A while ago, I made a decision to block users of Internet Explorer 6 and below. For some time after that I was enjoying being part of a group of others that had also made the same decision but that only lasted so long and then reality kicked in. People were still visiting or trying to visit my site in IE6 and I’ve got a family to feed. Having my site be accessible to all potential clients was more important than being impressed with myself for blocking them out. So I changed and guess what?
It actually turned out to be less work supporting the browser than it was blocking it. In order to block the visitors by serving them a custom page, I had to hide all of the standard content through CSS and then display some other content that was hidden to those with more modern browsers. Supporting it only needed a couple of image alterations. So besides wanting to maximize business and increase potential sales, it was actually easier and made more sense to me.
Whilst I have started supporting it again, I’m not making a major effort to ensure pixel perfection. I don’t mind if things don’t look exactly the same or some of the extra functionality is missing. As long as the site is functional on a basic level, that’s enough for me and those using a modern browser will benefit from extras while the others won’t know any different.
My stats have recorded a decent decrease in IE6 usage but the fact that it is still being used at all is enough of a reason for me to accommodate it as I’m not in any position to turn down potential clients by having my site be inaccessible to them. If I was a lot higher up that web celeb ladder, maybe I could be a bit more selective and could afford to not have those clients but I’m not and I can’t so it was a business decision before anything else.
Even though I have started supporting it after being pro-ban, I’m not going to urge others to do the same. It’s a personal decision in a lot of cases and if you don’t want to support it then don’t. I would still rather not have to deal with it but I think IE6 will still be around for a while yet and for me at least, that means supporting it if only on some basic level. Business is business as they say after all.
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I think it makes sense for the purpose of your site to continue supporting these users. I gave up on IE6 for my personal site, but it’s a hobby site. I have a full time day job which I love and don’t have plans on ditching anytime soon. For your audience and purpose, it makes sense to me.
Yeah, there was nothing to be gained financially from blocking those users and so it only made sense. If this was just a hobby site too, I would have probably carried on not supporting it too. A lot of my visitors are logically interested in the web and so tend to have more modern browsers but if there’s even just a slight chance that a potential client could come across the site and be blocked then that’s something that I had to address.
I don’t block IE6 users (22% of my traffic this month is from IE6), but I do have the “Save the Developers” bit on my site to inform users that there are better browsers out there.