LOGICal eMOTIONs

Just take a stand.

// June 7th, 2009 // Blog & Tech Items

It isn’t every day you get to take a stand against something. Usually you can insist or persuade the viewpoints or actions of others, yet very rarely do you actually get to tell someone – full stop – that, no, this isn’t going to happen. So what the hell am I talking about, right?

Well, to kick off the new blogging challenges here on LE, I decided to update and overhaul the site template. It isn’t nearly as customized as the old one (props to Brian Gardener & Douglas Karr) yet, but with a few tweaks and modifications here and there it’s all rather refreshing. After spending a few hours hacking away (it’s what I do), everything for the most part is looking as it should and nothing is screwing up in most browsers – EXCEPT – Internet Explorer 6… and I don’t even care.

I do believe that enough is enough, and IE6 will not be supported by this blog. Period.

At work we support just about every browser imaginable and that unfortunately includes IE6. Across the sites, IE6 traffic accounts for 15%, and when you’re dealing with sites that have significant traffic, we are talking an insane number of unique visitors that are using this outdated software. Sure, the common argument is that “my company requires that I use IE6″, but when you think about it is just plain sad. You’re telling me that the business you work for is knowingly using outdated software that is buggy and full of security issues that have never been patched? Wow. The typical answer is, “yes, but some of the business stuff we use will only work on IE6″ which is even more scarry. This means that even older/outdated software is holding companies hostage and forcing them to use a browser that is a security risk, thus opening them up to just about anything imaginable.

The amount of time spent trying to make sites IE6 compliant for a small percentage of users is incredible, and the fact that this MINORITY is still able to dictate to the web world that sites must be compliant to their outdated needs is truly insane. I looked at the current template here in IE6 once I was essentially finished, and wow, it is not pretty. So should I then spend at least another 2h tweaking and fixing something for a small number of users? Well the nice part of me says that I should try and give everyone the same experience when visiting, whereas the realistic part of me says that I should not support these people, yet provide alternatives.

To just stop supporting something is a bit of a jerk move, so what can be done to helpfully guide those users to the alternatives?

• provide a notice when someone arrives using IE6 that their software is outdated, and that they should upgrade immediately. Provide the link to the most current version of IE, and also provide links to alternative browsers
• promote alternative browsers that can be installed on the same system as IE6 which would allow the (business) user to use IE6 for certain business applications, and a real browser for 99.9% of everything else
• promote the use of RSS feeds for sites. Still want to use IE6 but hate the look of the site? Great, subscribe to the RSS feed so that you can get immediate content without the need to visit the site!

Taking a stand always seems so harsh, yet it is a great way to put an end to something (or start something new), and the people it affects are forced to actually deal with it.

So, for this blog, sorry, we don’t support Internet Explorer 6 or earlier.

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