The last 18 months or so have been a very exciting time for web developers with the advent of Web fonts, HTML5 technologies and CSS3 hitting the mainstream. We’ve also seen a massive drop in the number of users using outdated browsers that cause considerable pain for web developers attempting to provide a consistent user experience.
Offering support for Internet Explorer 6 is a terrible ordeal for web developers. The browser was first released on 27 August 2001. The Web (and the world) was a very different place nine years ago; there was no Gmail, Facebook or YouTube; sites were mostly brochure-ware or e-commerce with very little interactivity; the Nokia 3310 was one of the hottest phones on the market.
Internet Explorer 6 has suffered from numerous bugs, security flaws and generally poor performance. It’s a nightmare to debug problems. Google has phased out support for IE6 on some of its major products, including YouTube and Google Docs, and Yahoo has announced that it will downgrade support for IE6 in the first quarter of 2011.
And now, Microsoft themselves have jumped onto the bandwagon by releasing ie6countdown.com, a website that “is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers.”
The website continues to state “Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6. And neither should acquaintances. Educate others about moving off of Internet Explorer 6.”
It also encourages website developers to display a banner on their websites encouraging users to upgrade.
It’s a significant step that the software manufacturer itself has asked web developers to add the banner to their websites. With Internet Explorer 9 rumoured to be released sometime this month, we have to ask the question: how long will we be expected to support IE6’s terrible twin, Internet Explorer 7?