Why IE6 isn’t dead yet, and how you can twist the knife.
The web is abuzz lately with mounting campaigns against IE6. Web designers and producers have been moaning about it for years, but the reality has been that 20%+ of internet users have still used the old browser, avoiding the upgrade to 7 for whatever reason. There’s a reason it’s stuck around so long, even now, 8 years later, and a twitter campaign is not going to kill it. I do have a suggestion for easing development pain, though, and ultimately ending the bane of IE6.
"IE6 Must Die"
Before we can kill IE6, we need to understand why it’s still alive. Your mother already upgraded, she’s not the problem anymore. The problem is IT managers at really big companies. For the sake of personification, we’ll call them ‘Chet.’ Many years ago when IE6 was released, Microsoft added a lot of proprietary features that turned the browser into a development platform. Netscape had been defeated, and IE had over 90% browsershare. A lot of IT departments took great advantage of this, building custom software for their companies, intranets, and so on. But then we had a bit of a revolution on the internet – a huge shift toward open source and standards based development practices that would work across all browsers. The rise of alternative browsers like Firefox and Safari has fueled this trend, forcing developers to take other browsers into consideration. Even Microsoft has joined the game, abandoning their proprietary code in favor of standards.
The remaining IE6 users are not voluntary IE6 users, but shackled IE6 users. Thanks, Chet.
Unfortunately, Chet has been a bit oblivious to this trend. Chet is old-school, and he expects the software that his team developed to last a long time. It’s expensive to rebuild these things, especially after they have years of additional code stacked on top of them. Chet wasn’t really forward looking, and didn’t expect the browser world to leave him behind. No problem though – as long as we mandate IE6 for all users in the company and never upgrade, nothing breaks. Nice thinking, Chet.
I have first hand experience with these companies, and there’s more of them than you think. And they’re really big ones, with tens of thousands of employees, all using outdated legacy software built on top of archaic software, virtualized and VPN’d. The remaining IE6 users are not voluntary IE6 users, but shackled IE6 users (as Digg recently discovered). Thanks, Chet.
So what can we do about it?
At Mural, we would love to drop support for IE6, but when your clients are companies where Chet works, you can’t build a site for them that nobody at their office can use. I was working on a proposal today in fact for a certain giant internet retailer, and of course we get to estimating production and have to start thinking about how much time we expect we’ll need for IE6 debugging. We had been toying with the idea of leaving IE6 out of our SOW, thinking that the main audience for this site probably would be on IE7 or greater. But instead of just leaving it out and having the inevitable conversation about it later when they insist they need it, we decided to take another approach: make it a line item.
Instead of a line item for all development/production, make another line item for ‘legacy IE6 compatibility.’… For clients, it forces them to consider exactly how much that 5-10% is worth.
The reason most clients insist they want their sites to cater to the remaining 5-10% of users using IE6 is that they don’t really know how much development time that adds to their project. So make it real for them. Instead of a line item for all development/production, make another line item for ‘legacy IE6 compatibility.’ If you’re anything like us, that line item probably adds 30% or more to the cost. For clients, it forces them to consider exactly how much that 5-10% is worth. More importantly, it creates awareness inside those companies that Chet is costing them money, and is going to continue to cost them money as long as his systems are dependent on IE6. It helps build an ROI case for updating their systems.
So complain all you want on blogs. Add an anti-IE icon to your twitter avatar. But if you really want to help make a difference in the campaign against IE6, it’s up to you (agencies, designers, developers) to make the case to your clients to move forward, and it’s up to you (clients and employees at large companies) to go tell Chet how much he’s costing you.
Update: TechCrunch points out a new campaign pointed at IT managers, Hey IT!
Tagged as browser, development, ie6, ie7, microsoft, twitter, web design + Categorized as Business, Design, Tech
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Yeah, I know it all too well. That’s why I started End6! a year and a half ago. Maybe it’s made a dent. I don’t know, but what I do know is that now, I just use browscap.ini. If it detects that a user is running anything older than IE7, the site doesn’t display. Take a look at the URL I put in above for my personal site and you’ll see it in action. I’m done with 6 on all but one project of mine, where there still is some need due to the location of the project. Otherwise, sorry IE6 people.
Oh yeah, I forgot to add that All State Insurance has also chained their employees to IE6 due to old dead in the water software. Had a very annoyed employee write to me about that one.
For more than two years we have been “joking” about a IE6 line item. Now, with the growing momentum on blogs and social newtorks, we me actauuly have the guts to do it. Great piece.
That is a GREAT approach to phasing out IE6. I recently completed a high-profile project and have been monitoring the visitors screen resolutions, color depths, and browser (type and versions). Currently I have about 20% of my visitors, since the site has been launched approximately 3 months ago, are still using IE6. These users are also from all over the world which in some cases are 3rd world. These users may not have a good enough internet connection or computer system to even have the ability to upgrade to IE7 but that small percentage I think just needs to be chalked up as a loss. The remaining users like “CHET” could make it MUCH easier on the rest of use and just bite the bullet, and upgrade their IE6 browsers.
@Essa, I deal with “3rd world” users daily. The project I’m a lead on, Maneno is focused on attracting more African bloggers to write. Amazingly, the user base on IE6 there is about the same as the rest of the world. Folks in tech are no slouches and like to run the same software as everyone else, but in addition to connection speeds, there is also the issue that power goes out often and so downloading Firefox is tough given that folks are often cut off in the middle of it. This is one of the reasons I travel there with Firefox on a stick to install it on any machine running something old. Their computers for the most part, can handle Firefox fine.
Cool project, Hudin. Maybe put some download managers on those sticks too
Insightful! It’s definitely the case that remaining IE6 users are people who can’t or won’t upgrade. I’ve heard that IE8 is gaining popularity but it’s taking most of its share from IE7. IE6 users are the most stubborn.
Fixing websites for IE6 is one of my talents, so I’ve been loath to give it up, even though it’s a hassle. Putting a price on it is a clever solution, especially on a large project or something with a lot of Javascript.
Incidentally, I like the design of this site. Great use of light on dark.
Great piece! I was just looking for the current thinking on the IE6 problem as we’ve just found that some 65% of our website traffic comes from IE6 users!!
Well, one reason some people are using IE6 is because IE7/IE8 will not run on Windows 2000. Why is someone still using W2K, you ask? Cost and speed, plain and simple. W2K runs SO MUCH FASTER than XP or Vista (given the same system specs), has a much smaller memory footprint, and is rock-solid stable. For example, for me to upgrade to Vista, I would need a new, comparable system ($2000+) plus upgrades on several, expensive applications ($3000+). AND, there’s the “fixing and tweaking” period — which robs time and productivity for weeks on end (or more). Not gonna happen, not for a long time.
So, for some people, there is no positive incentive to upgrade their system simply because IE6 is no longer supported.
Good thing FireFox 3+ supports W2K.
@Russell: Yes, it’s a good thing FF works on Win2k, and I recommend using that
whats wrong with ie 6 ? i am using it all the time. its fast and confortable unlike ie 7 or 8 cant even pull the BACK AND FORWARD arrow down. so stipid, locked for no reason
Excellent article. Love it. I never really thought about adding iE6 dev into my quotes but will do so from now on. Excellent thinking!