How to kill legacy IE versions

What and where webmasters can help

[swa66]

With ongoing moves by larger companies to kill IE6 (I got today quite a few emails from Google announcing they're stopping IE6 support March 1st 2010 on Google Apps), I tried to compile a bit what we webmasters can do to help kill the browser that's holding back the web nowadays.

There are a few problems with this.

• Some can't upgrade their internal apps, but that's no excuse to not install a real browser and keep IE6 as an alternate browser for the legacy applications that need it due to shortsighted decisions from the past
  
• We should want to avoid them upgrading to subsequent legacy versions of IE as once our plan succeeds IE7 will become the new IE6 (and IE8 is no better with a utter disregard for CSS3)
  
• IE6 is still in use, depending on your demographic audience, so some might want to hold back, your competitor might want to catch the traffic you chose to drive away
  
• Some feel they cannot upgrade to more recent versions of IE (still it will not stop them from finding an alternate browser)
  

Still those who want to proceed should know the different options they have.

1. Stop letting legacy browsers let you stop from innovating your design, use conditional comments to offer a degraded but pleasurable variant to your visitors. This will not help all that much, but it will help those who finally convert be evangelists to their fellow hold-outs. This is the one thing every webmaster ca participate in as log as a different experience for IE6 is acceptable.
   
2. Tempt and/or warn IE6 users their browser really needs an upgrade, while keepig a functional site for IE6 users. This is what Google is claiming to be going to deployed real soon now. If you seek code to do this, ie6nomore has some code for you to cut and paste: [ie6nomore.com...] . note that the code might need an upgrade for FF3.6 and you might want to ease up on promoting the CSS3 defective IE8.
   
3. Stop testing in IE6, without knowing how it will react. This will more and more become the default for many new webmasters who just won't have (legal and easy) access to IE6 anymore (just like many -myself included- lost access to IE5 today). The unknown bit is a bit scary as you have no idea just how bad the user experience is.
   
4. Hand IE6 the content unstyled. Just the plain HTML content, no CSS. This can be done in a number of ways, e.g. through browser sniffing. This will dramatically reduce the user experience, but might still be much preferable to just not testing your designs anymore in IE6.
   
5. Block IE6 users to your site, giving them a messages as to why. The most draconian measure. This is actually easily achieved with just a conditional comment and some CSS (how: in a IE6 conditional comment: put the refusal to serve IE6 message on a background image, load that onto the body and set all children of body to display:none (using the right amount specificity as needed) )
   

I've seen all of these approaches out there. Most on just a very few sites that could be called somewhat anti-microsoft, but esp. the first method is often and widely used. With the second method gaining acceptance, we could hope for an acceleration ad an increase in pressure on those IE6 hold-outs.

Obviously each of these has it's advantages and drawbacks, and the method should be chosen in a best match with the site, the visitor mix and the amount of blocking you want to perform.

Got any more methods ?

[birdbrain]

Hi there swa66,

method 4 does not really require any "browser sniffing".

This conditional comment...

<!--[if !IE 6]><!-->
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/page.css">
<!--<![endif]-->

...should, hopefully, be sufficient. ;)

birdbrain

[bzgzd]

How to kill IE 6? :-)

<!--[if IE 6]>
<style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input></table>
<![endif]-->

or

<!--[if IE 6]>
<script>for (x in document.write) document.write(x);</script>
<![endif]-->

[KenB]

@bzgzd,

You are one evil webmaster. ;)

[Solution1]

Dean Edwards' IE7 javascript file makes it possible to ignore IE6 while developing, while your pages are still viewable by IE6 users. It modifies the IE6's CSS behavior to W3C standards. You just include it in your webpages with conditional comments:

<!-- compliance patch for microsoft browsers -->
<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<script src="/ie7/ie7-standard-p.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<![endif]-->

IE7 provides Microsoft Internet Explorer with support for W3C standard CSS and HTML:

* supports the following CSS selectors:
o namespace|selector
o parent > child
o adjacent + sibling
o adjacent ~ sibling
o [attr], [attr="value"], [attr~="value"] etc
o .multiple.classes (fixes bug)
o :hover, :active, :focus (for all elements)
o :first-child, :last-child, only-child, nth-child, nth-last-child
o :check, :disabled, :enabled
o :root, :empty, :contains(), :not()
o :before/:after/content:
o :lang()

* works with both HTML and XML documents
* supports imported style sheets
* preserves the cascade of the style sheet
* does not alter the document structure
* does not repeatedly query the DOM tree using JavaScript
* uses pure CSS to enforce style sheet rules
* supports the W3C box model in both standards and quirks mode
* supports fixed positioning (flicker free)
* supports overflow:visible
* supports min/max-width/height
* fixes broken (X)HTML elements (abbr, object)
* standardies forms behavior
* supports PNG alpha transparency
* lightweight script (22K)
* completely modular (add/remove fixes)
* works for Microsoft Internet Explorer 5+ (Windows only)

[tangor]

There should be no hurry to kill IE6. It will die a natural death as most systems running it will soon expire... the machines can't last much longer even if well constructed. The MTBF rate will kick in and the agencies (mostly government) will have to upgrade their hardware and that older version of IE (in most cases) will not run on it. We're still stuck with the imperfections of IE x.x accurately running W3C standards but we won't have to worry about that albatross known as IE6. Reminds of me Don Quixote... there are some windmills worth tilting... killing IE6 is not one of those.

[bzgzd]

@bzgzd,
You are one evil webmaster. ;)

KenB, interesting is that after this post your posts count is 666 :-)

[KenB]

@bzgzd,
You are one evil webmaster. ;)

KenB, interesting is that after this post your posts count is 666 :-)

Oh, now that is really freaky!