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I don't know how to IE6

blog.colbyrabideau.com

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Re: I don't know how to IE6

#101

Post by planb »

nostrademons wrote: post #61
melling wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google dropped IE6 support for YouTube over a year ago. They are dropping Google Apps support for IE7 on Aug 1st (that's today for some people reading this). For search results it's probably more worthwhile and not as hard to support the IE's but for their other apps they say they are only supporting that two most recent browsers.

Google Search dropped mainstream support for IE6 last fall. IE6 users are served a degraded experience that is roughly on-par feature-wise with Google Search as it existed in May 2010, and new features are no longer rolled out to IE6.

I just couldn't help but think how cool would it be if they slowly added spiderwebs and dust to the pages that are served to IE6 users.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#102

Post by flomo »

nbashaw wrote: post #45
enjo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the domain. That two percent can be the difference between wildly profitable and failing. After all, Google still happily sells clicks to IE 6 users. If you're business relies on external ads and optimizing conversion rates, IE 6 remains a priority.

I seriously doubt IE6 support can be the difference between "wildly profitable and failing" for any business. Can you name one example of a failing company that started supporting IE6 and then became wildly profitable?

Maybe not in 2011. But a couple years ago, it wasn't unusual to see 50% IE6 traffic on corporate-oriented apps.

And, yes, I can give a few examples were the webdevs ignored legacy browser support and got burned.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#103

Post by notJim »

JanezStupar wrote: post #98
DrStalker wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE6 support is not pointless if your target market includes banks and large corporates which are still using IE6.

They are wasting money by using IE6. Yes you can argue, that they pay for IE6 development and thus its their money and that we should not care. However it is we who sell Win7 and IE6 support at the same time. And by supporting IE6 we lock our customers into stone age even more. There are plenty of alternatives for any software that had to be done via ActiveX 7 years ago. It is completely our (industry) fault that ban…

Yes, it costs money to stop using IE6. It also costs money to deploy, test, train users to use, rewrite all other applications to use a new browser. When the former cost is greater than the lesser, businesses will upgrade.

I fail to see how its the fault of outside vendors that their clients or customers are still using an old browser. And if it's an in-house IT shop, it's purely a cost/business decision. You make it sound as if corporations are not upgrading out of laziness.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#104

Post by madaxe »

ansonparker wrote: post #73

I look after an Australian e-commerce site. About 6.5% of our users are on IE6 (I assume they're mainly office-workers on shitty, out-dated PCs). That is way too big a chunk of revenue to ignore in the name of ideals or standards or what-have-you. But please, feel free to redirect any IE6 visitors to your blog to whatever the latest "IE6 is shit and you're an idiot" single serving site of the moment is. I agree that…

You're lucky - one of our clients is an Australian e-tailer, with ~30% IE6 traffic - I'd just figured that Aus was really behind on the whole browser thing.

Anyhow - agreed entirely, we support IE6 whenever theres >1% of visitors using it, as it's all potential revenue. That said, we have noted that IE6 users tend to spend less, so... stupid and cheap. Still, net win, though.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#105

Post by _b8r0 »

First of all, welcome to the real world. While it may seem appropriate for your job that supporting a vintage browser from the start of the millennium is a bizarre concept, but for many people, particularly in business applications it's still a requirement and is likely to remain one for a good few years yet.

As tempting as it would be to write a lawn-getting-off comment about some of the garbage I've had to deal with in the past, let me just say that it doesn't matter when you start, there's always legacy support needed. At the moment, having IE6 as your legacy platform is a relative luxury compared to having to support a mish-mash of 32 and 16-bit platforms. There is only one IE6. Count your blessings.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#107

Post by JanezStupar »

notJim wrote: post #103
JanezStupar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are wasting money by using IE6. Yes you can argue, that they pay for IE6 development and thus its their money and that we should not care. However it is we who sell Win7 and IE6 support at the same time. And by supporting IE6 we lock our customers into stone age even more. There are plenty of alternatives for any software that had to be done via ActiveX 7 years ago. It is completely our (industry) fault that ban…

Yes, it costs money to stop using IE6. It also costs money to deploy, test, train users to use, rewrite all other applications to use a new browser. When the former cost is greater than the lesser, businesses will upgrade. I fail to see how its the fault of outside vendors that their clients or customers are still using an old browser. And if it's an in-house IT shop, it's purely a cost/business decision. You make it…

Same old set of excuses, covering gross negligence and incompetence that is going on in corporate IT departments. Its hard to train users and IT is against it - are two largest straw men arguments on this topic.

I was leading a development effort on this type of project and I took strong position that IE6 shall not be supported (due to some conflicting technical requirements in Request for tender). This specific IT department was delighted with our stance, since nowadays there are literally less than 5% of users who actually prefer their archaic IE6 solutions (which are usually people who don't actually use thy system, but are in position of "power"). This specific IT department also begged us to raise hardware requirements from 500Mhz Pentium III with 512Mb RAM (since that would enable them to push for an upgrade) - which we didn't.

Anyways - end users (yes those "computer illiterate" old ladies, everybody keeps on patronizing) were delighted by added usability that got enabled by using modern browsers. We were able to fulfill all the requirements a lot cheaper than dragging IE6 for that knucklehead department head would allow us to.

The fault of outside vendors is that they don't tell/show their users what they are missing on. The fault of outside vendors is that they don't explain security risks they are being exposed to, by using archaic software. The fault of outside vendors is that they don't help their customers to not pile even more opportunity costs related to stone age software.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#108

Post by DrStalker »

JanezStupar wrote: post #98
DrStalker wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE6 support is not pointless if your target market includes banks and large corporates which are still using IE6.

They are wasting money by using IE6. Yes you can argue, that they pay for IE6 development and thus its their money and that we should not care. However it is we who sell Win7 and IE6 support at the same time. And by supporting IE6 we lock our customers into stone age even more. There are plenty of alternatives for any software that had to be done via ActiveX 7 years ago. It is completely our (industry) fault that ban…

Any company still on IE6 has enough inertia that they aren't going to change for an external vendor, no matter how much that vendor hates IE6 support.

Re: I don't know how to IE6

#110

Post by hnbla »

TamDenholm wrote: post #11

I gladly offer to support IE6 to my clients, but i tell them it costs £50,000 in order to do it. Of those clients that initially asked me to support it none of them have taken up on the offer so far. :P

I do almost the same thing. Any fixes I have to do that are IE6 specific has a 3x hourly rate and i tell my clients so. It pushes the clients to really consider if it's worth it or not. Especially since these fixes usually take a lot of time too.

I'm thinking whether it's time to do the same with IE7 yet, at least maybe 2x rate.

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