Should Your Design Support IE 6?

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Should Your Design Support IE 6?

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I couldn't help but scoff at the status message that I read in Facebook. This was created by a friend and he said that IE 7 is one of the worst web browsers that has had to deal with as a web designer. I scoffed at it for the simple reason that I had it worse. I have to design a webpage that looked great on *drum rolls* Internet Explorer 6.

In this day and age when there are later versions of Internet Explorer (IE 9 is already in the works), it baffles me why a lot of people still use this very old browser. It was released in 2001 and yet it remains to be one of the browser's most popular versions, with a 27.4% market share in 2009. It's like a zombie that wouldn't die as people still cling to their Windows XP computers and stick with the default browser. This is especially true in the corporate world where OS changes take a very long time.

There are so many things wrong with this non-standards-compliant browser. Even Microsoft has given up on it, with its last update released way back in 2004. And its failure to support many web standards like PNG are forcing developers to waste more time by making sure that their websites are compatible with the antiquated browser.

But with that kind of market share, I seriously think it will take a long time before the need to support IE 6 will finally vanish. It's actually easier to make two designs for different browsers instead of forcing your current design to suit the old browser. If you are doing your own website, this means a lot of time lost, but if you are doing it for a client, make sure that this is well accounted for. You don't want to squeeze this into your budget as IE 6 is a non-compliant browser in the first place.

Anyway, most of the time business users are the ones still fueling IE 6 so I suppose when these corporations start upgrading their operating systems, we can see the zombie browser gone as well.

You can talk about... Should Your Design Support IE 6?

Tags: • developers • microsoft • standards • design • operating systems • web standards • windows xp • market share • web designer • worst web browsers • seo • internet explorer •

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