can we worry less about IE 6 issues since there seems to be upgrade push?

Question

I noticed that on my Vista and XP machines, the automatic update is asking me to upgrade to IE 8 (from IE 7). News article also says people with IE 6 also get such suggestion.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10218185-56.html

(i don't have IE 6 on any of my machine except an XP virtual machine version which might be different from the retail version, so is that really happening?)

So probably after some time when we look at the website log stats and see IE 6 falling below 2, or 3%, we can worry less about the IE 6 bugs.

(by the way, won't some machine out there running IE 6 be too slow if running the new and heavier IE 8?)

Answer 1

It really depends on who your audience is. Check your visitor stats and determine what you think is appropriate. Some site have already started phasing IE6 out, such as 37signals.

Answer 2

I think you answered your own question.

So probably after some time when we look at the website log stats and see IE 6 falling below 2, or 3%, we can worry less about the IE 6 bugs.

The key point is that you don't want to alienate your users if a "significant" percentage of your audience is using IE6 still. It should definitely be on a case-by-case basis, so the key basis of the decision should be the particular websites client usage statistics.

Answer 3

Yes, you can worry less about it. But I would not suggest not worrying at all. There are some companies out there that still use IE6 due to compatibility issues with internal systems.

Answer 4

Our approach is currently "get it essentially functional in IE6, but don't worry if things look a little odd from time to time".

2-3% is still a good number of people, and my industry (newspapers) can't afford to lose many more eyeballs, so we can't ditch support entirely - as much as we'd love to!

Answer 5

You can't rely on general statistics, you need to look at your own particular customer pool. There might still be corporate environments where they won't upgrade for a while, because they have legacy web apps that depend on the browser version or just won't spare the manpower to coordinate an upgrade.

Answer 6

Look at the browser usage statistics at w3school. Even if ie6 usage is decreasing, and even if w3school represents only a part of the Internet users, 15% of users on that site is still using IE6.

Obviously, statistics for your own sites may be over or below that percentage.

Answer 7

If your target audience is the "Internet in general" then I'd do like Facebook and politely tell your IE6 users its time to upgrade... IE8 is available or even Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc.

If your end users are PAYING for your services... be careful how much you push them.

That all said come 2010 I plan to phase out all support for IE6. Plus new apps I build today DO NOT support IE6 at all.

Answer 8

I think that looking at your logs and picking a number of people you can afford to annoy is the right way to go. You are the only one who can say whether 2-3% of your users is the right number. Just make sure that you don't have a high proportion of valuable users in that 2-3%, and you'll be fine.

Answer 9

I'm using IE6 on XP (for dogfooding - I develop applications that need to support it) and I haven't been asked by Windows Update to upgrade to IE8.

However, I may at some point have been asked to upgrade to IE7 and checked the "No, and don't ask me again" box. I don't know whether that decision would be respected by the IE8 upgrade process.

Answer 10

I have found that for most sites I design it is enough to use IE7-js http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/

This fixes most position bugs, adds support for most of CSS 2.1 and fixes IE6's broken png implementation all in one. It's brilliant beyond words.

To use the script just add this to your HEAD (or download and use locally):

<!--[if lt IE 8]><script src="http://ie7-js.googlecode.com/svn/version/2.0(beta3)/IE8.js" type="text/javascript"></script><![endif]-->

If you have transparent PNG's rename them originalname-trans.png and the script will give them proper alpha support.