eSpace Shows IE6 the Chair
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A problem we’ve been battling over for a while now is whether or not we should discontinue supporting Internet Explorer 6 in our new web applications. Not only does IE6 prove time and again to be buggy and infamously unable to adhere to standards, but it also takes about 20% more time during the development phase of any project for special handling. That time could be much better put to use in other things like code review, testing, and bug solving.
Alas though, turning the switch on IE6 is not an easy decision to make, especially since many of our sites target audiences in the MENA region. Many people still work on bootlegged Windows machines, and choose not to update anything for obvious reasons (curse you Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage!). Because of this, and other annoying reasons, IE6 still boasts a market share of roughly 20% of all major browsers. As such, we were tempted to see what the giants in the web 2.0 arena have been doing to alleviate the problem, and we came up with the following: 37 Signals (Basecamp) had phased out completely, Digg opted to drop logged in actions, whereas others such as Facebook, GMail, LinkedIn, and YouTube all partially support the browser, with clear intentions to shun it out completely in the near future by recommending users to upgrade to another IE version or use an entirely different browser.
All that was good enough for us - as developers - but may not be too convincing for clients, whom still want to cater for those lost-cause 20%. That’s when Google sent out an email saying that it will no longer support IE6 in Google Apps and Google Docs by March 1, 2010. One of the main reasons which caught my eye (other than support for HTML5, which we had started playing with) was that they claimed they can no longer support a browser that is no longer supported by its manufacturer. Is it true that Microsoft is finally dropping IE6? A quick look revealed that IE6 support possibly will continue to April 2010 and possibly longer (until 2014) for users with extended Windows XP support.
At the end of the day, does it really matter what Microsoft’s commitment to IE6 is? We believe that it shouldn’t be. Likewise, the future of the web shouldn’t be controlled by people that don’t know how to upgrade, or businesses that think it’s too risky or too expensive. It’s up to us, and the entire web community as a whole, to encourage people to move on to what is better for them and everyone else.
So show IE6 the chair. Strap it in. Hit the switch. Don’t look back – there is a promising future for the web out there, and IE6 doesn’t have to be part of it.
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