IE6? Haven’t we had enough?
April 27th, 2009 1 CommentsRecently, we had a discussion on IE6. Now I know that that sounded generic, given that almost all web design topics in one way or another, ties back to the standard adherence of IE6, or its lack of. But basically, the theme of the topic is embedded within this quote.
If you want to become a successful web designer you’d better find ways to make your coding almost seamless in all browsers.
Personally, I disagree, form doesn’t necessarily explicitly follow the function, the design should express the function of your website, but it should not be the function itself. In this case, even if the design isn’t compatible cross browser, as long as the function is cross compatible, then there’s nothing that you would lose.
Of course, you would not want your visitors to see a broken design that renders the page unusable, but there’s a fine line between unusable and unpleasing. As designers, it’s our job to make presumptions about our visitors. There’s a significance level of the audience we’re appealing to and the proportion of them who will use a specific browser that may be incompatible with our code. We have to blindly choose a significant margin that we don’t want to go over. In the current atmosphere, most modern browsers will render according to the modern standards. The main exception is IE6. However, IE6 currently have less than 20% of the marketshare. Now do not be fooled, this is a very large percent of visitors, there’s also a trend (shown to be true by the introduction of Chrome) that all new thirdparty browsers (non-Microsoft) will only steal market shares from FF, Opera, or the mainstream modern browsers. But since the release of IE8, we’ll most likely see a decrease in the IE6 Marketshare, going most likely below 15%.
Even then, 15% of the visitors from the general webusers will be visiting your site with an outdated browser, what do we do?
Now let’s turn everything around. The trouble comes from our attempts at making a site cross-compatible, a one time investment that we all believe to be worth it. But is it? From this point on I will be going against what I’ve been telling you.
Here’s where I’m going with. IE6 isn’t going away anytime soon, we have a whole cluster of conservative designers preaching the importance of cross-compatibility at the cost of design aesthetics and semantic code mark-up. These would be the same people who puts it in our minds that if even a single part of our website looks bad to a group of people, they will all bolt instantly.
These are the people keeping IE6 alive.
Recently, there’s been a movement to end IE6 once and for all. It’s an ultimatum to users of IE6 telling them to upgrade or seek their services elsewhere. While I’m not saying that this is necessarily a good practice, it nullifies everything that the conservatives rails against letting go of IE6. Let me explain.
The main fear of creating designs that break on IE6 is the fear that we would not be able to estimate how much of our users we will lose. It’s this unknown that makes it difficult for us to estimate the profit margins or any other statistics that depends on the website as a media. Now if we impose an ultimatum on the users, we knowingly and voluntarily let those clients go. In doing so, we lose money, but in doing so, we also gain 2 things.
1. It turns the profit model from estimating losses to estimating bonuses. After we impose an ultimatum, we would then be readily sure of how much percent of the clients we will have lost. But at the same time, instead of fearing for people who would turn away at a broken design, we would instead have people upgrade their browsers and choose to go on with our service. This is not saying that we will turn a profit, it’s only saying that we can turn these users around
2. It creates an incentive to switch to more modern browsers. I think one of the many things that we don’t realize or expect is that rather than going into a screeching and grinding halt, the clients number will suffer a sudden dip, but will slowly recover. People tend to see things as black and white. “If you cut off IE support, they will never come back.” They fail to realize that the whole purpose to begin with is to try to bring an end to something that we all loath. In sacrificing a small amount, they will be able to finally be rid of their most troubling problems once and for all, and begin a movement to end it for other designers as well.
On a more personal level, being web designers, we’re all liberals on some level, that’s just how we are. But on that scale, there’s a subscale ranging from the moderates to the militant far far left. I admit, my approach is militant at best, and in so doing, some may regard me as a conservative on this issue. I’ve seen it come and go, IE is no longer the champion of the browser market. Yet even in its decline it still obstinately refuses to give up hold. Many times I’ve asked myself, is it worth it to keep up with an outdated browser that get’s less than 20% of the market share, but still large enough for me to worry over it. It is a weed that won’t die, you can stomp on it with the more modern browsers such as firefox, and you can plant over it with the newer versions of IE, but no matter what, it just won’t die. The other side is telling me to wait, to be patient, to keep on coding for it so as to not lose any visitors, but the truth is, where is the initiative to end IE6 once and for all? Where? If we keep on supporting IE6, and only post a small meager sign advising visitors to upgrade, then not only are we not going to get rid of IE6, we’re the ones keeping it alive.
There are two fronts in this battle. On one side, we have the browser market itself evolving, and from that we hope that IE6 may become obsolete one of these days. However, as the launch of Chrome recently showed, releases of “new gen” browsers tends to steal users away from, not IE6, but Firefox. The only way to smooth out IE6 then would be to wait for Microsoft to release newer versions of IE, and that could take a long time. On the other front are the designers themselves protesting against IE6. Anything from the subtle sign telling users to upgrade or switch browsers, to the radical measures of forcibly dropping support for IE6 users. As the designers, we are only in control of that second front. So wouldn’t it be logical that we should be the people who should, in essence, bring an end to IE6, given that we are the people who are most effected by its existence and that we are the very people who creates the websites that visitors views?
Ok, now here’s the main opposition to this militant approach. People tends to think short terms. What would happen to the IE6 users? What would happen to those who can not, for one reason or another, switch browsers? Understandably, this is a real concern for many of us. However, things aren’t always as black and white as it seems. The main reason that people don’t want to switch browsers is due to the fact that people like mainstream. They believe that because IE6 is by default installed on their computer, and that it has caused no problems for them, that it must be the standard browser. By blindly conforming to this principle, they become intimidated when they are told to upgrade their browsers, some even adopt a doctrine of alienation that if a particular piece of software is what they believe to be mainstream, then it isn’t safe. Now I’m sure you have all known such people. They take comfort in the fact that if a page doesn’t work on IE6, then it is broken, since most to all of the other pages works perfectly. We recognize this innate ignorance on the users part, after all, they paid for the machine, it’s theirs to use as they wish.
That doesn’t leave us hopeless. We fail to recognize that if more and more pages begin to appear broken in IE6, then these users will fall out of their comfort zone and begin to question whether their browser really is as standard compliant as they had originally thought. If we can successfully put this doubt into the visitor’s mind and convince them of the cold hard truth, then we will in fact begin the process that eventually ends it all. However, it must be a risk that we’re willing to take. Businesses needs to recognize that this will cut profits, harshly too, but they need to also recognize that this trend won’t continue. If we can get a significant portion of the internet to do something like this, then we will be surprised at how efficient this truly will be. But then again, this is our classic chicken-and-egg dilema. We want this. Badly. But we’re also apprehensive about how little others are doing to supplement this. In a way, this is analogous to the rise of HD-TV. Distribution sectors are reluctant to sell these risky, out of the worldly expensive TV’s, especially when there aren’t many HD-Channels out there. The major network stations in the mean while are also reluctant to adopt HD-Channels since so few people own a HD-TV. It’s this paradoxical cycle that led many people to speculate that there’s no hope for HD-TV. Well, look at where we are now? This is essentially the same situation, we should be willing to take risks, and as designers, we, who would be most significantly affected by this, should be the ones to take the initiative first. And in doing so, creates a passage for the larger businesses to follow our leads. If we don’t do this, then who will? It’s a risk, but better we take it then live in the obstinate oppression of spending more then enough time trying to find workarounds for IE6.
With this said, I see it as a justifiable cause to voluntarily block support from IE-6 Based users. If you are going to argue it on a materialistic principal solely, at least read what I have to say before blindly preach conservative values at me.
This could be the thing that ends it all – an Ultimatum.