Like all good web developers over the last nine or so years, we have dedicated countless hours to ensuring compatibility with the archaic, standards-naive Internet Explorer 6. Well, here’s where we make our stand. While we are not, at this point willing to jeopardize the visitor experience for our clients by building company web sites that are not IE 6 compliant, we are officially cutting the cord on our own DynamiX Labs web site.

Why Kill IE 6?
Quite simply, because it simply can’t handle most of the great advances that have come along over the past nine or so years. This includes PNG transparency (yes, it SORT OF works with hacks, but not well, and almost never properly for backgrounds), not to mention any hints of HTML 5. Even such simple areas as fixed positioning are a challenge for IE 6. The point is, IE 6 is forcing web designers to lower their standards, and to not push the envelope in advancing newer technologies. If a designer has a feature in mind that will be a really great addition to a new web site, but will take a great deal of effort to complete, they are likely to bypass it completely if IE 6 can’t handle it through hacks. That’s a shame. So let’s stop the stagnation and keep pushing the envelope, and leave IE 6 behind where it belongs.

The Back Story.
Recently, this site was recreated from the ground up with a brand new design. We spent a lot of time making it look good in standards compliant browsers, only to find that IE 6 (naturally) was a mess. So, after several hours of attempting to make the design appear as it should in IE 6, we had had enough.

What We Did.
We created a small piece of PHP that checks to see what browser, and what version a visitor is using to visit our web site. If using anything other than IE 6, the site will render as normal. But, if a visitor does navigate the web site from IE 6, they will see a completely different header, footer and design (stylesheet driven), in fact the original design that we have had in place for the past several years. In other words, IE 6 is doomed to forever live in the past, while better browsers will continue to move forward as we do.

The End Result.
Here’s how the site appears in Internet Explorer 6:

For anyone still browsing our site in IE 6, here’s what you are missing out on:

More Reading.
For emphasis, we added the code from http://www.ie6nomore.com/ onto our IE 6 version, letting visitors know that they could be getting so much more than what they are. I encourage all designers to implement this code on their non-client web sites. The time will certainly come when this should be implemented universally, but let’s get this process moving on our own web sites for the time being.

If you have a client who is of the same mind about IE 6 and is willing to add this to their web site, all the better, but we don’t suggest forcing this on your clients.

Big Red Disclaimer:
Yes, we know that there are some companies who have had IE 6 forced upon them. For these people, we’re sorry, but it’s time to start pressuring your IT guys to at LEAST allow you use of Firefox, Safari or Chrome in addition to IE 6. There should be no excuse to only allow Internet Explorer 6, particularly since programs that allow multiple versions of IE have been around for years now (see http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE for a great XP-based one). There’s even a hack for Vista users. So, the question to ask your IT guys is, WHY only IE 6?

Looking forward to the comments and criticisms!

Tags: Ban IE 6, Goodbye IE 6, IE 6, IE 6 No More, Internet Explorer 6

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under design, php. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.