October 18, 200916 yr Let's all be honest here and say that IE sucks royally... How long will it take for Microsoft to realize that they should just give up?
October 18, 200916 yr Yep, IE sucks royally. Nope, IE will never go away for as long as Microsoft have the same market presence they have now. Even if laws prevent them from loading the IE browser on the Windows OS pre-sale, simply its existence has grown so large that I don't believe it will ever go away. Or... the real surprising fact... IE might actually get a hell of a lot better, good enough to rival Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and others. But I think that will be a loooooong time away.
October 19, 200916 yr I heard a rumour a while back that IE9 will be the last Microsoft browser with the Internet Explorer name on it, they currently have a team working on a new rendering engine which would have a browser on top branded under a new name. As a bit of a newbie, what are the main issues with IE? with IE8, I have none all my websites work fine and I never have any issues, with IE7, I sometimes have a few issues but no more than I do with Firefox 2, with IE6 on the other hand, its 8 years old and was built by a development team that thought they could direct the future of the web and cared nothing for web standards... Edited October 19, 200916 yr by gav
October 19, 200916 yr I mostly use IE, hehehehe.. Thats at work though, where are target audience is more than 90% IE users, and thus us developing and testing in that. obviously we do test in other browsers.
October 19, 200916 yr I mostly use IE, hehehehe.. Thats at work though, where are target audience is more than 90% IE users, and thus us developing and testing in that. obviously we do test in other browsers. IE which?!
October 19, 200916 yr 7 and 8. Due to 99% of the company using a delivered desktop solution to work, and the company standard being IE. nothing we can do but use it.
October 19, 200916 yr being a total newbie to web design, i didn't actually realise there were other browsers until i started reading more books!!
October 19, 200916 yr We recently began charging clients extra if they want their site optimized for a nearly 10-year-old browser. I explain the problems (show them a couple examples) and encourage them to accept that 6-10% of visitors will not see their site as we design it. So far only one (out of 60 or so) have asked that we do IE6 hacks and if she hadn't been a long-term existing client I would have declined the job. About 20% asked that we add a blurb to the site saying it was not optimized for IE6 and provide a link to upgrade. The problem is that if we (designers) continue to fix the-crap-that-is-IE6 the folks using the-crap-that-is-IE6 won't know their browser died 5 years ago and no one mourned. And if the sites they visit look good why should they upgrade? Talk to your clients, explain the issues, tell them you have to charge more for IE6 hacks and let them decide. A 15% up-charge usually helps change their minds. And don't worry about losing a client: it's probably a client you don't really want anyway (the stupid kind).
October 23, 200916 yr +1 reputation Craig! I should take on the same idea. I usually encourage clients to make use of this amazingness http://ie6update.com/ I use IE6 as my main browser. This way I don't have to deal with the annoyance of 'tabbed browsing'. It also displays each internet window in a nice stack on my toolbar. On top of that, it renders pages better than the modern browsers. You don't have to deal with the box model bug of 5.5 either, or annoying "add-ons" like firefox has. On top of that, no built in pop up blocker, so you can enjoy browsing the way you're supposed to and the websites can make their money from popup ads.
October 23, 200916 yr Yeah for ie6 as standard i'm going to start including a very basic style sheet, and an upgrade notice at the top. Unless ie6 is a big requirement (like an intranet that's accessed only via ie6 )
October 23, 200916 yr Yeah for ie6 as standard i'm going to start including a very basic style sheet, and an upgrade notice at the top. Unless ie6 is a big requirement (like an intranet that's accessed only via ie6 ) Yeah I'm currently working on an intranet right now, and with a lot of fieldsets, DD's, and DT's that started getting pretty complex styling. It was taking me hours to work out on IE6, and there was a specific display inline bug where the following DT wouldn't take the previous DD with an auto height into consideration, so on IE6 it looked all crunched together. The entire hospital that the client works at was using IE6. It took us a while, but luckily we convinced their tech department to upgrade. Isn't it a tech department's duty to keep software up to date?
October 23, 200916 yr Yeah I'm currently working on an intranet right now, and with a lot of fieldsets, DD's, and DT's that started getting pretty complex styling. It was taking me hours to work out on IE6, and there was a specific display inline bug where the following DT wouldn't take the previous DD with an auto height into consideration, so on IE6 it looked all crunched together. The entire hospital that the client works at was using IE6. It took us a while, but luckily we convinced their tech department to upgrade. Isn't it a tech department's duty to keep software up to date? Boils down to cost, many large institution run on w2k, which can't physically support higher than ie6. Upgrading several hundred pc's with new operating systems and licenses soon rolls over into tens of thousands, if not more. Try telling shareholders you want to steal some of their profit for something they'll never see the point of.
October 23, 200916 yr Boils down to cost, many large institution run on w2k, which can't physically support higher than ie6. Upgrading several hundred pc's with new operating systems and licenses soon rolls over into tens of thousands, if not more. Try telling shareholders you want to steal some of their profit for something they'll never see the point of. Yeah you raise a good point, that would get pretty costly! It would involve letting the shareholders know that the computers the company is using operating systems that's a decade old, and that hopefully the upgrade can increase productivity. In my scenario, they were on XP and could have upgraded at any point, but it had to take some talking before they agreed!
October 23, 200916 yr Yeah you raise a good point, that would get pretty costly! It would involve letting the shareholders know that the computers the company is using operating systems that's a decade old, and that hopefully the upgrade can increase productivity. In my scenario, they were on XP and could have upgraded at any point, but it had to take some talking before they agreed! Official Extended support for w2k ends in july 2010, so hopefully that will force many places to upgraded to a more recent system, and thus should help kill off a major chunk of the remaining IE6 users.
November 3, 200916 yr Official Extended support for w2k ends in july 2010, so hopefully that will force many places to upgraded to a more recent system, and thus should help kill off a major chunk of the remaining IE6 users. If Vista hadn't been such a screaming POS, we would already be done with W2K...now they're banking on 7. My testing shows it to be better than Vista, but the bar is set pretty low. It's not hard to outrun a quadruple-amputee. And Robin: great post! I use IE6 as my main browser. This way I don't have to deal with the annoyance of 'tabbed browsing'. It also displays each internet window in a nice stack on my toolbar. On top of that, it renders pages better than the modern browsers. You don't have to deal with the box model bug of 5.5 either, or annoying "add-ons" like firefox has. On top of that, no built in pop up blocker, so you can enjoy browsing the way you're supposed to and the websites can make their money from popup ads.
November 6, 200916 yr I have to use IE6 in work, god knows why because all new machines now run on XP. Someone told me that there were compatability issues with other software we use, god knows how or why that causes problems. I had firefox installed, until someone I know very well was nearly sacked because of a breach of our IS policy. I read up on it ans it says you can't install any software downloaded form the internet, so I uninstalled it to be on the safe side. It's really annoying, because I need access to the internet to do parts of my job, and IE6 slows me down considertably.
November 6, 200916 yr Could you use portable software on a flash drive? Because technically you're not installing anything then *Resists the urge to use mighty boosh quotes*
November 6, 200916 yr Could you use portable software on a flash drive? Because technically you're not installing anything then Unfortunately not. Flash drives are disabled. I work at a bank, so IS policy is pretty tight. *Resists the urge to use mighty boosh quotes* Why resist? :-)
November 6, 200916 yr I work at a bank, so IS policy is pretty tight. I'm guessing there is an app that was developed when IE6 was king of the browser hill. The bank prob'ly paid a butt-ton of money to have it developed on top of IE6 'cause nobody could imagine a day when IE would not dominate, and it won't work on real browsers. This is a fairly common problem in corporations - and the reason we have to do IE tweaks for a few clients. IE6 will be long-time dying in these environments: it's like a virus in the perfect host. No one in your IS/IT department is going to suggest spending time/money to replace a piece of software no one is complaining about and as long as it works no one will complain. You might try figuring out what the software is and if it is LESS vulnerable run on a browser that supports AES256, which can't be done w/IE6. I seem to remember you need FF3 to get AES256 on XP machines...but that might have changed from the last time I looked, but I'm fairly certain you can't get AES on IE6. (I'm sure someone will contradict this.) Don't fight the browser: champion the security.
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