I've often read that corporations will save millions once Internet Explorer 6 is finally laid to rest, but reading quotes like that make me wonder just how much time people are spending on IE6 development. I'll be happy once IE6 goes, but I've found that if I write valid HTML and CSS, use a JavaScript framework, keep the transparent images issue in mind, and don't try to over-complicate my design, I only need to write a few lines of IE6-specific CSS, which usually takes about 10-15 minutes. So I'm curious, how much time, effort, and money do you or your corporation spend on preparing your sites for IE6? Also, at what point will you drop IE6 support? If you've already dropped support, what has been your experience in terms of saved time and money and what has the switch done to your conversion rates and customer satisfaction?
We've already dropped it, but it depends on who you're marketing to. Only other companies will ever see our product, so we can be fairly certain they're at least using an operating system that can support IE7. If you're marketing to the entire internet then you may want to make certain that nothing breaks for a while yet.
I'm already phasing it out. Every second spent on debugging for an outdated (7+ years old!!) browser is a second wasted in my books. What I've started doing is when an IE6 user first comes to the site (determined by cookies and some dodgy browser sniffing), I pop up an alert informing them that they are using an old browser which does not support much of the functionality required by many of today's web sites. I inform them that their experience might be slightly downgraded by continuing, but that can be easily alleviated by upgrading to a modern web browser (even if it sucks).
Don't go out of your way to make it crappy for them (though they might deserve it), but don't go out of your way (with non-standard CSS hacks etc) for these users either. There's only one way they'll learn.
Unfortunately, I have a bunch of friends in other businesses that are sticking with IE6, and don't have a plan to upgrade.
They don't like the tabs in IE7, they don't want to go with another browser, etc, etc, etc.
There is enough of this that filters back to me, that I continue to test against IE6, and will do so for the indefinite future. Doesn't make me happy...just do it.
The vast majority of our internal corporate users are still on IE6. Until the powers-that-be decide to push out an update with IE7 or IE8 we will continue to support IE6 as our primary browser.
As far as I know, there are no immediate plans to upgrade.
Depends on the project. If I write the code conforming to web standards usually I don't have many issues.
If I'm using a template downloaded from the web, it often spells out very clear in bold letters: "manifest destiny is a bitch. don't trade blankets with anyone."
Really, you should be answering this question for yourself. If you don't have a decent web log statistics package such as AWStats, then there's the first thing you need to do. Otherwise, decide how much time you spend supporting IE6, and see what percentage of your users that is. If the time-to-customers ratio doesn't balance out, then you can decide to ditch IE6. Another factor to consider is how important your product is to your customers. If you're working on Salesforce.com, you can probably assume that they'll be willing to upgrade if you prompt them to do it. If you're talking about a server that injects ads into webpages, then you'll probably be at their mercy of browser choice.
I don't like it but I still support it. For small sites it isn't a problem, just make stuff work in Firefox first, then IE7, and IE6 last. I've used IE6-only css a number of times, and those only had a few rules in them.
For a larger project with complex layouts, I have wasted a lot of time on IE6. I'd be very happy to drop it entirely if it was impossible to provide one of my major features on it. So far, it's close enough that I'm still supporting it.
According to what I read online, about 1/4 people still use it, so it's probably not wise to drop support. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Use your own judgement, based on your application and what you think you can expect from your users. I do not believe that a typical web user will upgrade/switch their browser just for one site. I think those people who have not upgraded from IE6 by now will never be motivated to do so. The number of IE6 users is dropping, but I think we'll be waiting for them to replace their computers rather than upgrade their browsers.
According to some - browser - statistics, IE6 market share is still bigger than Chrome, Safari and Opera together, nearly as much as IE7.
Unless you target a very specific market (indeed check your stats to know for sure), neglecting to make your site looking at least decent with IE6 seems a bit foolish today...
I won't take the road to tell visitors what browser to use, for sure!
At my job all of our projects are for large corporations that aren't willing to drop support for a browser with such a large market share. Also, the designs we have are dictated to us by a third party design company so, even conforming to standards, there are still issues with complex designs in IE 6.
I would say for any given page about 5%-50% of the CSS development time is devoted to IE 6, depending on who the developer is and how complex the design is. The more experienced the developer and the simpler the design the better your odds are at hitting that 5% mark :) But even myself, with a good amount of IE 6 web-dev experience, have spent 3 hours on CSS for a page only to spend another 3 hours ironing out small quirks in IE 6.
Another thing that comes up is that certain markup + CSS approaches that seem so intuitive and simple in more modern browsers don't work at all in IE 6. If you go down one of these paths, you generally have to start from scratch once you realize that your code that works beautifully in FF and IE 7 doesn't have a chance in IE 6. More lost time...
I agree with the rest of you that if you can control your project and don't care about the IE 6 market, by all means forget about it. Unfortunately, some of us don't have that luxury quite yet.