by Mike McKeown
Internet Explorer 6 is dying, and that is great news for web designers. IE6 is one of the greatest hindrances in modern web design. First, it does not properly support important elements of CSS, which means extra work for designers. IE6 can render beautifully crafted validated code in a very ugly manner.
Take that and top it off with the fact that IE6 has some very big security issues and already you are well on your way to cooking up the world’s worst web browser. Most people by now have heard what IE6 did to Google, and it seems as if Google is pushing back in response to the issue. This month Youtube will stop supporting IE6, and G-mail is following. Google is not the only one that recommends you stop using IE6. World governments including France and Germany have recommended that people stop using the outdated browser. By using Internet Explorer 6 you are putting your or your company’s computer and even whole network at risk of catastrophic failure. There are still 22 un-patched vulnerabilities in IE6 and another 100+ that have patches, but that doesn’t mean everyone has them. Even Microsoft is recommending users upgrade.
It is important for web designers to remember that just because IE6 won’t be supported anymore doesn’t mean everyone will upgrade. There are still plenty of computer-illiterate people out there that won’t get the message. So yes, you can stop designing for IE6 (if you didn’t stop already), but its use isn’t disappearing quite yet, even though a funeral is planned for it.
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March 4th, 2010 on 1:03 pm
I already stopped designing or even really caring about how my sites look in ie6 a long time ago.
March 19th, 2010 on 11:40 am
Rightly so. Some web designers will say it’s a bad idea, and it’s not the webmasters place to determine which browser a user should use… but I say this is the one exception and we need to encourage people from using the browser.
Youtube is actually already doing it (and others are sure to follow). If you are using IE6 you will see a message whenever you go to view a video stating they no longer support the browser and they provide links to download a new version of IE or a different browser. I think it was a good step on the part of Youtube.
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