It's now definitely time to ditch IE6.

[movietub]

I posted something similar about IE6 about a year ago and met with much resistance. But I'm now convinced. Anyone faffing about with their site in order to display on IE6 is basically wasting their time.

It's not that I believe no one uses IE6 still. They do. But these people represent a few small pockets of most ecommerce sites reach, and time is simply better spent focussing on the other 98% of users experience.

This sentiment comes after a good look at our analytical data. Basically 3% of our users are on IE6. That's about 30 visitors a day. Is that worth the extra time and involved in forcing a cutting edge site to work on IE6, without making a single functional or design sacrifice? Many would say yes, but I looked deeper... The actual conversion to sale data showed that only 0.3% of visitors to our old site (fully IE6 compatible) actually bought anything.

I'm sorry but that's just not worth the time spent writing extra CSS, different site versions, ditching ambitious new ideas -whatever your answer to supporting old browsers may be.

Let's face it. If someone has IE6 then they haven't bought a new computer for up to a decade. They are very unlikely to be a high spending customer, and very likely to somehow get their order wrong and call for more assistance.

I had such a call today, that's partly what motivated this post. A bloke, probably in his 40's was stuck on our new site saying he couldn't use the site as cookies had to be turned on and the menu didn't work. For the first time ever I asked what browser he was using (talked him through finding out) and suggested an upgrade. He did, 30 mins later the sale came through.

I feel I have done a better thing by nudging him on to Chrome than by allowing him to use IE6 any more, or catering to his use of it. So I urge you all to check your analytics data, figure out the actual worth of supporting dead browsers, and then, in almost all cases, ditch concerns about IE6

Let M$'s final attempt to own the net die. It really is time.

 

[petersoftware]

I agree with your frustration as I develop sites both for the Internet and Intranets. IE6 is a pain. However part of my job involves installing my software on customer sites and I am still amazed how many companies still have IE6 as their official browser. I'm not taking small companies either. NHS (the worlds third largest employer), and various banks in the last couple of months.

I would love to stop developing sites for this browser but from an ecommerse point of view, do I really want to put any road blocks in the path of my potential customer? Particularly just before Christmas when I imagine even thoughs banned from using their company pcs for personal use will sneak in some present shopping.

 

[cjd]

We took the plunge a year ago, our new control panel uses technologies that IE6 can't support so it's upgrade or go elsewhere for us.

A lot of government and public organisations are still IE6 - I know we were responsible for at least one police force upgrade

 

[movietub]

I agree with your frustration as I develop sites both for the Internet and Intranets. IE6 is a pain. However part of my job involves installing my software on customer sites and I am still amazed how many companies still have IE6 as their official browser. I'm not taking small companies either. NHS (the worlds third largest employer), and various banks in the last couple of months.

I would love to stop developing sites for this browser but from an ecommerse point of view, do I really want to put any road blocks in the path of my potential customer? Particularly just before Christmas when I imagine even thoughs banned from using their company pcs for personal use will sneak in some present shopping.

Very large organisations are often stuck with ten year plus hardware solutions and a huge array of software that will only run on old hardware - so that is a clear exception. I was in our library the other day and they were still checking books in/out on a windows 3.11 machine :|

But I don't agree with dropping IE6 as being a roadblock for ecommerce in general. The fact is that the limitations of developing a new site to be IE6 safe means either dropping certain aspirations for the new sites design, which will lose you more customers from your overall target group than you will gain from the tiny IE6 user group - Or, you spend so long getting IE6 to work that the time could have been better spent making the site more attractive/useful to the other 98% of your users.

Someone, somewhere, will still be using IE6 in ten years time. We could always say that dropping it loses *some* users. But I think we're at a point now where they either need to upgrade or be deserted.

Christ knows the internet is a bleak looking place if you only view it through IE6 goggles - it's in their interests to have new reasons to ditch it

 

[movietub]

We took the plunge a year ago, our new control panel uses technologies that IE6 can't support so it's upgrade or go elsewhere for us.

A lot of government and public organisations are still IE6 - I know we were responsible for at least one police force upgrade

Good for you. Most cp type web software we encounter has either officially dropped IE6 or at least made no real effort to make sure things display correctly on it.

You may step over to the enlightened side of the room - you have chosen wisely

 

[Waumsley]

I could not agree more.

We decided not to support IE6 for my wife's on-line greeting card shop and added Microsoft's own outdated browser warning from ie6countdown(dot)com

I also work for a Government body that still has IE6 but it is due to up-grade next month. Sure, employees there do surf shopping sites but are restricted from buying at work.

 

[movietub]

I could not agree more.

We decided not to support IE6 for my wife's on-line greeting card shop and added Microsoft's own outdated browser warning from ie6countdown(dot)com

I also work for a Government body that still has IE6 but it is due to up-grade next month. Sure, employees there do surf shopping sites but are restricted from buying at work.

Government/public organisations probably account for the majority of IE6 users in this country. Every time I bring this up I get the same comments!

A friend of mine is a fast jet pilot. He will get out of a Typhoon jet, and in to an office with IE6 running on win2k. So he's basically a time traveller.

 

[cmcp]

Issues like this are understandable, but probably raise an interesting point about the workflow. If a website is built to progressively enhance, the site will function in raw html, then styled with css, then enhanced with javascript.

I suspect you are working with a system that is built post-ie6 and reverse engineering to work with ie6. This can be a nightmare, but it's the cost you pay for a system that is built from the outside in rather than the ground up.

I'm comfortable that any site I build will not look the same in ie6 as it does in regular browsers. (I can actually make it and often do, but like you say the extra resource to do so has to come from somewhere). But I do believe the workflow should go as above, be device agnostic, working in bare html mode on the simplest browsers then enhancing thereafter. That should mean that even the most prehistoric device should get access to the basic content and function of the site.

This approach is even more important when you consider building with mobile / tablet / any device in mind... First of all, build the site to work raw, then add a basic core stylesheet (just typography and colour) (that way, your non-smart phones can access). You can then stack media queries on top for each breakpoint. Older version of IE don't handle media queries but this is a blessing, as you can just deliver a conditional set to them. Ideal for sending a basic - but functioning - version to ie6.

Bit of a side step in the thought process there! I feel the same about ie6 and it's dreadful rendering. But I'm kinda of the opinion that the content and functionality should be there in some form, albeit looking a bit different sometimes.

ps, im not saying build to standards and the rest will follow. We all know ie6 doesn't follow css standards, which is why it's so hard.

I also believe that the security issues are a bigger sell for moving away rather than the way it renders, % use etc. If i were going to deliver an ie6 site and didn't make it pixel perfect, I'd deliver the css stack it could handle to work in basic form and deliver a conditional message worded "due to security issues" etc.

 

[movietub]

I suspect you are working with a system that is built post-ie6 and reverse engineering to work with ie6. This can be a nightmare, but it's the cost you pay for a system that is built from the outside in rather than the ground up.

The only CMS I use is magento, which is fine for IE6. But it's the CSS of any site that causes extra work for IE6. Even if you're a goody two shoes and write everything the correct way! It's because IE6 harks back to the days when MS believed it could control the development of how the net, and sites should work.

I'm comfortable that any site I build will not look the same in ie6 as it does in regular browsers. (I can actually make it and often do, but like you say the extra resource to do so has to come from somewhere). But I do believe the workflow should go as above, be device agnostic, working in bare html mode on the simplest browsers then enhancing thereafter. That should mean that even the most prehistoric device should get access to the basic content and function of the site.

This approach is even more important when you consider building with mobile / tablet / any device in mind... First of all, build the site to work raw, then add a basic core stylesheet (just typography and colour) (that way, your non-smart phones can access). You can then stack media queries on top for each breakpoint. Older version of IE don't handle media queries but this is a blessing, as you can just deliver a conditional set to them. Ideal for sending a basic - but functioning - version to ie6.

Bit of a side step in the thought process there! I feel the same about ie6 and it's dreadful rendering. But I'm kinda of the opinion that the content and functionality should be there in some form, albeit looking a bit different sometimes.

ps, im not saying build to standards and the rest will follow. We all know ie6 doesn't follow css standards, which is why it's so hard.

I'm much the same as you. I'll have a quick click around on IE6 to make sure the site works in it's most basic form. I've given up on things such as JS hacked hover effects etc. I just can't justify the extra work now!! You're right of course, if the basic stuff is done correctly the site normally works well enough on any old browser.

The mobile device/tablet design I actually find less of a headache than old IE browsers! I think this is because the manufacturers know that having a 'good as a desktop pc' browser is a major selling point, and they all encourage regular updates. Virtually no one has a smartphone or table that has a browser more than one year old in fact. Some of the old windows mobile powered devices are a bit rubbish, but it's hard to justify spending much time on a solution when you know within 12-18 months they will all have upgraded to something with a more modern browser anyway.

We actually did try using Magento's own mobile store template for our sites content on the iphone and others. Whilst it was very slick and displayed perfectly, there was no getting around the fact that our main site also displayed fine, looked better and was actually easier to (quicker) to navigate! So we ditched the smartphone specific version and just display the main site. In all honesty, on all smart phones I've had chance to test it on, it's worked perfectly.