Does anyone still bother with IE6 hacks?

Question

I'm working on a web development project usng PNG transparency, CSS3 and all the other goodies you would come to expect in a "new" web design. IE8 and Firefox look great, IE7 is passable and IE6 looks like the dog coughed it up.

With Windows 7 out in the wild (If you have to dual boot... do it in style :P) and Internet Explorer 6 down to a pitiful 11% market share, has anyone made the decision to ignore it?

Granted, I've still made the effort to make IE6 usable - but how far should I take it (how far have you)? Is anyone else working on a project where they've given the finger to this ancient design massacring nightmare?

browser stats: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers%5Fstats.asp

Answer 1

I personally tend to try to make my stuff usable even in Lynx. In general, if you start with that in mind, it's pretty easy at least to have it degrade gracefully.

Answer 2

11% is still one in ten users.

Much depends on what you're creating. If you're creating an intranet site where you know that most users should have made it beyond IE6, then go right ahead.

Me, I'd stick with IE6 for the time being for public sites, at least until the percentage drops below 2% or so. But this is really a question for the site owner: are you willing to look ugly for one in ten of your users?

Note, for web design questions of this kind, try doctype.com. For browser compatibility, try Litmus.

Answer 3

I still try to make my interfaces usable in IE6, but I don't spend the time to make them look perfect, or even decent. For my projects, it's just not worth the effort. People and companies with IE6 need to upgrade, period.

Edit: Semi-random addition: I just saw this graph of web usage mentioned on Slashdot, which puts IE6 at 14% of all users. At least it's going down!

Answer 4

If you design in flash, you'll get cross browser compliance.

Answer 5

What does the PNG transparency and CSS3 give you, that can't be done with older technologies?

It might be fun to try the most recent technologies, but you shouldn't throw out one in ten of your customers.

Answer 6

IMHO it's not just a matter of how many people are using IE6, it's a matter of why they're using it. If 11% of people were using IE6 because they really liked IE6 and Ie6 had a chance of gaining popularity as time went on, I'd say they should be considered. However, given that probably 99% of people using IE6 are using it purely because of inertia and it's getting less popular every day, I don't think it matters too much. If anything, the fact that your website looks like crap in IE6 will encourage them to upgrade.

That said, I think your page should probably explain to the relatively computer illiterate why it looks like crap and that IE6 his a browser from the caveman era and they should upgrade.

Answer 7

I'm still dealing with IE6.

jQuery has helped.

As has graceful degredation. I use CSS3 now and don't care too much if some things just won't appear in IE6.

For PNGs, Twinhelix has a nice script that does quite a bit for PNG transparency support in IE6:

http://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/

Or, alternatively, I use PNG-8s. Not ideal, but really easy.

The only major beef I still have is IE6's lack of double class selectors:

.class1.class2

I could de-bloat my CSS quite a bit of IE6 supported that.

Answer 8

I've been saying this for 3 years now - if you're trying to make things look nice for somebody using IE6, you're wasting your time. People using IE6 are not savvy enough (and depending on what you're doing, are they even your target audience?) to notice or care about the PNG transparency or anything. If they are savvy and they are stuck on IE6 b/c they are at work or something... really, who cares? They probably don't, it's probably just another reason for them to curse their stupid IT department. Not your problem.

Sure, make sure your site WORKS in IE6, but it doesn't have to look nice.

Answer 9

yes, I do, as does Google and Yahoo!.

yes, it sucks, but the numbers are still there (with us it's about 30 - 40% of users still using IE6)

Answer 10

This can only be answered by determining the audience for your web site. If you already have a version of your site running, look at the logs to determine how many people use IE6 and visit your site. Then you can make the decision on whether you're going to support those users anymore, and whether you're going to make the site work well or just well enough to be usable by those users.