There is a current trend on the Internet I wish to talk about. Web sites and discussion groups saying “Internet Explorer 6 Must Die” are springing up. One tactic appears to be forcing the user to update from Internet Explorer 6 otherwise they won’t be able to view that particular web site properly.
I can name two things that get me angry. One is having to include code specifically for a web site to look good in Internet Explorer 6. The other is reading various web sites forcing people to dump Internet Explorer 6.
“But wait a minute”, you might ask, “don’t you hate Internet Explorer 6?”. Yes I do hate Internet Explorer 6 but to quote an old saying “two wrongs don’t make a right”.
One of the rules I work towards is making web sites work in different web browsers. The measure of which web browsers to measure this by is the reported usage for each web browser. Obviously I’m not going to bother testing for a web browser that either isn’t being used anymore or has dropped so far in the usage figures that it’s not worth worrying about.
The simple fact is Internet Explorer 6 is still being used by a lot of people. One web site currently puts that figure at just under 25%1 of the World’s web browsing population. That figure is falling every every month but ever so slowly.
When you try to force people to change web browsers just to see your web site I can almost guarantee you’ll lose a lot of those people. Many people either just wont bother or are simply not in a position to upgrade for various reasons. They might not know how to upgrade or they might be working for an organisation that still uses Internet Explorer 6. I could go on but the end result is still the same. If your web site is being used for business then you will lose customers if you adopt this tactic.
My advice is to keep letting users of Internet Explorer 6 view your web site as it should be viewed. This means testing your web site in Internet Explorer 6 as well as the others. At the current rate of decline of usage of Internet Explorer 6 I recommend to keep this policy until 2011.
1Net Applications, Browser Version Market Share, September 2009, viewed 22 October 2009,
<http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=128>.
