Should we punish those who can’t upgrade from IE6?
Written June 18, 2009. 11 comments.
As a supporter of web standards and accessibility, I was recently made aware of my own contradictory stance regarding the support of Internet Explorer 6. Now I know IE6 is a dirty word in the design community and I can hear you all groaning from here at the mere mention, but bear with me for a minute.
Firstly, let me get this out of the way. I despise said browser because of its poor standards support and because of the extra time typically associated with getting things to work as they should. On this very site (and many others) I even have a script that nags IE6 users to upgrade, because frankly the browser isn’t worthy of my time. I in no way endorse IE6 as a capable browser, and if you’re still using it for no other reason than you’re too lazy to upgrade, picture me wagging my finger and shaking my head at you.
Jokes aside, I think there are instances where using IE6 might not be by choice. This unexpected realisation came from the tweet of one of my Twitter ‘followers’ (I hate using that term – it makes me sound a cult leader) who thought the IE6 nags were obnoxious.
If you’re going the extra mile like I did to make life difficult to IE6 users (I not only alerted the IE6 user on every page, but I also denied them access to the page), ask yourself this: What if the user can’t upgrade?
It’s a legitimate question and one I think deserves exploring. Who are these people that can’t upgrade? Here’s a few I came up with.
- Users on a (dated) corporate network who don’t have the admin privileges to upgrade (or install an alternative)
- Users who aren’t experienced enough to install software (My Mum comes to mind)
- Users whose computers are so old or broken that any attempted browser upgrade results in failure
- Users with no incentive to change, because the sites they visit still work
- Users who don’t know about other browsers (again my Mum falls into this category)
- Windows 2000 users (Thanks to Jason for telling me this)
- Users running counterfeit versions of Windows who can’t validate in Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage (pirates are people too!)
- People with a upgradephobia
- Luddites
Yeah I made the last two up. I know what you’re thinking: None of those people come to your site; and you’d probably be right. So what does this mean in the end? That we need to keep supporting prehistoric browsers just in case? Hell no.
I think it means that at the very least, using an IE6 nag needs to be kept as less obstructive as possible. Brute force never got anyone anywhere…oh wait – that’s not true. But gentle persuasion has also been known to work wonders. You could also think about it this way: is it fair to punish the people in this list for being ignorant? Or the people who don’t have a choice?
I’ll be first to admit that sometimes my personal browser politics can cloud my judgement. But I still firmly believe it’s every designer’s duty to do their part to eradicate the Internet cancer that is IE6, but consider that we can still achieve that goal in a less offensive manner.
Of course you can be aggressive as you like and I’ll respect your choice either way, but I offer this information so we can make an informed decision instead of blindly following our peers.
Start of pageWho is That Web Guy?
Michael is a veteran web designer / developer / usability evangelist, practitioner of W3C guidelines, and currently head of the web dev unit at Stormbox, a branding and creative communications agency located in Perth, Western Australia.
That said, all personal browsing at work is done in Firefox, that serves as my sanity safe house during my 9-5. On a side note, I’ll be adding the death to IE6 script to my website.
Not knowing how to install a browser is all the more reason to try it.
Also, while I personally make it a point to keep my browsers up to date (except on testing machines, where I need to intentionally leave older browser versions available), upgrading IE is a big fat thorn in my side. It inevitably requires a reboot and downtime, and the installation process is generally time-consuming. I can totally see why people would not want to even bother upgrading, especially if there are no obvious benefits for the average Joe. If it worked last year, and it worked yesterday, then it should work today.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17681961/Why-Your-Company-Should-Offer-an-Alternative-to-IE6
-Arsen
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