As a web developer, it is tough to do web design which is compatible with IE6. Is it required to make webpages compatible with css?. I heard the usage of IE6 is low.
My question is, whether I should still check compatibility of the webpage that i make, in Internet Explorer 6?
First, It depends on your audience. (This is where analytics come in handy)
For instance, a design focused blog might be able to avoid caring about Internet Explorer 6, as they can expect a large number of their users to be running the latest browser.
On the other hand, a website that focuses on business and accounting might need to support Internet Explorer 6, as some businesses refuse to upgrade.
Second, you must take into account that Google, many websites, and several countries have decided that Internet Explorer 6 is too horrible to support anymore. This means that you are in good company with not supporting Internet Explorer 6, and most likely you won't have too many problems.
Finally, you have to think if it is worth your time to develop for older browsers. It comes down to a cost per hour type thing, where if you could possibly be making more money doing other things than making sure your website works in older versions of browsers, you probably want to do those things instead.
No. It's almost a decade old and terrible to boot.
I suggest using http://ie6update.com/ to encourage any IE6 users to upgrade.
It depends. Every site is different. You can check your logs to get an idea of what percentage of your users use IE6.
Personally, I would say no - larger companies, like Google, have recently abandoned support for IE6 as well. The fewer websites that explicitly provide support for it, the quicker it will be phased out completely by the users' own choice.
One would love the answer to be no.
In reality the answer is: it depends on what your target market is using. We have several large corporate companies who are slow to move and still use IE 6 as their SOE (standard operating environment).
For us the answer is yes you do.
Is part of your audience forced to use IE6? EG are your clients unable to upgrade? If it's a general site (ie not being developed for in house use) forget IE6. However if people within your company who will be using the site are not able to upgrade to IE6 then you'll have to provide some support.
Even then, much better to talk to the tech support guys and try and get them to upgrade the company machines to something better then 6.
Do you make [a lot of] money from ie6 users? If true, make it ie6 compliant.
In my company we have corporate users who are still using IE6, so the reality is that we MUST support it for the features they are already paying for. For new features we are starting to take a hard look at a) the cost of supporting IE6 and b) is it even technically feasible to accomplish some of the more advanced things that we want to to within the browser.
On a recent project we took the same approach mentioned by @Pwninstein and explicitly state that IE6 is not supported. BUT... $$ talks and if we have a customer who wants to pay for IE6 then who am I to refuse their money :).
Bottom line, like everyone else has stated: it depends. Or just wait until April 8, 2014. That's when MS drops support, then we can all feel good about not supporting it.