It Is Time to Retire IE6

When users visit modern websites with non-“Grade-A” browsers, they often encounter banners pleading: “This site works best in IE7” or “Please upgrade your browser.” As developers, do we have an obligation to tell users, “There is a better browser for you”?

The answer is yes. With the availability of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3.1, there is no technical excuse to remain on IE6. It is time to educate the user base.

The Developer’s Burden

Web developers spend an inordinate amount of time ensuring backward compatibility for IE6. We pollute our codebases with Conditional Comments and CSS hacks just to make layouts behave consistently. It feels like trying to build a modern skyscraper while being forced to use construction tools from the previous century.

We are effectively trying to run modern Web 2.0 applications on an eight-year-old platform that was never designed to handle them.

The Fallacy of Backward Compatibility

I recently read a statement from a Microsoft IE program manager emphasizing their commitment to “backward compatibility” for the next version of IE. frankly, I found it laughable.

Backward compatibility is a virtue when you are preserving a legacy of excellence or rigorous standards. But when the legacy is a product riddled with security vulnerabilities and non-standard rendering behaviors, preserving it is not a service—it is a liability. Why should the industry bend over backward to support a product that was fundamentally broken to begin with?

The Rise of Rich Internet Applications

For simple, static HTML pages, IE6 is annoying but manageable. But we are entering the era of the Rich Internet Application (RIA). New services like MobileMe, 280 Slides, and the new Yahoo! Mail are pushing the boundaries of what a browser can do.

Expecting these complex applications to run smoothly on IE6 is like expecting Windows Vista to run on a 486 processor. At a certain point, the hardware/software gap becomes unbridgeable. The solution isn’t to degrade the application to fit the browser; it is to upgrade the browser to fit the application.

Case Study: Apple’s MobileMe

Apple recently rebranded .Mac to MobileMe at WWDC. Notably, the service does not support IE6.

While one could argue that Apple’s core demographic uses Safari or Firefox on macOS, MobileMe is pitched as a cross-platform cloud service for Windows users as well. Some speculated that the underlying framework, SproutCore, was the culprit. However, SproutCore does technically support legacy browsers.

This implies that blocking IE6 was a deliberate product strategy by Apple. They likely decided that the cost of QA and the inevitable degradation of user experience on IE6 was simply not worth the effort.

Moving the Web Forward

Apple has taken the first step. If a major player is bold enough to cut the cord on IE6 to preserve the quality of their product, who will be next? The web ecosystem needs this push to move forward.