In my last post I ranted somewhat about the practice of forcing people to ditch Internet explorer 6 just so they could see certain web sites. I’m not going back on my position of disagreeing with this trend.

I do however wish that Internet Explorer 6 would just go away. I still believe I need to make sure my web sites work OK in Internet Explorer 6 but the time has come to let go of “being perfect” in that web browser.

I’m picking up on a general mood that Internet Explorer 6 causes too much work and frustration to spend too much time on. By having a web site “look good” in this web browser it doesn’t necessarily mean it should look exactly the same as it does in other web browsers.

I guess this is the classic case of that balancing act. I need to decide what’s important and what I can let go of. With this web browser what’s important is to keep the necessary functionality of a web site and to make sure the layouts don’t look noticeably broken in any way. I need the web sites to look good enough so that a user of this web browser can still view the web site in a meaningful way.

What I need to let go of is the need to spend an extra few hours to make sure things look “perfect” in this web browser. The fact is this web browser is on a downward curve to relative oblivion in terms of usage. It may take over 12 months for this to happen but the downward path keeps being maintained every month.

Interestingly Internet Explorer 7 seems to be on a quicker path to oblivion. Usage of Internet Explorer 8 is skyrocketing. I’m putting that down to the original rise of Internet Explorer 7 being largely due to people who are technically savvy so those people would naturally be tempted to try the next thing that comes along.

Nevertheless at this point in time I’m having to cater for 3 versions of Internet Explorer (as well as the other web browsers) and it’s all I can do to stop myself from pulling my hair out. That’s the real reason for my “balancing act” with Internet Explorer 6. While I want my web sites to work OK in that web browser in the end the extra work needed for “perfectionism” in Internet Explorer 6 just isn’t worth the hassle.