE visitors (including all IE versions), and the IE6 and IE7 users are below 1%. So we decided not to support IE 6 and 7 at all (we don't test them), and we give full functional support for IE 8 (the site is usable, and looks OK, but it isn't as sexy as in a modern browser with a better CSS3 support, which means that there aren't any gradients or rounded elements). But this site is a little special case.

So I say that analyze what kind of people will visit your site, and make a decision based on that information.

Answer 3

It depends who you expect to use the website.

Some recent figures for use of IE6 in different places make interested reading.

If your client still uses IE6, then you are probably going to have to give in (or convince them of their evil ways). Otherwise it might be worth explaining the numbers involved and the additional cost to cater to them - if it takes x hours of your time, does your client really want to pay for that?

Answer 4

How much money do you earn from the customers who still use IE6?

How much resistance is there within those companies to upgrade from IE6?

How much money will it cost you to support IE6?

Answer 5

I didn't see this point anywhere above, but I apologize if I missed it.

It's interesting that you say ethical, because I think moving standards for technology forward is one of those responsibilities that we have as consumers and as developers. Moving towards SVG and HTML5 and CSS3 is really good for the industry, because it means more efficiency and a better, faster web.

It may not be best for the client if their site doesn't support IE6, but if developers move on from outdated technologies en masse, it forces the last users of those technologies - in this case, businesses and schools and stegosauri with IE6 - to update their browsers, which is not a negative thing. It's OK to make decisions for the good of the industry as a whole, and we should more often.

Answer 6

Count yourself lucky you're not trying to cater for the Chinese internet user-base...

I make the site work in IE6, but have a banner that comes down pleading with the user to upgrade to experience the awesomeness of this century.

Example page that shows the banner