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Many users of IE6 have no choice of browser. It's either IE6 or nothing. They're forced to use it because many large companies have IE6 as they're single browse
by MJR 16y ago
Many users of IE6 have no choice of browser. It's either IE6 or nothing. They're forced to use it because many large companies have IE6 as they're single browser on the desktop. Forcing an upgrade of all the clients in a company to IE7, 8, or another browser can be a large effort. The end users have zero control to upgrade their own browser or install other software.
An upgrade also requires that all internal applications built for IE6 are also updated. That's an even larger headache if one or more of those applications were built by an external vendor. I know a large company(4500+ employees) that recently upgraded from IE6 to IE7 internally. It was a MAJOR effort at significant cost to make this change.
At this point its naive to think that majority of IE6 usage is based on the individual home or business user who has control over their workstation and could upgrade with the press of a button.
If you choose to dump support for IE6, understand that you're making the choice against some large organizations. And make sure you communicate this to your clients as well if you're building a site for them. If you're ok with that, go for it. Charging more to support IE6 is reasonable, but make sure you're clear with your clients that there ARE reasons to support IE6. Let them make an informed decision rather than based on the bias of a developer who doesn't want the hassle.
- tnorthcutt 16y ago"that recently upgraded from IE6 to IE7 internally" Why on earth didn't they go ahead and make the jump to IE8?
- MJR 16y agoAgain - when you're dealing with outside vendors and you have internal applications which rely on browser compatibility you can only move to IE8 if the applications support IE8 - which they don't. So, IE7 is the current ceiling. It sucks, but it's the reality.
- grackle 16y agoThank you. Thank you so much for articulating this. I'd like to add that historical site analytics should always be a factor in the web developer's decision to support IE6 or not - and in my experience, B2B companies almost always have 40+ percent of users still on IE6. Yes, we all want IE6 to die. Yes, it makes life harder for us in the development community. But telling a client that "you can save money on your website if we ignore IE6" is inherently disingenuous, unless your client is already a web technologies expert (and if they're outsourcing web development, I'm doubting that this is the case). Nine times out of ten, the client will jump on the cost-saving opportunity, you will avoid the hassle of developing for backwards compatibility, and you'll feel good for having just stabbed IE6 in the kidney. But when the client's site analytics say that 40% of the customer base is still on IE6 (and this is typical in my experience) then you'll be costing them FAR more in lost business than you'll be saving them in web development costs. I hate IE6 too... but there's more to it than just the added cost of development - and as stated earlier, many users simply don't have a choice in the matter.