We *Like* Our Internet With a Side of Revolution
Internet Explorer 6 will be SEVEN years old on August 27th. It came out a few weeks before the Twin Towers fell. It came out before the Nintendo GameCube. It came out before the first iPod.
It’s time to put a deadline on dropping IE6, and I say that time is now, and the deadline should be soon… say like, March 2009. That’s roughly a little more than 6 months. Feel free to join me. If your company is dropping support for IE6, let me know and I’ll gladly post it up. I’m also on twitter, http://twitter.com/sxtxixtxcxh, if that works better for you.
Check out the marching category to see who else is phasing out Internet Explorer 6.
If, for some reason, you’ve found yourself here using Internet Explorer 6, you can help yourself by downloading Firefox, Safari, Opera and/or Internet Explorer 7 (there’s a beta for IE8, if you’re feeling adventurous).
Google has recently gotten into the browser game, and (if you’re on Windows) you can download a beta of their unbelievably fast Chrome.
Posts
[...] IE Death March→ [...]
IE Death March :: WPLover
24 Aug 08 at 9:50 pm
I dropped IE6 several years ago, before Microsoft even made a half-way decent successor.
IE7 is better, Firefox 3 is better, Opera 9.5 is better. Start writing some code telling people that IE6 is too old to use you’re site, and stop pandering to it. IE7 is at least easier to hack to in the event of a flaw or two. (Note the lack of optioning another insecure browser like Safari).
Progress people.
Yert
25 Aug 08 at 12:56 am
Totally agree with all of this, now we just need google, yahoo, msn, youtube, and myspace to catch on
Harrison
25 Aug 08 at 11:50 am
@Harrison: At least facebook has a clue: http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/facebook/
M. Dave Auayan
25 Aug 08 at 12:43 pm
Totally agree. I’ve tried to mostly keep things working in IE6 simply cause I’m a manic perfectionist. But I’ve said for years IE6 needs to die.
@Yert: Do you even know what you’re talking about regarding Safari? The only outstanding “security” issue with Safari is it’s lack of any anti-phishing protection. Which by definition, doesn’t make it an insecure browser. Even the safest car in the world is unsafe if an utter idiot drives the thing down the wrong lane on the freeway at 350mph.
Not to mention, last I checked, Firefox 3 had lots more outstanding security issues than Safari and/or WebKit has ever had.
jimeh
25 Aug 08 at 12:46 pm
[...] 6 (IE6) first came out. It’s a seven year-old browser. This little factoid is part of a battle cry by M. David Auayan to stop developing websites for IE6 by March 2009. Enter the IE Death [...]
Campaigns to kill the web browser that just won’t die: Internet Explorer 6 | Wisdump
26 Aug 08 at 12:59 pm
I totally agree. I’ve posted more than one blog about the subject. I just spent the last two days wasting my time trying to get a website I am designing to work in IE6 even though it was and is working beautifully in every other modern browser known to man.
I wish their was a way to literally BURN IE6 and permanently delete it from our technological history.
Shane
26 Aug 08 at 8:44 pm
I love you… I hate IE6…
Rick
27 Aug 08 at 6:56 am
*completely sarcastic comment*
I think that people are still using IE6 because it is just so hard to upgrade to IE7, or even better yet Firefox or Safari. I mean, they actually have to go and download Firefox and then go through the wizard that imports all their bookmarks and stuff. That just seems so complicated and ridiculous. Maybe if someone would just create something that someone could do easily, we would all be fine. Change is just so hard and is not worth it.
* end sarcasm*
Seriously, some people just are too lazy. There is even a wizard built in!!!
So, lets all cheer. Happy 7th birthday to IE6. Hopefully it will be your last.
-JD
JD Hartley
27 Aug 08 at 7:51 am
I twitterd you..
I am a strong supporter of IE Death March
Why don’t you create some badges and make it available for your supporters to use in their blogs.. [may be something like this -> http://tinyurl.com/5laz8g
It will give more popularity for this ‘mission’
aravind
27 Aug 08 at 7:58 am
[...] And so on. How did I fix it? On today, the 7th birthday of IE6, when others are working hard to put ie6 on its death march, here’s a bit of code that made my life a little [...]
Safetygoat » IE6 Randomly moves stuff around and how to fix it
27 Aug 08 at 9:06 am
@aravind I’ll be putting something together soon
thanks!
M. Dave Auayan
27 Aug 08 at 9:20 am
I with you on phasing out IE6.
Here’s some more “younger than IE6″:
IE7
Windows Vista
Zune
XBox 360
“Soon”, IE8 will be out.
Chris Pietschmann
27 Aug 08 at 9:49 am
The Hostile Monkey is totally on this march. What would be GREAT would be to use this blog to collect some hard facts. The Hostile Monkey’s clients want to be reassured that IE7 is a solidly recommended upgrade from IE6 (e.g. a quote from MS saying “YOU REALLY SHOULD UPGRADE”). They want to know it’s easy and painless. They want to know that IE7 already has 30/40/50/80/90/120% market share.
Advocacy is great. Facts are better.
Let’s do this. Let’s kill 6.
Hostile Monkey
27 Aug 08 at 2:48 pm
I support this. It is far past time to exclude IE6 from the real internet. Good riddance!
Davin Greenwell
27 Aug 08 at 3:36 pm
March 2009? I stopped developing for IE6 in November 2007.
http://blog.josh420.com/archives/2007/11/people-using-ie6-need-their-ass-kicked.aspx
Kill the IE6 users softly by not applying a stylesheet.
Josh Stodola
28 Aug 08 at 7:35 am
This is a simple decision to make if you don’t have many visitors using IE 6 to access a particular website. In the case of a client, 35% of their traffic still uses IE 6 and therefore an audience who cannot be ignored. It’s not always “easy and painless” to upgrade to IE 7 or another browser, especially when there’s a powerful IT department controlling those changes. I’m all for a revolution, but check your stats first.
Geof Harries
28 Aug 08 at 7:49 am
I wholeheartedly agree and support this campaign, however it’s so difficult with all our corporate clients managed by archaic IT companies who insist on IE6 corporate policies.
As one of the guys said in the office today - if so many people upgraded from FF2 to FF3, why can’t IE6 users upgrade to (at least) IE7, or even better FF3!!
Good luck with this campaign though!
Carl
Carl Crawley
28 Aug 08 at 8:31 am
Viva la Revolution!
Sadly, Geof has a point… (even if the message was clouded by what seems to be a small superiority complex)
Checking the Browser statistics ( http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp ) we see that while IE6 is losing ground… it still commands a considerable corner of the market… so any business that is in it to make money… cannot really afford to simply abandon the browser until it drops to an acceptable usage percentage.
Allen Harper
28 Aug 08 at 9:15 am
[...] http://www.iedeathmarch.org [...]
Lyrical Media Join The War On IE6 | Lyrical Blog
28 Aug 08 at 9:38 am
Allen - A small superiority complex? I didn’t mean to come across that way. I just wanted to make the point it’s not always up to individual users to upgrade their browsers, but rather the powers-that-be above them. Simply, don’t drop support until you consider all of the consequences.
Geof Harries
28 Aug 08 at 9:42 am
IE5 for Mac is actually *older* than IE6 — your front page is inaccurate:
It came out March 27, 2000.
Nathan
28 Aug 08 at 10:04 am
@Nathan while technically true, the final (non-prerelease) versions wasn’t out until after IE6. See also: http://iedeathmarch.org/2008/08/ie5-for-mac/
M. Dave Auayan
28 Aug 08 at 10:07 am
Come 2009 I will be dropping IE6 from my compatible tests on my website I create.
Thomas Hardy
28 Aug 08 at 10:48 am
Of course, some people are less able to drop IE6 - perhaps they’re running on older Windows OSs that don’t support an upgrade to IE7. Perhaps - shock horror, they don’t know about Opera, or Firefox, or any other, more compliant, less pain-in-the-arse-for-us-web-savvy-people browser.
For the ones that can upgrade, perhaps the lead taken by sites such as Facebook, with its large user base, will help the migration towards better browsers.
Patience, until the vast majority of people have done the deed.
Shane
28 Aug 08 at 12:40 pm
I respect your ability to organize a campaign and get support from the development community, however, I find that this will all once again fall into two camps.
1.) IE6 sucks. Upgrade now. I don’t care about users. I only care about my job being easier. If you don’t force your users to upgrade, then I won’t do business with you.
2.) IE6 sucks. Upgrade if you can. I care about the users, but I’m realistic enough to know that sometimes “it pays” to support IE because not all users have a choice.
We live in our own little world, where we think we represent the general population. The reality is that most of the non-technical folks we talk to couldn’t give a rip about what browser they use. You can try to sell them on the security issue, but it still won’t help the fact that eventually they will end up with another virus on another day running another browser. They are not technical enough to understand anti-virus software, or even care enough to run it. If they do, they always say the same thing — “I can’t figure out why it won’t stop blocking my cookies, and it slows down my computer.”
So while we all relish in Firefox, and hope someday that it will take over the online world, I guarantee at some point in your life there will be another Web site along the same lines (Firefox6DeathMarch.com?), that gets the browser the same bad press, that everyone is disgusted with because it has reached market dominance, and is therefore, the primary tool for hacking into computers.
Brian Reindel
28 Aug 08 at 1:36 pm
how about just dropping IE period.
tf
28 Aug 08 at 2:40 pm
tf: or just dropping it full stop.
Jibbidy
28 Aug 08 at 3:21 pm
I’m all for it, but the tactic can’t be blindly imposed across the board. Businesses, non profits, government agencies, and so on MUST cater to users with outdated machines and browsers. That’s not a pass or an excuse not to stand up to the Menace. It’s merely a reality that the interweb community can’t ignore.
Dropping support for IE6 is cool, but if you do it, do it in such a way that does’t come off as a smack in face to the user. If you don’t support IE6 and are willing to pay your bills more power to you. I’d just recommend helping the user understand why they should upgrade. I find that saying - what are you stupid - just doesn’t work.
My next personal project will ignore all IE6 concerns, but will offer a detailed explaination as to why they should upgrade. I’ll tell them what’s in it for them, rather than just focusing on how much it makes my life easier.
antoine butler
28 Aug 08 at 5:46 pm
Well, I’m with you on this one. I’m not a web designer by profession, but I believe that websites should not be made for specific browsers, but rather for a specification, a standard. I know that unfortunately in reality that is not what happens, but we can always dream, right?
I even post a short rant a while ago, check it out:
http://pensador.org/2007/05/08/yet-another-article-on-why-ie-six-sucks/
Saulo
28 Aug 08 at 6:23 pm
Starting immediately, none of the members of the Arizona metal band Embers Rise will be using IE6 nor will we be instructing fans to use IE6.
Mike of Embers Rise (Metal)
29 Aug 08 at 2:26 am
To everyone who is about to drop or has already dropped IE6 support, could you, maybe, list the URLs involved. Please…
We’d be more than happy to ‘take over’ those customers.
Bill
29 Aug 08 at 3:51 am
It’s bad enough our company supports IE6 for websites and online applications we build for our customers; but just found out that IE6 is actually our company standard for the entire planet! And we’re in 79 counties
I’ve sent a link to this article to our tech guys who all seem to think the sun shines out of Bill Gates’ arsehole.
Leyton Jay
29 Aug 08 at 5:18 am
Interesting. I find specific information on _why_ you want to stop supporting IE6 lacking, though. IE6 is my favorite version of IE so far. One reason is because it doesn’t hide the menu bar or put it below the address bar by default. I dislike the lack of tabs, however, so I usually use Firefox instead.
justhal
29 Aug 08 at 5:52 am
Geof - No problem, your first post was just a little abrasive. And I do support the elimination of IE6… but we cannot afford to simply stop supporting a browser simply because it’s hard to develop for.
It’s kinda like supporting the idea of the semantic web. It’s a great idea… and while general validation is always necessary, who can say what standards we should be adhering to… there are what, 3 active firms including the W3C pushing for Semantics? Each with their own idea of what is “standard.”
sorry…
like others have stated… if social media outlets can push it (facebook, youtube, flikr), perhaps we can win… but large market support sadly must continue.
Allen Harper
29 Aug 08 at 7:24 am
I just checked and 74.5% of my client’s traffic is on IE6. Of course the design we use also works well on Netscape 4 and Lynx, but they don’t seem to be as popular…
Kearns
29 Aug 08 at 7:54 am
[...] not alone in making it. Recently Apple and 37signals very openly dropped IE 6 support as well. In addition websites like IE Death March are appearing to rally web developers to the cause of a unified internet. We’re proud to [...]
Creative Design & Illustration | Cubicle Ninjas | Call a ninja at 630.940.6337.
29 Aug 08 at 9:24 am
We’re officially dropping IE 6 support at our design firm as of today! Thanks IE Death March for reminding us why it is a bold but important cause.
Josh of Cubicle Ninjas
29 Aug 08 at 9:28 am
whats the best way to make a “please upgrade your browser” page or popup box, i’m trying to do it for my page. Maybe someone can make a small script so people can put it on their websites as well?
Harrison
29 Aug 08 at 11:19 am
@Harrison: I have the save the developers script installed on this site. You can get it at http://savethedevelopers.org - I’ll be putting something together for IE Death March soon.
M. Dave Auayan
29 Aug 08 at 11:49 am
Explicitely dropping IE6 would mean recommending IE7. And since IE7’s CSS support sucks (not as much as IE6’s, but still a lot), I’m not too keen into recommending it in any way.
I kid you not: in my code, there are quite a lot of IE6-specific code, my at least as much code that’s IE-specific (i.e. applies to IE6 and 7).
Fabien
29 Aug 08 at 3:31 pm
Can we make this a date for everyone to dump IE completely? All versions
Jon Randy
29 Aug 08 at 10:23 pm
@M. Dave Auayan: oh cool! i’ve seen that site before but but i didn’t use the script for some reason! thanks
Harrison
29 Aug 08 at 11:25 pm
I totally agree!
As from March 2009 I will have a standard code that I will drop into my CSS which will create a pop-up saying “This site does not support IE6, please upgrade your browser”.
If a client wants IE6 support they will have to pay extra for it.
Jack
31 Aug 08 at 5:17 am
I build nothing for IE6 anymore. You can see a list of the sites at Hudin Varela. I also built, maintain, and am redesigning End6! which I run on all my sites to push people in to getting rid of it.
Undoubtedly we’ll see more of a drop after December once people are unfortunately upgraded to Vista on any new machines that they buy at Christmas.
-miquel
Hudin
31 Aug 08 at 2:50 pm
I recently decided to stop trying to fix my clients websites to work with IE6. I think this is such a great idea.
Dunkle
1 Sep 08 at 12:21 pm
I’m dropping IE6 support as well. I’ll only support company websites…. for a bit longer.
Jonno Riekwel
1 Sep 08 at 4:18 pm
Please tell me why so many people likes this torture called Microsoft Internet Explorer? Please, ban this crappy browser and start using the only standard: Firefox.
Arno Hoogwerf
2 Sep 08 at 3:33 am
Especially people who aren’t internetting that much (e.g. older people) usually hold on to IE6 with the motivation: “It works, I haven’t got any problems with it, so why upgrade it?” Time to move on and forget IE6 as browser choice for both developers and users alike.
BTW, I do not understand why IE6 doesn’t upgrade automatically to the most up to date version? This would be profit for all of us, even for M$ because less people would change to FF.
Henk
3 Sep 08 at 12:11 pm
He he, it’s poetic justice is what it is. MicroShaft stops support for an OS so we stop support for their browser. I like it.
Doug C.
5 Sep 08 at 3:07 am
It’s about bleepin’ time.
I don’t struggle all THAT much with this browser, but it is time to say good-bye!
Thanks for the post (and the encouragement!) Sign me up!
Travis Holliday
5 Sep 08 at 1:48 pm
I’d love to be able to cut all my special IE6 code out of my site. But I can’t yet. My solution is a jGrowl notification. I’m open to suggestions about the wording.
For those who can’t cut IE6 users off at the knees, but who would like to encourage them to switch or add a browser to their machine, this may be a good solution.
If IE6 users start getting notifications like this, they may add a browser or bug the IT department.
Every little bit helps.
—
You are using Internet Explorer 6.0.
xxxx™ performs many calculations, so it works best with modern browsers such as IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome.
If you have another browser, please switch to it now.
This version of xxxx™ does support IE6, but some operations will be very slow. Please be patient.
Nosredna
7 Sep 08 at 1:39 pm
>>BTW, I do not understand why IE6 doesn’t upgrade automatically to the most up to date version? This would be profit for all of us, even for M$ because less people would change to FF.
I know of companies who have built in-house web applications that rely on broken IE6 bits and don’t work on IE7. It’s a REAL mess we’ve got here.
For those people, the best solution is IE6 for the Intranet and FF for the Internet.
Nosredna
7 Sep 08 at 1:41 pm
I am definitely stopping all support after march 1st!
PS. Why not add the link to the Google Chrome beta to the post?
Ruud Welten
7 Sep 08 at 4:08 pm
You forget to mention SVG Graphics in “Things You Can’t Do In Internet Explorer 6″
H5N1
15 Sep 08 at 1:26 am
Death to IE6…
The anti-IE6 squad seems to have been gathering some momentum lately; 37Signals announced that they are phasing out support of the aged web browser, as well as Facebook and MobileMe. Even a website has been constructed, IE Death March, to revolt agains…
Scott Mallinson
17 Sep 08 at 8:32 am
I fully agree that its time to kill IE6, however I do not think that outright dropping it will work, the client effect. Therefore, I propose IE6 get TAXED to death. Meaning that if a client wants IE6 compatibility it will be immediately flagged as an added cost beyond normal scope.
Cesar
17 Sep 08 at 11:25 am
IE6 is like a used condom. Just don’t use it, don’t even touch it, don’t even think about what it would be like to use it. It’s disgusting, and should be thrown away.
How’s that for the best description ever written?
Adam Roberts
22 Sep 08 at 6:45 am
“Render the box model properly” should be under the things you can’t do in IE6 category!
Amy
24 Sep 08 at 7:17 am
I’ll stop designing around it too, so you can add Poppen Design (www.poppen.ca) to the list.
At last, somebody steps up!
Mark
30 Sep 08 at 8:04 am
I hate IE as much as the next guy, but dropping IE6 is a designer indulgence; you can only countenance such an extreme measure when your site is a personal one and you don’t really care about your users.
theCounter.com has IE6 at 37% market share. Are you seriously considering alienating that many visitors?
If you care about readership or income from your website, or if you are making a website for someone else, then you must continue to support IE6. The alternative is lunacy. Can you think of any business that would deliberately alienate 37% of its customers?
Having said that, you don’t need to make your website perfect in IE6; just make it good enough: good browsers get the full effect, and IE6 gets a slightly inferior version.
I know that hacking for IE6 is a misery, but you have to ask yourself why you are making the website. Are you making it for yourself? Fine — do as you please. Are you making it for users? Then serve them first, and put your own needs second.
Mike Hopley
30 Sep 08 at 9:13 am
@Mike Hopley:
IE6
Sept, 2006 - 81%
Sept, 2007 - 50%
Sept, 2008 - 37%
Sept, 2009 - ?
IE5
Sept, 2001 - 80%
Sept, 2002 - 47%
Sept, 2003 - 34%
Sept, 2004 - 13%
Sept, 2005 - 4%
Sept, 2006 - 2%
Sept, 2007 - 1%
Sept, 2008 - 0%
Your point is valid, but ignoring a downward trend is also lunacy. Every developer will have to weigh the benefits and every project will be have different needs. As pointed out by others, many grid based CSS frameworks and javascript frameworks do a LOT of the work for you, and for the most part, if you’re using them and a couple of the minor CSS tweaks for IE6, you probably won’t even have a problem.
M. Dave Auayan
30 Sep 08 at 10:55 am
[...] after seeing Mike Hopley’s comment, I realized I’d need a graphic to illustrate my [...]
Trending at IE Death March
30 Sep 08 at 10:56 am
Add http://www.c010depunkk.com to the list… I’ve been designing non-IE<6-compatible sites for a while now…
c010depunkk
30 Sep 08 at 12:55 pm
I got into web design in October of 2007, and haven’t given the slightest look to making my site or any site I’ve worked on look nice on ie 6. If it worked on ie 6 great, if not I didn’t care.
Add me site to the list if you will
Melech Mizrahi
2 Oct 08 at 12:39 pm
http://idroppedie6.com/
This is a site I created with a friend. It looks like momentum is building for our shared cause!
Kevin Burg
4 Oct 08 at 7:43 am
We at HomeGrownClone.com will join ye quest!
roto
6 Oct 08 at 11:26 pm
Our little niche blog staff members at (http://atchucan.blogspot.com) have actually been deleting their IE browsers and switching to Mozilla Firefox for about 3 months now. And we’ve all felt that we’ve made the world a better place. Our current 98 suscrbers by mail have done so too…
Atchucan Gaming
18 Oct 08 at 1:55 am
I should correct myself: the numbers from theCounter.com are misleading. See this post for details:
http://www.thewebsqueeze.com/forum/Web-Development-in-Genera-f56/Thecountercom-Stats-Misl-t2773.html&hl=thecounter
Using Net Applications’ numbers instead, the figures are more optimistic: IE6 is at about 25%.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=3&qpcustom=Microsoft%20Internet%20Explorer%206.0
This is still too high for me to drop IE6, but at least the knave’s doom approaches faster than I thought.
Mike Hopley
22 Oct 08 at 3:36 pm
Add to things you can’t do in IE6:
Style an HR using CSS (Workaround: wrap it in a div)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum83/4412.htm
AJH
12 Nov 08 at 12:38 pm
well IE6 has been a nightmare for a lot web designers these past
years.
Ie7 continued the tradition have most of the time to work around its problems
But what is going on IE8 beta looks even worse
Even apple.com site does not render properly
i had really tried hard to download qucktime
(the download button was covered with overlapping text)
So i suggest to kill all IE project altogether
Take care
Ioannis
P.S. try googles chrome
everything runs smoothly even on the first beta version!
Ioannis
12 Nov 08 at 3:02 pm
Not sure if you want to add this to the “IE6 can’t do”s, but it cannot disable single options in a select. I believe IE7 can’t either, but IE6 certainly cannot.
Matt
16 Nov 08 at 9:30 am
You can always make IE6 users’ life sad: http://browsesad.com
Michal
17 Nov 08 at 9:21 am