

A clever way to fight IE6 - IgorPartola
http://igorpartola.com/web-development/a-clever-way-to-fight-ie6

======
melvinram
I run a web design company and as part of the discovery process, we ask
questions to figure out whether or not big corporations, schools, gov.
agencies, etc, are part of their core target audience. We also look at their
existing analytics data if they have it. If they have visitors using IE6, we
just assume that we're going to need to support IE6 and adjust the price
according. There is no good reason to make the customer feel bad that they
have to pay more because their clients are using a dipshit browser (most of
them are probably being forced to do so.)

Now if I determine that their core audience won't be using IE6, I explain the
issues pertaining to IE6, how it takes more time to make everything work as
intended and give them the facts of browser/version distribution. If they
want, we'll support IE6 for them (because we are here to help them make money
and even though I hate IE6, I'm not religious about the hate) for the extra
cost.

~~~
yock
I'm confused. Are you or are you not notifying your customers of the added
expense of supporting IE6? If you are, then I don't see how your method
differs from what is stated in the post. No one is making their client "feel
bad" about a business decision. Whether or not they do is more a function of
how that unfortunate news is delivered, or perhaps whether or not they
irrationally view IE6 support as mission-critical.

~~~
melvinram
If we determine that it's in their best interest to support IE6, we don't
line-item IE6 support (i.e. we don't say IE6 will cost you $xxxx extra.) We
simply quote them a price that includes that cost (i.e. your website will cost
$xxxx.)

If we determine that support IE6 will likely not matter, we break it out as an
extra line-item cost and give them the option to support IE6 by paying extra.
We explain the facts of their situation and let them make the decision.

It's not about making them feel bad. It's just human nature. It's just a more
pleasant experience just paying a price and knowing it'll just work instead of
having to pay more than the regular price just to make it work.

~~~
billybob
I see what you're saying, but it might still be useful for them to know what
trade-offs are being made.

Like, "for this site and audience, we recommend supporting IE6. But FYI, that
does eat this much of our costs, which can't be spent on shiny new features
for modern browsers. So maybe for other projects, if you do something that
targets a different audience, we'll want to make a different trade-off."

If I were the client, I think I'd appreciate that info. It might affect what
types of sites I want to launch, for example.

~~~
btilly
If big companies are part of your core audience, they are part of your core
audience. At that point IE 6 support is not optional, nor is pushing back on
it going to make a difference. All you'll do is cause annoyance.

------
dinedal
I went into this expecting the latest "show a message to the user urging them
to update" technique, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I wonder if it goes into the territory of browser support a la cart ordering
though.

~~~
IgorPartola
I don't think so. As a consultant you can always structure your products in a
way where the core browsers are always included, but the weird ones are extra.
Naturally, the always-included ones will be the more standards compliant ones
since chances are that if it works in, say, Safari it will also mostly work in
Chrome.

------
danmelnick
This is the way I've approached the issue for sometime, and the analogy I
always use with clients to explain the additional cost is one of translation.
Most browsers speak english, or some basic dialect of english. I can deal with
those dialects. IE6 speaks Chinese. It costs more money to translate the site
into Chinese. People seem to understand that analogy.

~~~
sebi
IE6 speaks Latin - both are seriously outdated.

------
WillyF
Maybe you could turn this idea into a new monetization technique for content
websites. Free for most, but IE 6 users have to pay to view your content.

~~~
tmlee
but the underlying problem is that IE6s are still sticking in big
enterprise/workplace where they do not have a choice of uninstalling it.

~~~
brazzy
Actually, the biggest pool of IE6 users are people from poor countries running
pirated copies of Windows XP with no access to automatic updates.

~~~
njharman
They have access to Firefox's and Chrome's automatic updates!

~~~
brazzy
Just like everywhere else, they'll use what comes with the OS.

------
ck2
IE6 is the new NN4

To be fair though, NN4 support was a massive pain, getting people off it even
more pain.

(for those that got into webdev post-2002
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator> )

~~~
subbu
True. NN4 was the reason I moved to Flash.

------
MJR
Many users of IE6 have no choice of browser. It's either IE6 or nothing.
They're forced to use it because many large companies have IE6 as they're
single browser on the desktop. Forcing an upgrade of all the clients in a
company to IE7, 8, or another browser can be a large effort. The end users
have zero control to upgrade their own browser or install other software.

An upgrade also requires that all internal applications built for IE6 are also
updated. That's an even larger headache if one or more of those applications
were built by an external vendor. I know a large company(4500+ employees) that
recently upgraded from IE6 to IE7 internally. It was a MAJOR effort at
significant cost to make this change.

At this point its naive to think that majority of IE6 usage is based on the
individual home or business user who has control over their workstation and
could upgrade with the press of a button.

If you choose to dump support for IE6, understand that you're making the
choice against some large organizations. And make sure you communicate this to
your clients as well if you're building a site for them. If you're ok with
that, go for it. Charging more to support IE6 is reasonable, but make sure
you're clear with your clients that there ARE reasons to support IE6. Let them
make an informed decision rather than based on the bias of a developer who
doesn't want the hassle.

~~~
tnorthcutt
"that recently upgraded from IE6 to IE7 internally"

Why on earth didn't they go ahead and make the jump to IE8?

~~~
MJR
Again - when you're dealing with outside vendors and you have internal
applications which rely on browser compatibility you can only move to IE8 if
the applications support IE8 - which they don't. So, IE7 is the current
ceiling. It sucks, but it's the reality.

------
InclinedPlane
This shouldn't classify as clever, it should be standard practice. Supporting
IE6 is more difficult than other browsers, and the usefulness is highly
dependent upon the specific site's demographics et al, so putting the decision
to the site owner and making clear that IE6 support translates to either
sacrifices in other parts of the project or increased total project cost is
very much the correct course of action.

------
feverishaaron
I do this as well, and have had the same experience. IE 6 support is suddenly
no longer as important. I explain that I'll put a message up that directs the
user to either upgrade their browser, install Chrome Frame or browse at their
own peril.

------
kenjackson
Of course the problem with this strategy is that you may not be in a vacuum.
If I'm a competing shop I simply say that I'll do it all for a price somewhat
south of your +IE6 price.

And if I have some experienced webdevs who have done this type of stuff since
forever, the cost is already largely locked in. Sure I may not be "helping the
web" (whatever that means), it may mean a substantial boost in revenue.

~~~
prawn
I'd rather miss a job because I was too expensive than get it just because I
was too cheap.

~~~
kenjackson
I'd rather be rich making 30% margins than broke because I charged 200%.

~~~
prawn
I've run a small web-dev business for 12 years and regret every time I've
dropped my price to lock in a job.

~~~
kenjackson
Then you've dropped too low. You certainly don't do it for $1. But I've found
that whenever there are other companies with ideological bents (like anti-IE6)
I can almost certainly always crush them economically and with respect to
quality.

~~~
prawn
Competing aggressively on price, more often than not, attracts a certain type
of client. If you're taking the cheap option now, you'll often fight over
every cent going forward and be pretty miserable to work with.

If someone is desperate for work, they might need to make sacrifices to keep
busy. I'm not, so I try not to.

~~~
kenjackson
It's not all that aggressive. If your intention is to effectively price out
technology X (IE6), I can almost always beat your price by a good mile, and
I'll make a point of it.

With that said, I don't do web development :-)

~~~
prawn
We'd be going after different markets. The shops trying to beat a price by a
mile are in a lower tier.

~~~
kenjackson
I think you underestimate the huge price differentials for almost no
difference in quality. In fact often quote the opposite. I've seen a factor of
5x in price difference in some cases with virtually no difference in
portfolio, mockups, or code quality.

------
edw519
Be careful what you wish for.

This reminds me of former NFL great and Monday Night Football announcer Frank
Gifford. At one time, he charged $10,000 per corporate appearance. The grind
was wearing him down, so he doubled his rate to reduce volume. Funny thing
happened though, the higher rate made him _more_ desirable to corporate
program directors and his demand actually _increased_.

I wonder how applicable this phenomenon is here. You could easily become known
as the "ie6 web design experts" who corporate drones turn to first. Sure,
you'd make tons of money, but is that what you really want?

[EDIT: Lots of us are constantly dealing with the trade-off between whoring
ourselves out for high paying shit work and doing what we really want. Just
sayin'.]

~~~
redorb
Q:"sure you'll make a ton of money, but is that what you want?"

A: "yes, that will be fine."

~~~
umjames
I think you're letting the allure of the money downplay the costs of actually
doing the work. It's not like one client is going to hand you a duffel bag
full of $100 bills, you do the conversion once, and then you're set for life.
It's going to be a seemingly endless line of enterprise clients who already
have a history of not keeping up with the times.

The amount these clients pay, while substantial, probably won't provide you
with the "fuck you"-money needed to never have to do it again.

~~~
jemfinch
Do people really go into web design to get "fuck you" money?

~~~
jfb
Not smart people.

------
netmau5
I've made the same suggestion to my company and we are going to adopt a
pricing policy for IE6 in our future product releases (B2B). The bottom line
is that it costs us more to support IE6 and it's a sunk cost. We've eaten the
cost for a long time because we care about making our customers happy no
matter the circumstance. However, on the verge of IE9 and HTML5, supporting
IE6 is starting to show measurable effects on our development velocity,
capability, and agility which impacts all of our customers regardless of
browser.

I suspect many IT depts and software companies are eating this cost and it
reduces the impetus to upgrade browsers. Business cares about the bottom line
and they won't consider changes unless they see line items that will affect
it.

------
ary
When all else fails, make it about money.

I actually have a friend whose design shop has been doing this for a while. It
really drives the point home.

The issues with getting large corporations to finally upgrade are moot. The
consumer/home user is already abandoning IE6 because people like us are
advising them to. Large companies aren't going to incur the cost of an upgrade
until they _have_ to. They don't have to as long as people keep supporting
IE6. With the current amount of web traffic coming from IE6 hovering around
12% (last time I checked) it really depends on whether or not an organization
_needs_ to reach those visitors with an experience that is on par with users
of other browsers. Putting a price tag on it is perfect.

------
devmonk
We don't support IE6.

If a client wants IE6, why not tell them to spend that money developing an
accessible version of the site? There are going to be more disabled people
visiting their site then IE6 anyway:

IE6 stats: <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp>

Paper on percentage of disabled rising from US Dept of Commerce:
<http://www.census.gov/prod/3/97pubs/cenbr975.pdf>

Based on IE5 degradation in usage and extrapolation of the IE6 stats, it may
only be ~3.5 years (~summer 2013) before IE6 drops to ~0.3% usage.

------
flannell
I think we should remember why IE6 continues to burden us. All those companies
spending millions adding Citrix and MS Terminal services to their network many
years ago need a few more to get their ROI back. In these cash strapped times
I can't see an already over stretched IT department putting together an
operating system upgrade for 600+ desktops.

I develop a web based app and it's a nightmare adding those awful hacks to get
IE6 to play ball. However, many companies are stuck with IE6 and do you want
to alienate a potential customer(s)?

Microsoft.. you _were_ an arsehole.

~~~
VMG
_In these cash strapped times I can't see an already over stretched IT
department putting together an operating system upgrade for 600+ desktops._

You assume that it is the decision of the IT department. I would imagine that
the IT department would have _less_ headaches by updating

~~~
flannell
I don't mean the IT department upgrading their own computers, they probably
already done so, I mean as a company. If they run an old citrix or MS TS then
they're locked into XP. I've seen this first hand. A lot of global companies
haven't upgraded to the latest version and continue to run Software that even
Microsoft no longer supports!

------
trustfundbaby
I used to do html/css layouts very frequently just a few years back, and after
tracking my hours to determine this, I found that coding for IE6
idiosyncrasies essentially doubled my html/css dev time.

So I'd have a layout done and ready to go in Safari, Opera and Firefox (Chrome
wasn't on the market then) in 4 hours, and it'd take another 4 just to get it
working correctly in IE6.

Luckily though, I billed hourly (so it was never really a problem), but it
just amazed me to realize how much money clients were throwing away trying to
support IE6 at the time.

------
MJR
Many people keep talking about "driving the point home" like the majority of
people using IE6 are doing so by choice. Gmail doesn't work, Youtube soon
won't work, site after site that people use for personal browsing are limiting
IE6 users or shutting them out. Which begs the question why are there still
IE6 users. I propose the simple answer - the majority of IE6 are corporate
users. Those who have no control over their browser.

I'm not going to be redundant, but I spelled this out further down the page
and I think it's been mostly ignored. If you want to cut off corporations
using IE6 from getting to your site - go for it. Just be aware and let you
clients know this is what they're doing.

------
lovskogen
I work as a product designer for different web apps. We just support the
latest build of IE, Chrome, Fx, Opera, Safari - that's still alot of
differences.

IE 6 should be ignored.

------
bherms
This is what we do too, but this isn't going to kill IE6. It's not a problem
that sites support it, it's a problem that large companies and non-techies
don't want to or know how to upgrade. What I do for all my sites is add
<http://pushuptheweb.com/> to all my pages and customize the message to say
they're not getting the full experience and that their browser may be
unsecure.

~~~
powrtoch
I disagree, I think that techniques like this do contribute to killing IE6.
The reason that corporations don't upgrade their browsers is pretty simple:
they don't have to. As it stands now, IE6 is "good enough" for their employees
to do whatever it is they need to do.

The more websites that drop IE6 support, the more IE6 becomes "not good
enough", and the more pressure accumulates for corporations to upgrade. Right
now it's more practical in many environments for the IT group to stick with
IE6 than upgrade. The day it becomes more practical to upgrade than stay put
is the day IE6 dies.

~~~
Isofarro
The UK Government decided that it will stay with IE6 for the forseeable
future:

[http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses/petition-
view.aspx...](http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses/petition-
view.aspx?epref=ie6upgrade)

Claiming:

Security: "Complex software will always have vulnerabilities and motivated
adversaries will always work to discover and take advantage of them. There is
no evidence that upgrading away from the latest fully patched versions of
Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure. Regular
software patching and updating will help defend against the latest threats.
The Government continues to work with Microsoft and other internet browser
suppliers to understand the security of the products used by HMG, including
Internet Explorer and we welcome the work that Microsoft are continuing do on
delivering security solutions which are deployed as quickly as possible to all
Internet Explorer users."

Cost: "It is not straightforward for HMG departments to upgrade IE versions on
their systems. Upgrading these systems to IE8 can be a very large operation,
taking weeks to test and roll out to all users. To test all the web
applications currently used by HMG departments can take months at significant
potential cost to the taxpayer. It is therefore more cost effective in many
cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and
malware scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users."

Pretty hard to argue against without deteriorating into a "no it isn't", "yes
it is", which gets us nowhere.

So with the UK government, and it's 'standards' for it's various departments,
standing firm, cautious businesses will follow the same path as well.

The more websites that drop IE6 support, the less people will use those
websites. Facebook and Youtube are fairly safe in ignorning IE6 since that
makes it easier for businesses and government departments to stop non-business
use of their infrastructure.

Talk of raising prices to cater for IE6 suit me just fine. I've been dealing
with IE6 since it was launched, so I'm fairly fluent in dealing with the
issues it has. It's part of my job as a web developer, to build websites that
work in web browsers.

Supporting IE6 isn't a big deal. It's all about clean separation of layers,
progressive enhancement, and a decent understanding of IE6's foibles. Unless
you've chosen to use a framework or code-generation toolkit that gets those
basics wrong, and prevents you from fixing the corresponding HTML, CSS and
JavaScript layers.

~~~
qjz
Those arguments can be used to put off adopting any technical advance. While
it may be wise not to follow a policy of early adoption, eventually there's a
tipping point that will force one to embrace the present. The disadvantages of
protecting IE6 will soon outweigh any advantage of using it. Hopefully, the UK
government will be lucky when it pins itself to the next platform.

------
MrNibbles
The company i work for has been doing this for quite a while now,
unfortunately our clients mostly just pay the extra...

------
mrbird
What is the price increase to add IE6 support? 100% more? 50%? Does it even
matter, in terms of this approach?

------
efsavage
Back when IE6 was the best browser available, I used this exact technique to
kill off Netscape 4 requirements.

------
vaksel
I don't see why we are supposed to fix this problem. It's so much easier for
Microsoft to do something about it,

I mean seriously...how hard is it for them to add "Run as IE6" mode to IE9?

That way companies can run their internal crap as "IE6"...and can browse the
web as IE9.

~~~
Quiark
It seems to me that installing Firefox is easier than risking an update to
IE9, yet corporations won't do that either.

------
MattBearman
The company I work for simply have ask if the client requires IE6 support, but
states that they "recommend not supporting the 9 year old browser". That seems
to discourage all but government clients.

------
schindyguy
Title should be changed to "Fight IE6 by overcharging your client for the
headache"

------
jokull
This is exactly what I do and it works!

------
kqueue
Let's make some money and support IE6!

------
binspace
Danm, I was hoping he wrote a virus that upgrades IE.

------
tehgawdo
I aprove of this technique.

------
fady
Or you could just give them a 101 on web standards, while giving the main
points why you wont support IE6. It almost depends on your clients. ie: Since
most MLS programs are still in the dinosaur age, most Realtors use Windows,
and good % of them still use IE6(I've seen the analytics), crazy eh?

I just wont support it. Update your OS/Browser!

~~~
tofumatt
Governments and other big organizations REFUSE to update their browsers
because they need IE 6 to support legacy software (I used to work in
provincial government in Canada: I know). Spouting off about "web standards"
(whatever that means to a client) is worthless -- they'll tell you it still
looks wrong.

Tell them IE6 costs extra and at least your trouble will be worth your while
(or you can skip IE6 dev time). It's not unlike paying more to the mechanic
who works on vintage Mini Coopers versus new BMW ones; the vintage skill is
more specialized and harder work in lessening demand.

~~~
fady
I agree with charging extra. It's a good tactic to see if they understand, as
they certainly will understand spending more money, vs supporting web
standards.

