IE6 No More?:
Written on the 20 of August, 2009, by Bree Davies
Regular readers of the R&B blog will be familiar with our feelings for Internet Explorer, and specifically, IE6. Turns out, we’re not the only ones – in fact a movement of companies within the digital realm are taking a very strong stance on the issue with a campaign entitled ‘IE6 No More’, and no longer accounting for IE6 compliancy in their projects.
While we’d love to drop support for IE6 altogether (it would certainly be like Christmas for the developers) – there are two arguments to this contentious issue.
A Bit of Background
In the digital world, 10 years is practically a lifetime – and that’s coming up to how long it’s been since IE6 was first released in 2001. At this time, IE had an incredible dominance of the market – at one stage, up to 95% of users browsed the web with IE6. Since then, technology has progressed at the speed of light – with IE6 the continual splinter in its side, which retains power, even today, purely because of its number of users.
The For Argument: Innovation is Being Stifled
Designers and developers’ number one argument against IE6 is that it restricts innovation. In almost every way. There are a bunch of features (some technical, some design) which IE6 doesn’t support – so designers and developers need to spend a lot of extra time writing ‘exceptions’ to their system or tone down their creativity to allow for the roadblocks IE6 presents.
The digital industry has put up with IE6 until now. But it has reached a crisis point with the advent of HTML 5 – a lot of which IE6 will not recognise. HTML is part of the core code which shapes the internet – and version 5 includes some pretty exciting new features.
The ‘IE No More’ movement argues that users are really the ones getting the raw end of the deal with IE6 still around. User experiences could be richer, more exciting and more powerful – if not held back by a need for IE6 compliance.
On a more practical note, there are also some fairly serious security issues with using IE6 – your data is simply not as safe as if you were using a more technologically advanced browser.
Furthermore, they propose the only way to force IE6 users to upgrade their browser is to stop supporting it – when a user’s favourite sites cease to look and work the same, they’ll have no choice. It will be to the benefit of the entire web community – industry, designers, developers and users alike.
The Against Argument: Corporate Users Don’t Have a Choice
People don’t use gaming consoles that are nearly 10 years old – I think it would even be difficult to find an appliance in any kitchen which has reached double digits. IE6 users can’t seem to give it up. But for some IE6 users – who ‘The Against’ argument is founded on – don’t have much of a choice.
Fast forward from 2001, when IE6 was released, to today – and even though there have been two subsequent releases of IE, many users out there still haven’t upgraded from IE6. While a significant portion of this statistic are undoubtedly at-home-users, who received IE6 in their Windows XP Operating System and have never realised the need to upgrade – the troublesome portion is corporations. These are the organisations who still use IE6 because of the time and financial costs of updating the browser of every computer in their network. This is why it would be unfortunate to drop IE6 support – because of the employees who have the browser forced upon them.
A new website has even been started to ‘name and shame’ organisations who still use IE6, in an attempt to force them to upgrade. As you’ll see – there are some major players on that list – and some serious numbers of employees who will be affected if IE6 support is dropped.
Finally, Microsoft also refuse to drop support for IE6. While they support users updating their browser, they retain choice of browser remains with the user. And as Microsoft remain committed to supporting Windows XP – they will do the same for IE6.
Where To Now?
It’s unlikely IE6 will be going anywhere anytime soon. This is primarily because Microsoft still support it, and corporations (especially in the current climate) will refuse to fork out the man power and money required to upgrade all their systems.
But for digital agencies and individuals who have already made the decision to stop supporting IE6, this doesn’t mean their IE6 users will not be able to access their websites altogether – they just wouldn’t quite look or behave exactly as they should. Not ideal, but not unusable either.
And our stance on whether we’ll be continuing support for IE6 in our projects? Let’s just say it’s still a hotly contested one in the development studio. Stay tuned…
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Bree Davies
Digital Project Manager
As R&B’s Digital Project Manager, Bree Davies brings experience working for some of Australia’s most high profile organisations including Morrison Media, Endemol Southern Star and the Virgin Blue Group.
