As we all know supporting IE6 with its many well documented quirks is painful but a necessary part of development and supporting with web based technologies. My question is “does anyone know when IE6 is scheduled for end of official Microsoft support (or retirement) or if Microsoft will force an update to IE7 or IE8”?
+6
A:
See Microsoft's chart:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps/#Internet_Explorer
AlbertoPL
2009-07-06 12:37:50
Cool, so sometime around 13-Jul-2010 for computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2 or 3
Kane
2009-07-06 12:40:11
I also found this link (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx) within another Stack Overlfow answer.
Kane
2009-07-06 12:43:40
Sorry but I work for a government department, and me nor any of my team have any authority on which browser is part of the standard operating system, so I can't stop developing for IE6.
Kane
2009-07-06 12:50:03
+3
A:
Personally I don't support IE6 anymore on websites that I built. Not completely anyway. If you build a website in a sensible way (i.e. use a CSS reset stylesheet, don't futz with margings and paddings on floated containers) then things mostly work on IE6. The content is presentable and usable and otherwise degrades in a reasonable way. I'm done with spending hours on minor style fixes, using AlphaImageLoader hacks on PNG's and other dirty tricks.
The only trick I will employ for IE6 when things really break down is to include an override to simply remove most styles.
In short, I treat IE6 like any other legacy browser. You can access the contents and it's usable. Doing anything more isn't feasible anymore. It takes an extraordinary amount of work for only a little bit of market share (15% and plummeting).
Sander Marechal
2009-07-06 12:49:45