No more support for < IE6

Hooray!

[MatthewHSE]

I just checked browser stats for my main site. It's been quite awhile since I checked last, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

Although my site works just fine in IE 5 and 5.5, those browsers account for less than 1% of my total visitors.

IE6 accounts for 21%, and IE7 is a whopping 55% of the total, making up about 71% of my IE users.

In other words, my job just got a lot easier and more fun. I'm no longer going to worry about supporting IE 5.5 and lower, and I'm going to start using some more advanced stuff that works in IE7 as long as it degrades decently for IE6.

Looks like

* html {}

just went out the window for me! :)

[encyclo]

Welcome to the future ;) I abandoned IE5.x a long time ago, but now in 2008 there is virtually no real IE5 user agents around, apart from a few rogue bots with fake user agents. Next step, dumping IE6 support... which should be helped by the forced upgrade to IE7.

[simonuk]

It's weird. IE5 hasn't accounted for more than 0.2 to 1% for a long time but I still test in IE5 just to make sure :)

Guess it's just habit.

[Robert Charlton]

Just reviewed browser stats on an ecommerce client site. Thus far for this month, IE6 is used by 30% of visitors, and has been used for 19% of conversions. Too large to ignore.

[DrDoc]

IE6, yes ... but no one uses IE5.x or older

I, too, have completely dropped support for them a long time ago.

[fside]

IE 5 is done. But maybe that's irrelevant (see below). If only folks had realized the power of IE 5.5 in particular . . . IE 7 wasn't even announced until all that long ago, and now it's already IE 8 time. Another browser variation, with more 'sniffing' and 'anti-sniffing', or whatever required. IE 6 had been around during the 'lull'. Now perhaps we're back to browser competition. Or consider it this way. A fair number of people worry about Safari and Opera. But Opera's made no headway, for some reason. It's a pretty good browser. And no on uses it. Firefox has ripped away M$ once 90%+ domination. But people still write for Opera, which probably is about the same range as IE 5 and 5.5. So if for Opera, why not IE 5.5, at least?

Of course, one reason for why Opera - it can do so much that 5.5 simply can't. Why Opera? - because the programmer likes it.

[vincevincevince]

I too am waiting to drop IE6. I wish they'd done some proper patching of it at least; but in the current state it remains too bad to use. A thorn in my side at every turn.

As for opera's limited market share vs. firefox - it's not open source even if you aren't charged for it.

[jelle76]

Hey all,

Was wondering.. How do you test for different versions of IE? I have tried to get IE6 and IE7 next to each other, but failed. (The resulting upgrade was undone, as I think IE7 is more like FF than IE6). I now ask my gf to create a screenshot of news sites every once in a while during development, which is far from ideal...

IE5 went out loooong ago; together with 540px resolution support, I think :D

J.

[tedster]

IE6 and IE7 on one computer [webmasterworld.com]

[jelle76]

purrrr-fect; (The link, the solution.. I'll have to see)