Should I still cater for IE6 or is it time to move on?

[webmaster1]

Randomly, I just viewed this website in IE6 and I noticed that the home page is not in any way geared towards it and SMF 2.0 RC for the forum is not without it's aesthetic glitches either.

 

I just wanted to understand whether this is the consensus or whether this is simply a decision made by the phpfreaks staff.

 

As anyone familiar with CSS will know, IE6 is fairly buggy when it comes floats, margins and other undesirable effects. In fact, right now, I've wasted a good few hours trying to get my customized theme for SMF 2.0 RC to work on IE6 as it does in FF and Chrome.

 

I'd gladly forget IE6 like a bad smell but with 10% usage share (W3 schools) potentially one in ten visitors could end up seeing an erratic layout.

 

Do I move forward and snub IE6 users like this sites home page does (only in an aesthetic sense of course) or do I continue to modify my CSS on IE6 until I reach a brink of madness?

[Tazerenix]

what i'd do is just scrap support for IE6 and put a PHP redirect in the header to an error page if the users browser is IE6 so they wont see the webpage

[trq]

what i'd do is just scrap support for IE6 and put a PHP redirect in the header to an error page if the users browser is IE6 so they wont see the webpage

 

That's a terrible idea. At work we simply have a message in our footer saying page requires at least ie7+. There's no need to send them away.

[TheFilmGod]

what i'd do is just scrap support for IE6 and put a PHP redirect in the header to an error page if the users browser is IE6 so they wont see the webpage

 

What if the whole website is completely messed up with IE6?? I have that problem with my website and IE6.

 

That's a terrible idea. At work we simply have a message in our footer saying page requires at least ie7+. There's no need to send them away.

[webmaster1]

what i'd do is just scrap support for IE6 and put a PHP redirect in the header to an error page if the users browser is IE6 so they wont see the webpage

 

That's a terrible idea. At work we simply have a message in our footer saying page requires at least ie7+. There's no need to send them away.

 

I was thinking that a footer might not be obvious enough. What about a header above my standard header that only appears if IE6 is detected (i.e. an if and an echo)?

 

According to gs.statcounter.com 10% of my target audience (Ireland) use IE6. About 30% use IE7 and 20% use FF3.

 

One in ten just seems like a lot. I'm thinking of folks whose work place still use crummy IE6 or even old computers in libraries.

 

 

[webmaster1]

Hmm, the idea of using a different style sheet for IE6 just popped into my head.  :-\

[haku]

You can add extra stylesheets to your page that are only loaded by IE6, using conditional comments around the <link> tags. This way only IE6 will load the page, and therefore you can make IE6 specific changes in that stylesheet.

 

As to whether you should bother - well what's most important are YOUR stats. So if you already have a site up and running live, put some analytics on it, then check back in 2-3 weeks and see what browsers people are using to access it with. That is the most important test.

 

As for serving up an error page when someone tries to access it with IE6, that's just plain bad thinking. Better to let them see a broken site than give them nothing at all.

 

If you don't want to make the size IE6 compliant, then you can use the above mentioned conditional comments to add a small warning somewhere visible in your site that informs them that the site is not built to work in IE6.

[webmaster1]

Cheers, haku. I'll most likely go with the conditional statement on link element.

 

It's a new site so I can't base it on any stats other than national browser shares.

 

For SMF, I might see if I can just swap out the theme completely rather than just the style sheet.