stuff to read, apparently/may 2010

ie6 no more

dead browser walking and about bloody time…

One thing I touch upon elsewhere in the site is how different web browsers can render pages quite differently. This isn't directly a problem for most users or clients, because normal users typically only use one browser.

It is a problem for those of us who have to build sites so they don’t break or look weird in older browsers though. The biggest single problem is Internet Explorer 6, which is around a decade old but still used by a lot of people – currently around 5-7% of users are using ‘legitimate’ copies of Windows XP with IE6, the figure’s doubtless a bit higher if you count all the hookey copies.

Internet years = dog years.

The issue is simply that given IE6 is a decade old, a lot of the newer methods and technologies available to build websites simply aren’t supported by IE6 — it’s a bit like trying to get a high definition widescreen picture on your granny’s 1972 black & white portable telly, it ain’t going to happen.

What happens in fact is that IE6 either ignores the new fancy stuff completely, or perhaps worse makes a half-arsed attempt at it and then gives up, a bit like a five-year old who gets bored halfway through baking a cake, but who still leaves the kitchen like a bomb site.

Let’s see the problem.

Okay. Here’s a screengrab of the homepage from a site I built recently, which looks fine and dandy in any modern browser and even IE7 (mediocre in absolute terms, but it’s a lot better than 6).

case-hhf-normal

Uhh… and the same page (below) in IE6. Oops. Sadly IE6 is such a pile of junk that not only does it not understand some of the techniques I’m using, but it can’t actually count, which is why it frequently gets the position, width and/or height of bits of the page wrong. (Equally importantly for users, it has major security issues — anyone using IE6 for online banking for instance presumably also believes their 20 million dollars from an exiled member of the Nigerian royal family will be showing up any day now…).

case-hhf-before

Bugger. So what’s the answer?

Well, I have to figure out what IE6 is screwing up, minimise the damage, add code which detects a retard user with IE6, then show them a dumbed-down version which gets a bit closer to the real design. In this case, it looks like this with the various fixes and substitutions applied. It’s still got a few issues, but it’s close enough.

case-hhf-after

So what’s your problem?

Well, the problem is that it’s your problem as well, because the several hours I can typically spend sorting out this crap is built into your quote.

And frankly, it’s becoming an increasingly futile exercise, so I’m going to stop doing it.

Quite apart from the visual glitches, as the web becomes increasingly sophisticated, it's getting harder to make some features work at all in IE6 (it’s Granny’s telly again, when the analogue signal is switched off, it’s a doorstop…)

I’m in good company, the likes of Facebook, Google and YouTube no longer actively support IE6, as reported on the BBC News website earlier this year. Read Google’s comments

Actually, on this site, which utilises a lot of fancy-dan stuff which would give IE6 a panic attack, I don’t even let such users in, all they get is some jiggery-pokery which stops them clicking on anything and a message which explains why.

case-no-ie6

Ah. So we’ll get cheaper quotes then?

Alas, no. The time I spend, or at least, spent, fannying about with IE6 will be better spent testing on mobile devices like the iPhone. (The only projects where I’ll still be offering IE6 compatibility will be those where the target audience is largely in the education sector, where budget retraints typically dictate a lot of older hardware/software is still in use).

I was just typing thinking…

corporate + brand identity | graphic design | website design | dog walking

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