Internet Explorer 6? Never Heard of It
The day of reckoning has come for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6. More importantly, however, the time has come for all of us as a species from web designers and developers to janitors and zoologists to forget that it ever existed.
It’s been at least a couple years now that I have had discussions (sometimes heated) with fellow designers about the choice of giving attention to this dilapidated dinosaur of a web browser. Ultimately, their argument always boiled down to the fact that it held a majority of the market share when it came to web browsers and that it wouldn’t be good business practice to alienate the majority of users because they were naive enough to still being using a browser from 2001. Well, enough time has passed now and we as developers have been pandering to this ignorant class for too long. According to recent statistics by the W3Schools website IE6 has dropped to the number 2 spot (finally!) and it’s my opinion that this is evidence enough to completely abandon this browser once and for all.
IE6 has been so ingrained in our product development cycle that we have come to accept the fact that tweaking and/or troubleshooting for IE6 is just a given, standard part of our development process. This needs to stop. Countless companies are wasting millions if not billions of man-hour dollars on having their developers tweak insignificant details in their pages to appease the lazy part of our population that are too aloof or too ignorant to figure out what that yellow, upgrade shield is that keeps popping up in their taskbar day after day. The money these companies claim that they would miss by not polishing their websites for IE6 they would, at the very least, make back in the form increased product development times. This is only my theory, but I have a hunch I’m right.
Just think of it. No more IE6 specific style sheets. No more scrabbling to find an old, yellowed Windows PC to check whether your grandma will be able to see the 10 pixels of padding that you placed in the right rail. No more! None of that. From now on just one standards-complaint stylesheet that all modern web browsers can decipher without hacks or workarounds.
With the upcoming release of Windows 7 we will be 2 operating systems (and 8 years) away from Windows XP, which gave us the thorn-in-the-side that is IE6. Taking into account the fact that almost any system bought today (on the PC side) comes pre-loaded with Windows Vista (and IE7) we have no reason to keep up with this tradition. With the release of Windows 7 in the fall (and the expected push to upgrade to IE8) again we have no reason to be hanging on to this false notion that not bending over to IE6 will somehow lose us valuable customers. Maybe this was true 3-5 years ago, but times are changed and we have no excuse to even remember that IE6 ever existed. Let’s just think of it as that old girlfriend we kept around too long because we just didn’t want to be alone. Well, there’s a new girl in our contact list now and she’s way sexier, smarter, more productive, and (gasp!) more profitable than that bitch ever was. It’s time to let her go and forget she ever existed.
So, here’s my main reasons and benefits of ridding our brains of this insidious piece of software:
1. Noticably increased product development times. When developers can focus on refining their code to W3C standards and not have to worry about third-party support of IE6 we can all be focused on striving to develop standards-complaint, accessible, and efficient code.
2. (Say it with me designers) Full, and I mean full(!), PNG support. The embrace of full PNG support without the looming threat of repercusions of IE6 is any designers wet dream. Well, wake up designers. It’s time to party!
3. Further embrace of innovative, creative designs and layouts allowed by the CSS 3 standards: multi-column layouts, freedom of font choice, and rounded corners, just to name a few.
So, in short, the electronic and web development life-cycle is a fickle mistress. This day in age technology advances rapidly and I think we as a whole have pandered too long to this obsolescent piece of crapware. Never again do I want to hear: “Ya, but that won’t look right in IE6″. IE6? Never heard of it.
I must admit, I gave up IE 6 compliance about a year ago. People should be ready for change. (You can hear the old people griping about how their bunny ear antennas have already gone the way of the dinosaurs. I love the new digital signal, and the free HD channels.)
I’m finding the biggest new headache for designers and developers is the competition. When such widely-used, and heavily-budgeted web applications include Facebook, freelance web designers must cringe when their clients expect the norm to compete with a multi-million dollar web budgets.
In this way, I find that freelancers and small studio firms are in great danger of becoming weakened by the big box guys, like Digg and Facebook. Many firms seem to already be dishing out out-dated technologies, and in my experience, have been lying about that fact.
Granted, many projects, including some I’ve worked on, don’t have the resources to obtain the newest and greatest web technologies, but still deserve a place in the web for whatever meager budget they can muster. Unfortunately, lowly freelancers as myself are put in a position to keep educating our clients on the difference between cubic zirconium and diamonds, as it pertains to web technologies. For the most part, it can make us feel like lazy cheap skates, unable to provide our clients what they really want.
This “gap” is what keeps me up at night these days, and makes me realize that my place in the web world is quickly fading.
My few years in the small to medium-sized design studios really did bring your points to light. The “lay-person” really doesn’t understand what time, effort, talent and knowledge it takes to develop a website. They view a website as something childish and therefore something to not take seriously. They think, “Oooh, give me this and that, oh and that, too” , without knowing what all goes into creating such features. They think you should be able to do it all, fast and cheaply. I don’t know what the answer is for these smaller firms other than to be honest about what they can deliver. Honestly, I haven’t thought about it too much myself.
I can say that it does seem with the exponential growth of different back ends, API’s, programming languages (and their complexity), as a web designer you need other people who know that stuff in order to deliver a quality product. Web designers are just that: designers, not developers. Going solo these days is increasing difficult unless you have fairly “undemanding” clients.
To build a house you need all kinds of expertise: architects, plumbers, construction workers, electricians, etc. All play their part. There isn’t one guy who can do it all, even a small house. Websites should be seen as the same.
I’ve been hiring freelance developers to supplement my projects. Seems to help, but drains the budget awfully quick.