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Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development?

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Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development?

#1

Post by omgsean »

With the release of IE9 it's becoming clear that without a solid up-front discussion with clients about browser compatibility, they may expect their website to work in four versions of Internet Explorer. For some sites this is fairly easy, and a couple of star hacks in the CSS will make it usable in IE6, but for clients who want the latest and greatest, sometimes IE6 compatibility isn't really realistic, or else just very tedious and time consuming.

It seems to me there are a few of ways to deal with this problem, but I'm not totally happy with any approach.

1) List IE6 development as a separate line item, with a cost beside it that the client can opt to go for or not. The problem with this is they could take that estimate to another company who might say "well our websites work in EVERY browser, no extra charge", whether or not that's actually true.

2) Tell clients up front that if they want a website that uses cutting-edge front end technologies, they'll have to live without IE6 support. Offer to install an upgrade banner/alert for no extra charge. A lot of clients don't understand that IE6 is turning 9 next year, or they don't understand that using a 9 year old browser is like driving a 25 year old car.

3) Continue along the same path of just making sure everything works in IE6, even though it slows down development, adds to costs, limits the design and programming departments, and contributes to developer alcoholism and severe workplace swearing.

This problem has to be cropping up at every design/development studio that builds websites using the newest technologies. How do the rest of you deal with it?

Re: Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development?

#3

Post by charlesmarshall »

For me it just depends upon the type of site I'm working on.

In these competitive times you need to support as close to 100% of the sites user base as possible. If the site drops 10-12% to a rival because it lacks ie6 support thats not going to go down well at all.

I do like the car analogy, but if you have a 25 year old car & you can't get a newer one, it's rather harsh. You can get away with it as long as the percentage is low enough.

On backends (cms/admin areas etc) then this is were you can specify what browser can be used and ignore ie6 as long as you can explain why.

For my work projects ie6 is a must as it still registers around 10% of visitors. Personal projects tend to be more techy with virtually 0% ie6, so no need to support it.

I look forward to when I can ignore ie6 completely!

Re: Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development?

#6

Post by imp »

I think I'm in the minority, but I will fully support IE6 until it's less than about 5% of traffic to a website I'm working on. Once you know IE6's quirks, it's not that hard to work around them. I think the benefit of an additional 10% or 15% or web traffic outweighs a few extra hours of development. Again, it sounds like most people disagree, but I developed a somewhat complex ajax app back when there was only Firefox 2 and IE6 and it wasn't that bad. I'm not in charge of a big design studio, but that's my policy for side projects and part-time clients that I work for. They shouldn't have to care about IE6. It should just work for them.

Re: Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development?

#7

Post by maxdemarzi »

If your website will have a tilt to "Enterprise Customers" (worker bees in Fortune 500s) in any way then you must support IE 6. You have no option.

Otherwise forget it for now. "Early adopters" are on the cutting edge (browser wise) anyway. You can always accommodate IE 6 bugs later on if the site "makes it".

Re: Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development?

#8

Post by keltex »

I think that you have to look at the client's visitor profile before you make this decision. If a client's site sees 10%+ IE 6 visitors (and many of mine do), you can't simply say we're not going to support this technology.

Often I tell them that we will review the site in IE 6 and make sure that it's "functional" but we don't guarantee it will be pixel perfect unless they pay for the extra work.

Also I don't like the IE banner / alert option. Maybe you want to try to proselytize the death of IE6, but I don't think it's appropriate to force your paying clients to do the same.

Re: Ask HN: What is your policy on IE6 development?

#9

Post by eswat »

I simply don't cater for IE6 anymore. Not for contract work or my own sites (IE6 use for my sites hovers around 3% and it wasn't until it hit 10% where I decided to not care for the browser). Hell, even my corporate dayjob is deprecating IE6 development (we're in the health insurance industry).

If I'm doing contract work I usually spit it out early that I won't be catering for IE6. It is up to them to figure out whether the lack of an IE6-friendly frontend would harm them or not (I deal mostly with the same clients I've had for years, so they trust their metrics and me by now).

It hasn't happened yet, but if a client demanded I had to cater a project for IE6, I won't be afraid of firing them.

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