Reports of Internet Explorer 6’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Dear IE6 is a site devoted to people venting about Internet Explorer 6. 

As web designers/developers, most of us are trying our best make sure everyone who visits a site has the best experience. IE6 makes that harder. It’s is close to seven years old and doesn’t fully support a number of standards established as far back as 1996 for web development. Developing for it sucks; it requires more work, effort, troubleshooting, frustration, etc. I wish everyone would download a modern browser like Firefox, IE7 or Safari. 

But they don’t. They haven’t. IE6 is still widely used. It’s still 15% of NewSpring‘s traffic, and while I wish we didn’t have to spend the extra time to develop for it, that 15% equals HUNDREDS of people a day. For some folks (Apple’s MobileMe and 37signals come to mind) they think the tradeoffs are worth it. That’s their prerogative. But for us, for a church whose main web strategy is “get content into the hands of as many people as possible,” ignoring 15% of them because we’re too lazy to do the work is a halfass strategy at best. It essentially says “we don’t care about you because we think you’re stupid.” 

You’re a web developer—know your audience and learn how to make your website work for them, even if they’re behind the curve.

P.S. if our Web Campus launches with full IE6 support, it’ll be a miracle. But I’m working on it.