A long Goodbye (to Internet Explorer 6)

Your web browser is one of the most important parts of your connection to the Internet itself. It's the tool that helps you navigate, organize and virtually digest the endless stream of content that's constantly expanding across our digital globe. Over the years the humble browser has evolved from a crash-prone, clunky software afterthought to a streamlined, multi-tabbed, multi-media application. Consider what your average computer experience would be with no Internet browser?

Although browser technology has come a long way in the last decade or so, a small percentage of users are living in the technology stone age by using Internet Explorer 6 - the browser than came bundled with Windows XP.

Here's a breakdown from the W3C Schools, a popular web development resource, on browser usage:

The lion's share goes to Mozilla Firefox, a free, open-source browser. Google's new browser, Chrome, is clearly picking up speed as well. But standing there shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most advanced Internet applications in the world is a bug riddled, security-hole laden application that's over a decade old - IE6.

It's still in use for a variety of reasons, some don't know any better. Some folks run pirated copies of Windows XP, and are unable to download the browser updates (along with any other critical security update) from Microsoft. Still others are in corporate environments that require the old browser for running proprietary software.

Luckily however the tide is changing, and people are moving away from IE6 at a much faster rate than before. Factors triggering this include the introduction and growing popularity of Microsoft's new operating system Windows 7. Google just recently announced they'd be dropping support for IE6 with their popular email application Gmail, as well as their other online offerings like Google Docs. Even Microsoft is dropping support for IE6 in several of their online software applications.

Where does that leave Core3? Our design and development teams want nothing more than to bring the most modern and cutting-edge technologies to our clients. At the same time though it's obvious we can't turn our backs on a significant percentage of users who are either stuck with, or unaware of the fact that they're using out-of-date software.

So we've decided to make a compromise.  Future projects will provide limited compatibility for Internet Explorer 6. We'll ensure that the user experience isn't broken in anyway, but won't be quite as rich either. Without getting too technical we have ways in which we can determine that the user is browsing a site we've designed with IE6. If that's the case, the user won't see things like transparent elements, drop shadows, fancy buttons, etc. They'll still see the important nuts and bolts of the design, just sans a lot of the enriching detail that are easily supported in modern browsers.

We feel this approach will allow our team to develop amazing websites and applications that take full advantage of modern browser technologies without sacrificing much of anything.

Further reading:

"Web citizens trying to kill Internet Explorer 6"

"IE6 No More"

"Google Drop Support for IE6"

Posted February 23, 2010 | Read all posts by Joe DaSilva