Do you plan to support IE 6 on your future project

Question

I'm trying to make a pitch to my boss to drop support for IE 6. I find that a disproportionate amount of time is spent on trying to make the css IE 6 compatible and that could be spend on making new features or improving usability etc.

Do you plan to do so on your future projects and if so how did you convince others to support only newer browsers?

Answer 1

The rule for talking to business people is always: sell your idea in terms of profit. In this case, how much money do you make off of customers using IE6, and how much money does it cost you to support IE6? In many cases you're losing money by supporting IE6. In other cases, you are making money, but if you forced your user base to switch to IE7+ or a real browser, some of your users would leave but enough would stay that you would be making more money. And in some cases, you can complain about it, but the best decision is to still support IE6 because it's still the most profitable course.

Answer 2

Recently we got permission NOT to support IE6. Mostly because of IE6NoMore campaign.

I believe that it makes website only better - many people knows what kind of harm IE6 does and admires such a step.

Answer 3

http://www.ie6death.com/

I don't consider IE6 anymore.

Answer 4

No. I would rather spend years implementing my own rendering engine and creating my own webbrowser than have to worry about IE 6 again.

Answer 5

Get your hands on some user statistics for each individual website you're going to work on. Get the browser usage statistics from the past year, not more, no less. If there is still a significant amount of IE6 users (I personally go for more than 5%) it is probably worth supporting IE6.

If it's less than whatever you deem a reasonable percentage of users, so in my example: less than 5%, you could simply use this fact to try and convince your boss.. and ultimately.. your client.

Further arguments you can use are: Better use of CSS selectors, better support for PNG images without hacks and making the world a better place.

Unfortunately though, IE6 is here to stay.. not because the users are nefarious bastards, but simply because some companies take way too much time to upgrade their software.

Answer 6

Rant

Yes, I do, because I use IE6 (edit: I use it in lieu of other IE's, I browse exclusively with firefox and opera, but sometimes I need IE). I'm a bit tired of people complaining about it; I mean welcome to the world of development.

And to be perfectly honest, a lot of people blame their own incompetency at developing in CSS and JavaScript, and lack of research into what they are seeing, and so on on IE, when they are at fault, for not following proper development processes.

There are some general bugs that need to be worked around, but in general the so-called 'problem' is very over-blown.

Simple Answer

Yes I do support it, and I find it pretty easy, using frameworks to help me (jQuery, reset css, etc, simple downgrading of functionality).