Departika, a graphic and web design studio

The Industry

IE6 Support is a Warm Gun

There has been a lot of bickering discussion regarding whether we should stop supporting IE6 and, of course, both sides of the argument are equally as loud and zealous about their reasoning behind their stance. The topic has been discussed, at length, at places like Digg and by people like Paul Boag and Noah Stokes. There is no question that most web developers and designers wish that they didn’t have to deal with the notorious bugs that have plagued IE6 for the last 8 years, but the reality is, we’ve all done fine and we’re still alive in spite of the browser-that-refuses-to-die.

Lately, however, I’ve been noticing something interesting: supporters of dropping IE6 are, for the most part, web developers.  One the other hand, those who insist we keep tolerating IE6 are mostly web designers. Now, one of the interesting things about the web is that there is a lot of overlap between these two camps. Designers are having to get their hands dirty with HTML and CSS, and even into some real programming with Javascript while developers are having to take much more of a role in managing the aesthetics (with widely varying degrees of success, mind you). But, for the sake of this article, I’m talking about people who create web pages vs. people who create web applications.

When I say web pages, I’m referring to sites that mostly center around content. The purpose of the site is content and visitors to the website are usually there for the content. Things like blogs, newspapers, photo-sharing websites and your plain-old company website fall into this category.  By referring to the other genre of websites as web applications, I’m talking about the hosted services that are focused on the features that they provide.  Think of web-based email, word processing, online presentation tools, and project collaboration apps.  Hopefully the distinction here is clear and hopefully you’re already starting to see where I’m going with this.

If the primary focus of your website is content, the issue of supporting IE6 is a moot point (which I assume is why web designers get so up-in-arms about the whole argument). You want your content to be seen by as many eyes as possible, which is nice since is also a lot easier to do with content.  Content is very portable.  Text is especially easy to transport and manipulate and we’ve got a decent set image format that are supported pretty much universally.  Everything on top of the content is really just sugar.  Allowing text to resize gracefully, adding nice dissolves between images and even having rounded corners and drop shadows on the content’s container all add to experiencing the content, but don’t add to content itself.  So, in regards to IE6, the content is still the same whether you have CSS3 rounded corners around the content or not. And, the fact the someone is coming to your website to view your content in IE6, or any out-dated browser, should not keep them from being able to do so.  However, every single browser to have to same experience is unreasonable.

However, if you’re focusing on a web app, you’re focusing on the features you provide, just like a desktop application.  And, just like desktop applications, many of the features rely on the platform on which they are built. So, for a web app to not support older browsers versions is akin to an application supporting not supporting older versions of operating systems.  Developers of an OS X application have to make the decision of if they are going to make use of the some of the new features found in Apple’s latest release. In doing so, they alienate users (and market share) or if they are going put in the extra work the make their product available on older systems.  But that’s okay for application.  No one expects the new iMovie to work, on an old G3 clamshell iBook running Panther.

So, I think for a web application to not support an older browser like IE6 is a valid choice.  But, the website that is blocking IE6 users from viewing their content by telling them they need to upgrade is just being silly.