Any web developer will tell you that Internet Explorer 6 is a pain. Mainly because it doesn’t conform to CSS standards and will turn a nice design into a maligned mess, so it’s good practice to program a second style specifically for these visitors. More standards compliant browsers have come along like Firefox and even IE7, but there are still people using IE6; too many for the web dev community to ignore. 2 forces exist that may cause the irksome browser to finally have it’s day:
- Don’t use IE6 campaigns
- Windows 7
Some sites show IE6 users a suggestion that they upgrade to a standards compliant browser for a better experience, some sites stip all CSS style from the site for visitors using IE6, they see only the site’s link structure. Cool concept but it’s not going to exterminate IE6 on a grand scale. Any serious site has to support the browser that so many IT departments have locked their colleagues into for securty and standardization reasons. Then today, Google fires up a don’t use IE6 campaign for users of Gmail, Google’s highly trafficked web-based email service. This comes in the form of a notice to IE6 users that they can have faster email with IE7. A mainstream player saying “hey, this browser is outdated, why are you using it?” is a huge step forward for web standards based design, and should get people who want faster email to upgrade their browser. By this time next year IT departments worldwide will have given Windows 7 the green light to deploy in their corporations and more old home PCs will be replaced with Win7 or Mac netbooks, ultraportables and a variety of smartphone operating systems. Designing and programming for IE6 will be a headache of the past, though we may be too busy coping with an even more splintered web audience to notice, reminiscing about the days we only had to write 2 stylesheets.
