Internet Explorer 6 is older than the oldest eMac

Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. A year later apple released the eMac.

I only know one person with an eMac and he’s my grandad. He loves his eMac and it suits him just fine. It has 40GB of hard drive space, no CD drive and no USB 2 to hook up an external CD drive. But that’s fine for him. He recognises the limitations of his machine and works within them. Will the latest OS X run on it? Nope. But why not? Why isn’t Apple producing a completely separate version of Snow Leopard that can run on his 10 year old machine?

Well, because that would be ridiculous. My grandad doesn’t expect Apple to do that and neither does anyone else because his machine is 10 years old!

So why then do we as web developers still dedicate a hugely disproportionate amount of time to making websites work in IE6? It is no exaggeration to say that making a website work ( and by work I mean look like and function like it does in a modern browser) in IE6 can take over 100% longer than the time it took to make the same website work in a modern browser. And I bet most of us don’t charge for that time do we?

I know that there is still an argument that corporations are tied to a version of IE and simply can not upgrade. But are they all sitting there using eMac’s? I don’t think so.

So from now on I will no longer be supporting or developing for IE6. I won’t even look at a site in IE6 unless the client has specifically requested it and are paying for the extra time. And even then I will have to be persuaded.

I am also going to start doing my bit to eradicate the world of IE6. I will be adding a browser detection script to all of my plugins and themes that will alert users of archaic browsers that unless they own an eMac and are using dial up Internet they really should update their browser.

Tags | 6, browser, ie6, internet-explorer, microsoft