

Things We’ll Be Able To Do Once IE6 Is Dead - peter123
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/14/10-cool-things-well-be-able-to-do-once-ie6-is-dead/

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halo
Contrary to the article inline-block on inline attributes is supported by IE6
according to the Quirksmode tables
(<http://www.quirksmode.org/css/display.html>); unsurprising as it was
originally a non-standard IE-specific attribute. Firefox 2 was the browser
everyone was waiting for in order to use it.

We'll have to wait until IE7 dies until we can forget about the hasLayout
problem, sadly. (<http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html>)

~~~
nopassrecover
I think IE7 users will upgrade faster than IE6 users for these reasons:

1\. The quick release between IE7 and IE8 means that users who have recently
upgraded (or have adjusted) to IE7 haven't got stuck in their ways just yet
and have recently encountered change.

2\. IE7 users have already (tended) to show a willingness to upgrade and learn
a new system (either Vista or IE7 on XP).

3\. IE8 is being rolled out as a critical update so the willingness and recent
experience of change should influence IE7 users more than IE6 users.

4\. A major reason for not upgrading IE6 is legacy code written for IE6 - this
should be less of an issue on IE7.

5\. IE8 isn't nearly as different from IE7 as IE7 is from IE6.

------
_pius
Or, "10 cool things you can do right now because you no longer support IE6."

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derefr
Sadly, Firefox 2 isn't dead (and apparently still accounts for 40% of Firefox
usage), so inline-block is even further-away than the death of IE6. I recently
had to take out a bundle of inline-blocks I had put in for a client's intranet
site after finding out that they wouldn't even consider updating past
2.0.0.20. Why go through the major effort of transitioning to a new browser
and then doing QA and testing for all your existing web-apps, but then not put
in the small amount of effort involved in keeping said browser up-to-date?
I've never seen a single site, no matter how complex, break on a Firefox
upgrade.

~~~
fortybillion
Not sure where you're getting your 40% number, but my sites see less than 3%
of users using FF2 (these are sites which still see 20%+ IE6 use, so not
skewed towards developers).

This stats page shows FF2 use at 3% of total, which would be around 7% of
Firefox users. <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_firefox.asp>

~~~
derefr
If you're curious, I got my stat from here:
<http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php>

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petercooper
It's only one data point, but I have a few popularish (for the niche) sites in
the (Ruby) programming niche, and averaged over a few sites, over about a
million pageviews over the last several months, about 2.5% of visitors were
using IE 6. From others I've spoken to, this is about average for techie /
programming sites.

So.. if I didn't want to support it, I wouldn't. Well, I would, but I'd just
show bare styling to them. The sort of user who's still on IE 6 doesn't really
care about pixel perfect layout anyway, right? (Except for the poor closet
geeks "stuck" on IE 6 in the workplace, but that's an even smaller
percentage.)

------
intregus
I though it was getting to a point now where IE6 support was more for intranet
and business sites. Is it a case of everyone supports it because everyone
supports it, or people still use IE6 because it's supported?

~~~
jsdalton
I am starting to come to the conclusion that all the downsides of not
supporting IE6 are for the most part mythological (particularly outside of
corporate intranet situations like you identify).

I mean, if you "don't support" IE6, what is the worst thing that happens? Some
stuff doesn't look right for a portion of your audience? These people already
have a seriously degraded internet experience, are they going to notice that
the padding on your floats is all messed up?

I am pretty certain that you are leaving revenue on the table if you choose to
ignore IE6 as a business, which is a valid objection to my argument. But how
much?

And how much costs are you leaving _off_ the table by freeing your designers
and developers from supporting IE6, and allowing them to do other amazing
things with their precious time?

Give me two almost-identical websites with two similar, business-oriented
audiences, then have one site support IE6 and the other basically ignore it
(and use the excess development/design time to build other features). I don't
know about you, but I'd put my money in #2.

~~~
fortybillion
The problem is when you use CSS for interface elements (such as dialog boxes,
UI controls, etc), a broken IE6 implementation may mean those users can't use
the site at all.

How relevant this is to your income, of course, depends on the site. For a
blog, it may not matter at all, but there's a good reason why Facebook is
notifying IE6 users of a degraded experience. They use a _ton_ of
CSS/Javascript for their UI, and I'm sure the cost of supporting IE6 is very
measurable and very high. But they probably can't just tell IE6 users to go
away entirely.

