Link to stopie6 campaign is stopie6.com (not org).

Its not the fact that us designers will immediately STOP support for IE6, its the fact that we HAVE to do something otherwise this beast will STAY around.

I am a designer that just hates taking the extra day and headaches to fix IE6 at the end of every development cycle. But I still do it, because I HAVE to. And I will continue to do so until I no longer have to.

I sympathize with you corporate users who have no choice. But if all of us just accept the fate that IE6 is going no where, then it will not. We all have to continually try to get rid of it.

I do not agree with refusing access to IE6 on my websites. Some websites can. Mine can not, I rely on each and every visitor being able to use my sites. Its a business. But I will be damned if I sit on my ass and just LET people continue to use it without any clue as to what they are doing.

Its not about forcing change, its about not ignoring change.

This is a good article on IE6 too:
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200902/no_more_pixel_perfectionism_in_ie_6/

I feel the pain for those who are stuck with IE6(gov, corp inhouse designers). I feel a site doesn’t have to look pixel perfect in IE6, but should still function.

However, as Joost pointed out, things don’t have to be pixel perfect. For example, if you want to ignore the PNG problems (as long as the content is still readable and the site usable) then IE6 users aren’t going to care too much that there’s no semi-transparency on an image.

The fixes in my article (which you’ve kindly featured) on IE6 bugs and fixes should resolve 95% of IE6’s major layout bugs so if you look for them while you’re coding (e.g. put display:inline on all floated elements with margins on the same side as the float) then you won’t even encounter the double margin bug. Just get into the habit of fixing these problems before they even occur, educate yourselves and 9 times out of 10 when you come to testing you should find that the page renders just fine

I am one of those in house designers forced to use IE6. I petitioned for Firefox but corporate acquisitions said IE6 is the only approved browser (duh. That’s why I want FF!). We are not allowed to upgrade any software on our computers; they are locked down.

So, sometimes it’s not that users don’t want to or don’t know how to upgrade, but their companies say they can’t. Specifically for us, apparently IE7 crashes our machines (some monkey business they did with the imaging to get other programs to run). Oh, and we’re still using Lotus Notes for email, too.

The problem is, it never ends like that or will end very slow. If it is still >18% after 8 years, it’ll probably be >10% after 5 years from now on.

On the other hand, I agree that not every website has to be pixel-perfect in all browsers. But mostly, IE6 problems get bigger than double-margins. Those extra margins can cause the div-blocks to collapse or not being able to use PNG transparency because of “a browser version” is at least sad.

On the other hand, I clearly see your points & the difficulty in applying this to clients. And I don’t know what is the best approach to follow in such situations, because you’re right, clients won’t accept this.

For a project I’m working on, we decided not to support it after few hours working on compatibility (& I decided to write this post after that). And this is what I’ll do for anything new.

For WRD, I’ll take an action, but decide -how strict it will be- with the help of the comments – after hearing more thoughts about the subject.

Last week we started an amazing anti-IE6 campaign in Norway. Today – one week later 12 of the 13 largest Norwegian sites (alexa.com http://bit.ly/QNJzq ) have joined the #IE6 campaign with banners.

I’ve posted a thorough description of the campaign and how we united a country around it in only 48 hours:

http://www.larre.com/2009/02/23/the-norwegian-web-changed-in-48-hours-how-is-that-possible/

And they, well they, I’m afraid almost all of them, can’t, can’t afford or just don’t know how to upgrade.

So really, just get your conditional comments and underscore hacks out and do what you’re getting paid for. You are the professional right? It is not THAT hard.

In my opinion it doesn’t need to be pixel perfect (who notices that double margin anyway?), that flashy javascript can fail (it’s unobtrusive right?), but the content should be accessible, the navigation should work.

If we have the right to complain about stuff (firefox plugins, whatever) not being available for Mac or Linux, which together have less users than IE6, we should also give the less fortunate Internet users a reasonable experience.

Soon, my friend, hopefully within a few years, once it gets below 1% or 2%, but right now it’s too early.
That being said, I applaud Google and other big corporations who can and do make a stand.

But in the mean time, you won’t hear me telling my clients that 1/6th of their visitors can’t checkout their cart because their browser is outdated. (Best viewed with… anyone?)