I Killed IE6 And Below
Tagged with: browser, Design, ie, ie6
Yeah, the title is true and yeah, the above image is what it looks like - I stopped my site from working properly in IE6 & earlier. Want to know why? Read on…
Well, I was fiddling about this morning, wondering what to do about discrepancies in the appearance of my site across different browsers. There were a couple of minor things I had missed that caused a small problem in Safari but that was quickly fixed. IE7 had my footer half way up the page which was actually my fault due to misplacing a closing tag from an above element. Again, that was soon fixed.
All was looking OK in modern browsers…then came IE6. I knew from an early stage developing this theme that I would have to do something about the lack of support for transparent PNG’s and there were a couple of things I was considering. I could have used one of the techniques to get IE6 to allow the transparency, such as the ‘AlphaImageLoader’ filter but the thing is, I didn’t really want to.
It’s not that I was being deliberately mean or anything, I thought of it more as a gentle nudge in the right direction. I made the decision to display a custom page just for users of IE6 & earlier. So, I created a new image which was added to my header, set it to invisible in my main stylesheets and made a specific one for older browsers, in which other elements were hidden - leaving only my message to those unaware or unwilling to upgrade. I’m not telling you that you can no longer support these browsers, I have no place to. But, I simply made the decision for myself. Upgrades are free, quick and easy - there’s no reason not to.
Those visitors may not care, after all, if they don’t want to upgrade I’m sure they’re not going to just to view my personal blog. But maybe if this was happening on larger sites, they would have no choice and we could all finally completely move from IE6. The majority of people that are likely to come across my site and actually want to read it are most probably going to be in this industry anyway and they should know better, so I hope there aren’t many visitors of mine out there using IE6 anyway! I tested using Multiple IE on Windows XP, all seems to be working correctly, please feel free to check it out and let me know of any problems.
As with the rest of the site, I am still adding the final touches and should be finished over the next couple of days. The preview image at the top links to a full screenshot if you want to see it in full glory. Also, feel free to join in and give those visitors a special message of your own!
Thats really funny. One of the guys at my agency and I were starting a “Kill IE6″ coalition. The whole purpose is to speed the advent of a non-IE6 world. It was a site, that would be dedicated to killing IE6. We would try to get as many designers as possible to do what you have done to their own sites, plus perhaps add links to Opera or FF, even at least the IE7 upgrade page on each site they build down in the footer somewhere. That isn’t to say that we should make our client’s sites non-ie6 friendly, but we should put links to real browsers.
Thanks for stopping by. That sounds like a plan to me! My aim of doing this was purely personal and I wouldn’t tell a client that I was making their site non-IE6 capable either, I just think that it’s about time we moved on - IE7 has been out for a while and is easily available with a simple update, IE8 is on the way with a beta already available yet still, numerous people stick with IE6 which just makes no sense.