IE6: The Special Flower of Web Browsers

Pondered on Thursday March 26, 2009

Over the last few months my co-workers and I have been overheard cursing IE6. I know we aren’t alone and that this is nothing new. That doesn’t make us feel better especially when we get calls from people within our software company who discover a bug on our site in IE6. It befuddles us that a progressive company full of technically gifted people are alerting us that they, not a customer mind you, are having an issue.

We wonder aloud why people within our company network are running an 8 year old browser with a long track record of security flaws. One of these flaws was blogged about by Brian Krebs at the Washington Post in December. It notably affected all versions of IE from 5 to 8 beta 2. In this instance IE6 wasn’t so special.

Where IE6 is a “special flower” is in its rendering of CSS. I will be honest here — I don’t mind if you gunk up your PC with spyware and viruses from gallivanting on the web with the IE gang. Getting a page to look like what it should from browser to browser is a huge task (because of the existence of IE) and one I will obsess over if my workload is light (hardly ever) and if I feel like taking a few on the chin.

Other designers have taken a more humorous approach to the IE6 problem. I recommend visiting The Rissington Podcast if you have IE6. If you don’t have IE6 you can see the results in this screen capture.

Its an irreverent way to tell IE6 users that they need to get with the program and I live vicariously through the implementation. I only joke about doing it on my site because deep down I know a smidgen of the 20ish% of people still using IE6 don’t know other browsers exist and excluding people is not my thing.

For the record I only use IE 6, 7 and 8 for work related sites – our content management system (it won’t run on anything else) and our web site properties. Thats it. I sincerely suggest that anyone else jump to Firefox, Safari, Opera or Chrome.

Web designers and developers alike join the movement at http://www.bringdownie6.com/. I am on board with the balanced approach they suggest and will be implementing the IE6 notification on this site.

Now if I could just make the warning come up for company users on our network…or maybe convince the powers that be that we could give all of our users a polite hint.

What were they thinking?

Shane
thought on Thursday March 26, 2009

Good post, Jill.

I suggest you go visit my blog in any version of IE. I put an extra special message in the header just for fun times.

Here’s a question…what’s up with companies that build content managers that only work in one browser. If you’re in the business of building tools that publish to the web, shouldn’t cross-browser compatibility be a consideration?

Jill Ducey
thought on Thursday March 26, 2009

Shane thanks for the comment. I will fire up IE tester and check out your site.

Our content manager only works in IE7. I understand it to the effect that it is a .NET app. I don’t judge that because the thing is radically different from any open source PHP CMS I have used. Way over my head.

What is fun is keeping everyone’s IE7 settings in line to get into the thing. I feel bad when a writer gets their feelings hurt thinking Tridion simply doesn’t like them. Just turns out that IE7 settings change on a whim.

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