Do you still design/develop for IE6?

[terrybarnes]

I'm seriously considering to stop thinking about IE6 when designing and developing websites. It must take up an extra 25% of development time to get it all looking right in IE6 and with the number of users dwindling, down to 14% in May '09 I'm wondering if the time is right to stop.

I was looking to see when IE7 was released and it turns out it was in October '06 which is over 2.5 years ago! I use a Mac but I just don't know why people would still be using IE6 and not having upgraded by now... Perhaps PC Users can give me an insight into this.

I've be interested to know how many of you still develop for IE6.

[incrediBILL]

I haven't worried about it for a couple of years, IE7 and FF2 are my baseline.

[swa66]

IE6 is still quite popular in businesses, often they had too much intranet stuff developed for IE6 that wasn't even compatible with IE7, or they just never got around to test it in IE7 and hence they kept the block on IE7 in place.

For me: IE6 on my biggest site is still above 15% of total visitors for the ongoing month. (Which is down considerably from a 25% over 2008, but not enough to fully ignore it)

With CSS having that many bugs in IE6, ignoring it means chasing away those visitors.

My approach to spend less time on IE6: do it last (by then you fixed IE7 and know half of what it needs already), use conditional comments as to not interfere with other browsers (and have to test your changed there), and *ignore* why IE does the wrong thing, just make it look ok and move on.

But I can't wait for the IE6 usage to drop further.

[incrediBILL]

Don't let bogus IE6 user agents like this keep you building for IE6:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)"

That UA alone is in about 2% of my traffic and it's completely bogus.

Those should all be filtered out, and then you would find it's probably a lot lower than you suspect.

[tangor]

Quick answer: No.

Extended answer: The OS on elder systems which came with that version are due to die (and most already have). And in the extant look at the future of the web these versions of IE can't deliver which will spike some new computer sales in the future. Forget IE6. MS is also actively attempting (on systems which can accept) updates to IE8. Code to that. Just my thoughts.

[encyclo]

At work I use IE6, and so does everyone else in my sector (2000+ people). So do many other corporate environments with significant investments in intranet and local web-based applications. We will not be upgrading until the switch to Windows 7, and it is unlikely at the moment that the XP machines will get upgraded at all until replacement.

You have got to look at your audience and cater to their needs. Don't get hung up on percentages, look at raw visitor numbers - do you want to turn these people away?

Supporting IE6 is far easier than catering for the wide divergences in earlier browser versions (remember IE4 versus NN3/NN4 anyone?) On one site with a definite non-corporate audience I'm down to 6% IE6 usage - but why turn away those users?

Finally, browser support is a self-fulfilling prophesy - if you don't support a particular browser and your site is broken for those users, then obviously they won't hang around because they can't use your site. But don't then look at your stats and justify your stance by saying that no-one using that browser visits your site any more! :)

(OT: congratulations to tangor on reaching 1000 posts!)

[terrybarnes]

All great replies so far and very good point (swa66 and encyclo) regarding the corporate environment. I think before designing/developing any website in the future I'll see if the company has any stats for their site visitors and what they use.

I think, if it's more of a home environment then I'll be developing with IE7 as the base level.

[piatkow]

I wonder if encyclo works on another floor of my building?
Same here, user numbers in six figures, all IE6. These is a major corporate so if you are designing for B2B you will really shoot yourself in the foot by ignoring 6.

[choster]

We're still getting over 30% of visitors on IE6 on most of our sites. Relatively few people in corporate environments are permitted to install or upgrade software on their machines, and according to Forrester 60% of surveyed businesses were still on IE6 in the 2nd quarter of 2009.

[blogs.zdnet.com...]
[forrester.com...]

[rocknbil]

Coincidentally, this morning . . . [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: encyclo at 5:30 pm (utc) on June 18, 2009]
[edit reason] updated link to moved thread [/edit]

[smallcompany]

I look into GA every some time. For example, I see 77% being IE, of which 15% is IE6. That's still over 10% total. Is it worth? Sure, based on that number.
In addition, I personally keep IE6 on my machine as I think that if it works in IE6, it should work in 7 and 8. As 6 numbers drop down, I'll move to 7.

[swa66]

I think that if it works in IE6, it should work in 7 and 8.

You might be in for a surprise.

IE8 is utterly different from IE6, it's day and night almost.
IE7 has it's own set of bugs too (e.g. disappearing backgrounds) that IE6 never had.