Should we bother about IE < 8?

Question

Hi there.

It might look like philosophical question, however it really bother me. We're expecting HTML 5, we're using JS, Ajax, Flex, all this stuff, but when older browsers were devleoped, nooone even dreamed about such technologies.

IE6 can't see transparency in PNG's. Some correct W3C techniques, are bad interpreted by IE6. It's just too old for our "new" world.

IE7 is sight better better than IE6, but it still has some weird errors.

How many people use IE6 now? And if someone upgraded to IE7, doesn't he already upgraded to IE8?

Should we bother about those browsers?

(sorry for bad eng, but noone in my country answered me to this)

Update:

So - IE6 users are mostly corporations (the have to use it, becouse of some contracts), and we can't count on miracle change to IE8.

I'd rather spend my time to check is my site good-loking and functional in some mobiles, than checking IE6 compability.

Answer 1

It depends on your audience, there's no single answer here.

If you have corporate customers, unfortunately you can't ignore IE6 exists in most cases, and you definitely can't ignore IE7 does they just move that slow to new platforms.

If it's for a public/internet facing website, I would only target IE7+, but that's just me....you're going to lose some users if your site is broken is IE6, it depends how much you care. Now there's a difference between "making it work" and "making it look good". If you can make it work and decent with little effort, then support everything you can...doesn't mean they get have to get all the bells and whistles.

Answer 2

Even youtube has discontinued support for IE6, I say it's time to drop support for IE6 once and for all to force an upgrade.

IE7 isn't that hard to support once you learn a few tricks, I say support IE7+ for now.

Answer 3

In our company (about 5000 employees) it is company policy to use IE6. Some intranet apps are just not compatible with newer versions of IE ... much less with Firefox, which I tend to use whenever I can. But most of the employees are not in the IT department so I guess they just use IE6 as ordered...

Answer 4

Depends on how technologically backwards you expect your target audience to be. IE6 should be supported only if it is specifically expected to work there. In IE7, a site should be functional, but I do not spend extra time on it. Also, suggested is a message for IE7 users with a link to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx

On the other hand, these days it's good to check if your site is at least functional on newer phones.

Answer 5

My company still can't shake support for IE6. Sadly, it is the gating factor for everything we do. We have clients who are still on Windows 2000 using IE6. I estimate it causes 20% of our development overhead, at least.

Answer 6

Ok, as W3Schools say - March 2010 - IE6 8.9%. Every month users count drop ~2%.

IE7 isn't as "dangerous" so it can be even 10%. Thanks all of you guys.

Answer 7

How many people use IE6 now?

As of March 2010, about 18% of general web users, according to Net Applications, still use IE6. Another 13% are using IE7, so not worrying about "IE < 8" means not worrying (potentially) about nearly a third of general users out there. In theory, see below.

Should we bother about IE < 8?

That is a much more interesting question. You should worry about your user base. I've heard it said regularly that "most IE6 users are corporate users" (I haven't seen the data to back that up, but I'm not saying it's not true). So if your site is mostly going to be of interest to home users, maybe the numbers are different.

The best thing to do is find out what percentage of your user base uses IE6 or IE7. The best way is to examine your web server logs and see what user agents requests are coming from (user agent strings can be spoofed, but usually aren't).

If your user base is very much like that measured by Net Applications, I would say, no, you can't ignore IE6 and IE7. But if your user base is hardcore web developers, of course you can. :-) Measure first, then work from there.

Answer 8

How many people use IE6 now? And if someone upgraded to IE7, doesn't he already upgraded to IE8? ... So - IE6 users are mostly corporations (the have to use it, becouse of some contracts), and we can't count on miracle change to IE8.

The website I've been working on (protein-protein interactions), serving mostly R&D audience, has about 1200 unique users a day. 30% of them use IE and the numbers break down to:

• 45% IE8,
• 30% IE7,
• 25% IE6

As these numbers suggest, being able to upgrade to IE7 doesn't necessarily mean they'll go for IE8.

Based on previously posted numbers, you can expect from 5-10% IE6 users. Should you care about them? Well, if they can't even use your site, and you earn a million a year, would you care about extra 50-100 grand? ;)

Answer 9

Don't forget two things.

IE8 can emulate IE7.

More importantly, although various browser have their own implementation of HTML5, it's real due date is... 2023!!! They expect to be finished to write the requirements in about 2 years.

Answer 10

Your English is much better than any other language I try to speak. (good post!)

It depends on who your users are. I've worked in America for the government and for large companies, and both are still using IE6. They've probably got another year or two left on it; IE6 will last as long as Windows XP does in those environments.

If I were targeting people at any other businesses or at home, I'd ignore IE6, and follow Google/Youtube's example of telling users with IE6 that they may have a less-good experience.

In other words; if the customers you're aiming for want IE6, give them IE6. If they don't, forget IE6, but absolutely support IE7/8 and Firefox 3.x.

Answer 11

On our most popular dutch site, (about 300.000 visitors per month, mixture of home and office visitors), the following numbers for IE (% of total visits):

IE6 - 7%
IE7 - 19%
IE8 - 46%

So it would be wrong to assume that hardly anyone still uses the browsers.