I see your point, and I agree, IE6 will not truly die until completely phased out by Microsoft. That being said… I’ve had an idea for a while and as with many ideas I’ve had, this idea came with a great desire to do it! So I did it, I created Death To IE6 http://deathtoie6.com, which is a script website owners can install on there site to attempt to help IE6 users to upgrade and optionally block IE6 users from their site.

From some of the feedback and reaction to the site, I’ve come to the conclusion that at least 50% (I said at least) of all IE6 use is by a computer locked to it. And admittedly this script will only cause problems for those. I mean, I can see the scenario where someone is searching for something, they find the info on a blog with this script, they get redirected and can’t upgrade, and basically miss out on the info that would be available to them had this script not been installed (although I think this would be a rare occurrence).

But on the other hand, I’m relying on website owners to make the judgment whether this is something they want to do. I understand that this script is not for all sites. Usage of it should depend on factors like what percentage of your visitors are on IE6, how much traffic the site gets overall, do you feel strongly enough about trying to help users upgrade that you are willing to potentially reject traffic to your site?

I’m assuming that most people who would install something like this probably wouldn’t get enough traffic or have a big enough audience to matter much. And it’s worth it to them if they can direct someone to upgrade. I’m sure there are still people out there using IE6 unwittingly. My mom was one case until recently lol.

In the end, we are all looking forward to saying good bye to IE6, and I suppose with or without scripts like this, your right, when MS pulls the plug, the end is near for IE6.

This is just my 2 cents. Hey thanks for following on twitter! That’s how I found your blog!

Take care,
John

There’s no eventual way to get out of a lock-in like that except incurring additional costs – be it in a platform upgrade to adopt newer technologies OR to get stuff developed that works on dated browser software. Our choice – in case we want to fully support IE 6 – is, so far, limited to whether we wish to incur that cost ourself or pass it on to the customer who made a choice that resulted in this lock-in (even if unknowingly)! Although the point on additional cost only applies if the customer wants to support “all the real browsers” + IE6, obviously.

I, for one, believe in being responsible for my choices and expect others to be responsible for theirs. Is that asking for too much or is that being unfair?

BUT that doesn’t mean you don’t have to TRY to make your website look reasonable* in all browsers. It’s called graceful degradation (or progressive enhancement depending on how you work) NOT I-can’t-be-arsed-to-do-my-job-properly-so-I-won’t-bother…

*Note the use of the word “reasonable” not “pixel perfect”

:)

I completely disagree with the idea of putting a “best viewed in” or using any script or stylesheet to make the user experience in IE6 particularly bad. I think it’s unprofessional and just bad form.

Rather, IE6 users are in some cases going to have a downgraded user experience because the browser just doesn’t support new technologies, and IE6 shouldn’t hold us back from using HTML5 and CSS3. Learning techniques for graceful degradation is now a key part of our job and will keep the web ticking over until the eventual death (with flames, chanting and much celebration) of IE6.

Whilst I don’t agree with it, why not hack Google and stick an IE filter in so there’s something with a ridiculous z-index that doesn’t allow the user of IE6 to do anything until they upgrade

Or you could all stop trying to over-design every pixel!!!!

That’ll never happen! I do agree that for some clients we can’t just drop IE6 entirely, just yet. However, like both of you mentioned we can scale back support in the sense that we don’t provide any of the new-fangled features that come with CSS3 and having a modern browser. What will be interesting, and possibly an uppercut to IE6, is when HTML5 is finally supported across the modern browsers, including in-browser databases. This will certainly provide a feature that IE6 will find impossible to support without the use of server-side code.

The next few months are going to prove extremely interesting.