Google phases out support for IE6 – So what?
If you work with the web, by now you’ve probably heard that on Thursday afternoon Google announced they will be phasing out support for IE6 on some of their key web properties, namely Google Docs and Google Sites.
Tech writers are all abuzz over this development, and many of them are suggesting that this marks the final nail in the coffin for the much derided legacy web browser, but as a front-end engineer with 10 years of experience building web sites I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.
I often hear developers complaining about IE6 and I’ve certainly done my share of venting at the quirks of it’s rendering engine but supporting it is really not that hard anymore.
No, IE6 doesn’t do a great job of implementing web standards, but by now those deviations are well lamented and, thankfully, well documented.
Besides, IE6 is still a common visitor to many sites. In fact, according to Net Applications IE6 still makes up nearly 25% of browser traffic during the week.
1 in 4 weekday visitors to your site may be using IE6.
If that number seems high, go take a look at Much Ado About IE6, a post by Mark Trammell outlining the results of some research with people who visited Digg using IE6. It turns out that most of the people they interviewed are using IE6 on the computer at their office because they have no choice; either they don’t have administrator access on their computer or they have been told by someone (corporate IT, I’m looking at you) that they are not allowed to upgrade. As Mark rightfully points out, telling these people that their browser is not supported is “not only pointless; it’s sadistic.”
Now, if you’re Google, perhaps you can afford to ignore those users; the rest of us need to ask ourselves some hard questions.
- How important to your business model are visitors from a corporate office?
Picture one of those customers using IE6 because they have no alternative.
- What kind of experience is that person going to have when they dial up your website?
And
- How will that customer’s experience impact their perception of your brand?
Finally
- How is that going to impact your bottom line?
Those are the questions that actually determine whether or not you need to support IE6, and you can see that they have nothing to do with Google.
30 Jan 2010 07:07 pm davidalpert 3 comments
I suppose the question that I have is how to get the other 25% to find the alternative that they apparently don’t have. There must be _some_ way that people can upgrade from a browser that is 9 years old. Having a big player like Google take a stance might force some of those IE6 people to go from “I can’t upgrade” to, “I don’t want to, but I’ll do it”.
With that in mind, forcing your users to upgrade against what they want to do will definitely be a hit on your brand and the way that your users perceive your site/product. You will now appear as a bully.
Ultimately, I suppose it depends on the trade off between development time and how far you go to please your user. Although IE6 support is well documented, it requires time on the developer’s part learn if they were not forced to learn how to support it from day one. I, for one, am an example of someone who has never had to deal with IE6 because I started with IE7 and FF2. So, for me to support IE6 will be quite the task and I would prefer to avoid that development cost by having my users upgrade to a better browser.
Okay, but look at the statistics that Digg published; most of the people visiting Digg.com with IE6 (those who were willing to fill out their quick survey, anyhow) claimed that the reason they were using IE6 is that they were not allowed to upgrade. In other words, their IT department was preventing it.
Some, if not all, of those users are using IE6 in an environment where it is not possible for them to move from “I can’t upgrade” to “I don’t want to, but I’ll do it” as you suggest; they are actively prevented from upgrading by corporate IT policies.
In my experience, corporate IT is going to drag their feet when it comes to upgrading off of IE6 because they have a huge amount of time and money invested in apps that were built for and tested only in IE6. Many of those sites and apps do not work in newer browsers. In those environments, then it has moved from an individual choice to an enterprise-level choice, and the enterprise cannot necessarily see it’s way clear to invest in rebuilding those IE6-dependent apps.
While they still depend on IE6, they cannot upgrade.
And while they cannot upgrade, and they remain a core part of your business model, supporting IE6 are table stakes; dropping IE6 is not an option.
Yeah, but until someone starts to stand up, there’s really no reason for those dinosaur IT depts to get things rolling. If more sites stop working, more people complain. More people complain and stuff gets done.
Squeaky wheel and all that jazz.