
Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development? - omgsean
With the release of IE9 it's becoming clear that without a solid up-front discussion with clients about browser compatibility, they may expect their website to work in four versions of Internet Explorer.  For some sites this is fairly easy, and a couple of star hacks in the CSS will make it usable in IE6, but for clients who want the latest and greatest, sometimes IE6 compatibility isn't really realistic, or else just very tedious and time consuming.<p>It seems to me there are a few of ways to deal with this problem, but I'm not totally happy with any approach.<p>1) List IE6 development as a separate line item, with a cost beside it that the client can opt to go for or not.  The problem with this is they could take that estimate to another company who might say "well our websites work in EVERY browser, no extra charge", whether or not that's actually true.<p>2) Tell clients up front that if they want a website that uses cutting-edge front end technologies, they'll have to live without IE6 support.  Offer to install an upgrade banner/alert for no extra charge.  A lot of clients don't understand that IE6 is turning 9 next year, or they don't understand that using a 9 year old browser is like driving a 25 year old car.<p>3) Continue along the same path of just making sure everything works in IE6, even though it slows down development, adds to costs, limits the design and programming departments, and contributes to developer alcoholism and severe workplace swearing.<p>This problem has to be cropping up at every design/development studio that builds websites using the newest technologies.  How do the rest of you deal with it?
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keltex
I think that you have to look at the client's visitor profile before you make
this decision. If a client's site sees 10%+ IE 6 visitors (and many of mine
do), you can't simply say we're not going to support this technology.

Often I tell them that we will review the site in IE 6 and make sure that it's
"functional" but we don't guarantee it will be pixel perfect unless they pay
for the extra work.

Also I don't like the IE banner / alert option. Maybe you want to try to
proselytize the death of IE6, but I don't think it's appropriate to force your
paying clients to do the same.

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danielh
I think you are spot on. But maybe you should not look at the visitor profile
but at the revenue profile. Maybe the typical IE6 user has a higher
probability of clicking on your client's advertising.

After all, if your gain from supporting IE6 is higher than the cost of
supporting it, it makes no sense to abandon IE6.

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pbhjpbhj
_After all, if your gain from supporting IE6 is higher than the cost of
supporting it, it makes no sense to abandon IE6._

Although is you abandon full support in IE6 and users want to stay and so use
another browser then you've kept their continued custom and saved your extra
dev costs. That is, it's not a given that removing full support will impact
your profit.

Also, the improved design that could be purchased with the extra dev costs
could net you more customers using a browser made less than 8 years ago or
indeed convert more of the same.

People can have a non-profit motive too.

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eswat
I simply don't cater for IE6 anymore. Not for contract work or my own sites
(IE6 use for my sites hovers around 3% and it wasn't until it hit 10% where I
decided to not care for the browser). Hell, even my corporate dayjob is
deprecating IE6 development (we're in the health insurance industry).

If I'm doing contract work I usually spit it out early that I won't be
catering for IE6. It is up to them to figure out whether the lack of an
IE6-friendly frontend would harm them or not (I deal mostly with the same
clients I've had for years, so they trust their metrics and me by now).

It hasn't happened yet, but if a client demanded I had to cater a project for
IE6, I won't be afraid of firing them.

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christefano
Well, #1 and #2 aren't mutually exclusive.

In our experience, IE6 users are simply unwilling -- or more to the point,
unable -- to upgrade. The people who come to mind are parents whose kids have
moved away, office workers, unfortunate souls in school systems or other non-
profits that don't have a decent IT budget, etc.

My shop leans towards #1 and will include IE6 "compatibility" separately. This
works well for our clients since IE6 is rarely being used by the people that
our clients' sites are built for.

Unless we're explicitly asked not to, we use a banner-style alert as a general
practice in order to encourage upgrades. We use IE6Update:

    
    
      http://ie6update.com/
    

On a side note, Microsoft's "Browser for the Better" campaign was actually
pretty helpful because we could say that upgrading to IE8 was feeding hungry
families:

    
    
      http://browserforthebetter.com/

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tcarnell
The solution is very simple. Pricing.

Give your client two prices: one with IE6 support, the other without. Give
honest prices based on the genuine overhead of working with IE 6.

If the client is willing to pay for IE6 support, fine, do the work you are
being paid for. Let the cash decide the future of IE6

...but this is another example of developers making decisions that they should
be making. For example, a software developer that decides to build a system
with full database independance (hibernate for example) COULD be doing the
right thing, but could simply be driving up project costs for requirements
that never existed.

Developers - DONT make these decisions, price the options and ask the client.

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adriand
The problem with this approach is that it opens up a good angle for your
competitors to attack you on compatibility grounds. They can tell your client
that they don't charge anything extra for IE6 compatibility, leaving you
explaining that either they are charging them but that it's a hidden cost, or
that their sites are so crappy and outdated that they work fine in IE6 from
the get-go.

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oneplusone
Guestlist (<http://www.guestlistapp.com>) does not support IE6 even in the
slightest (except for the public page where you buy tickets, that works in
IE6). We support IE7 and higher, and that will probably stay that way for the
foreseeable future.

As for contract work, I do whatever the client asks. I do let them know that
IE6 support will probably cost them an additional 20% in my time, and it will
not be identical to modern browsers. It will work and that is about it. If
they want to spend the money it is up to them. They do know their customer
base better than I do.

~~~
gte910h
Only 20%?

Wow we charge more like 75-125% more for that browser

~~~
oneplusone
This would be HTML + CSS only. I don't do Javascript and if I did, then yes,
it would be a lot more.

~~~
gte910h
Ahh, jQuery helps, but still, IE6 burns.

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gte910h
Let your competitors eat the cost of IE6 dev then

Always charge as LEAST as much as is required to make you either not care or
actively want the client to buy a feature

So if IE6 makes the site 2x as difficult, charge them for the site using
modern browsers, and line item (basic IE6 testing for at least limited
functionality) at whatever price makes you not care.

Charge for them to maintain an outdated site, charge a lot. Then you won't
care if they want IE6 support or not

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nkohari
We're a product company, so it's a slightly different stance. However, we made
a conscious decision early on not to support IE6 for the following reasons:

1\. Our app is very interactive, and we didn't want to have to deal with
incompatibilities.

2\. Our target market is (primarily) software developers working for small
companies. The only people that use IE6 are people who don't know any better
or who are forced to do so, and there are few of those in our target market.

We know that we're probably losing some sales due to our lack of IE6 support,
but for the reasons stated above, we're going on the assumption that the
additional sales wouldn't offset the cost of development and testing.

I think for a consulting company, it depends on the project. If you're writing
something for general consumption or enterprisey software shops, it's much
more important (unfortunately) to support IE6.

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charlesmarshall
For me it just depends upon the type of site I'm working on.

In these competitive times you need to support as close to 100% of the sites
user base as possible. If the site drops 10-12% to a rival because it lacks
ie6 support thats not going to go down well at all.

I do like the car analogy, but if you have a 25 year old car & you can't get a
newer one, it's rather harsh. You can get away with it as long as the
percentage is low enough.

On backends (cms/admin areas etc) then this is were you can specify what
browser can be used and ignore ie6 as long as you can explain why.

For my work projects ie6 is a must as it still registers around 10% of
visitors. Personal projects tend to be more techy with virtually 0% ie6, so no
need to support it.

I look forward to when I can ignore ie6 completely!

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imp
I think I'm in the minority, but I will fully support IE6 until it's less than
about 5% of traffic to a website I'm working on. Once you know IE6's quirks,
it's not that hard to work around them. I think the benefit of an additional
10% or 15% or web traffic outweighs a few extra hours of development. Again,
it sounds like most people disagree, but I developed a somewhat complex ajax
app back when there was only Firefox 2 and IE6 and it wasn't that bad. I'm not
in charge of a big design studio, but that's my policy for side projects and
part-time clients that I work for. They shouldn't have to care about IE6. It
should just work for them.

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chaosprophet
For my in-the-works site, I'm going with displaying a notification to IE6
users notifying them that the site may not work as intended on their browser
and asking them to upgrade to Firefox/Chrome/Safari/IE8.

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julio_the_squid
We're down to 37% IE these days. Only 8% are IE6, for a total of under 5% IE6
usage.

I don't really know what the difference is between our site and the sites that
say they have 65% IE still... it's not at all oriented towards techy type
people. We have 45% FF and 15% Safari.

It's a significant enough number of people to test new features with IE6, but
not enough to go wild trying to make it perfect. If I was developing sites for
clients, I'd go for option #1.

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stan_rogers
NN 4.x stayed around forever BECAUSE we supported it, and IE6 will do the
same. We have met the enemy, and they are us.

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bhousel
Maybe another way of looking at the problem: I think a bigger challenge would
be supporting mobile devices.

Whatever your site does, you might need to also do it in a stripped down no-
frills way that will render well on a tiny screen.

If you can manage that, IE6 support should be no problem. Worst case, push IE6
users to your mobile site. :)

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maxdemarzi
If your website will have a tilt to "Enterprise Customers" (worker bees in
Fortune 500s) in any way then you must support IE 6. You have no option.

Otherwise forget it for now. "Early adopters" are on the cutting edge (browser
wise) anyway. You can always accommodate IE 6 bugs later on if the site "makes
it".

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InclinedPlane
The most professional option, in my opinion, is to make sure your designs are
at least basically functional in IE6, but put making IE6 a design priority as
a separate line item with it's own cost. Doing extra work deserves extra
billing, and you owe it to your clients to give them a choice.

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Freebytes
I will create a site that is designed for newer browsers. I am not going to
forbid IE6 usage like I have seen other sites do. "Your browser is not welcome
here, please upgrade." Instead, if IE6 works, it works. If not, I am not going
to worry about it.

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jlk
I agree that without a very frank up-front discussion about IE6 limitations,
you'll find yourself redoing PNGs as GIFs and writing some conditional CSS
hacks the night of launch when the client's sister boots up her Compaq to
check out the cool new site.

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nathanh
I operate an English language learning site, and we have one demographic that
has a staggering amount of IE6 usage: 66% of our Chinese user base is using
IE6. Needless to say, we continue to support IE6.

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pistoriusp
I generally just make sure that the website is functional in IE6. If an
element is bumped/ aligned or distorted in some way (and is still usable) it
doesn't get fixed.

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jarsj
I am deprecating it quite aggressively now.

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mattdennewitz
every advertiser i've worked with requires IE6 compatibility. so, theres that
to keep in mind.

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talleyrand
Not supported.

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ldh
My policy for IE6 is: don't.

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motters
DO NOT WANT!

