Comments on: Has developing for IE6 become a sign of quality? http://www.biggiantcrayon.com/post-has-developing-for-ie6-become-a-sign-of-quality/ A Network of smaller Companies and Freelance Professionals. Fri, 08 Oct 2010 10:02:11 +0000 hourly 1 By: Wulf http://www.biggiantcrayon.com/post-has-developing-for-ie6-become-a-sign-of-quality/comment-page-1/#comment-133 Wulf Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:40:34 +0000 http://www.biggiantcrayon.com/bgc/?p=186#comment-133 I don't view it so much as a sign of quality, so much as a sign of "it works in every browser people STILL use". I wish that IE6 wasn't as popular as it is, or as common as it is, but it's still around. Pay a visit to colleges over here, their intranet relies upon IE6 to work, so they can't upgrade. The same is, lamentably, true in a lot of corporate places too. Heck, I even know of people that don't want to upgrade past IE6 because they don't understand tabbed browsing. And they still expected the same functionality in their browsers that I was getting in Firefox. Yes, sometimes I do end up with IE6 specific stylesheets, but the same is true with IE7. It's the way things are, and probably the way things will be until such times as Internet Explorer is either gone, or works in a similar fashion to Firefox, Chrome and every other Standards Compliant browser out there. So whilst I acknowledge that IE6 is there, and is a royal pain in my butt, and I work to make things look pretty in the archaic browser, I also don't go above and beyond to do so. What a final site looks like in IE6 is highly unlikely to be what the site looks like in a more modern browser. If it does, then sweet. But I'm content so long as nothing breaks horrifically. I don’t view it so much as a sign of quality, so much as a sign of “it works in every browser people STILL use”. I wish that IE6 wasn’t as popular as it is, or as common as it is, but it’s still around.

Pay a visit to colleges over here, their intranet relies upon IE6 to work, so they can’t upgrade. The same is, lamentably, true in a lot of corporate places too. Heck, I even know of people that don’t want to upgrade past IE6 because they don’t understand tabbed browsing. And they still expected the same functionality in their browsers that I was getting in Firefox.

Yes, sometimes I do end up with IE6 specific stylesheets, but the same is true with IE7. It’s the way things are, and probably the way things will be until such times as Internet Explorer is either gone, or works in a similar fashion to Firefox, Chrome and every other Standards Compliant browser out there.

So whilst I acknowledge that IE6 is there, and is a royal pain in my butt, and I work to make things look pretty in the archaic browser, I also don’t go above and beyond to do so. What a final site looks like in IE6 is highly unlikely to be what the site looks like in a more modern browser. If it does, then sweet. But I’m content so long as nothing breaks horrifically.

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