Internet Explorer 6

This entry was posted on February 12, 2008

Millions swear by it, millions hate it. As for me, I’m somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t say that IE6 is my favourite browser of choice, but equally I don’t think it’s as bad as some people would like me to believe. I think IE6 is a very “love / hate” type of browser, which is why it’s strange that I’m somewhere in the middle.

I’ve been using IE6 for as long as I can remember (which is quite a while when you think that IE6 has been around for many years) and it has served me well. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but it does what I need it to do and that’s good enough for me.

Many people ask me why I don’t upgrade to version 7. I would love to do that, but it’s not physically possible. I use a laptop and a PC. The laptop is running Windows Vista and hence has IE7 installed as standard. The PC is running Windows XP and hence has IE6 installed as standard. However, I don’t have the essential “administrator privileges” and so I can’t even alter the system tray, let alone install or upgrade a program. That’s the only reason I haven’t upgraded to version 7.

Then there’s the small matter of IE6 not always interpreting CSS as expected. Amateur web designers seem to be in two camps; one camp insist that IE6 is the spawn of Satan and will not do anything properly, and the other camp are so used to the bad habits they’ve picked up testing with IE6 that they don’t understand why standards-based browsers don’t interpret their markup properly.

For more complex designs, it is often not possible to recreate certain effects in IE6 without using massive amounts of extra markup and this can often (but not always) lead to snobbery. Some people drop support for IE6 altogether, some people display messages to their IE6-using visitors telling them to get Firefox (when there are in fact more browsers out there than just IE and FF), and some people do something that really bugs me. What really bugs me is when people brag about how “valid” and “accessible” their site is, and don’t even go to the trouble to make sure it works in IE6.

Sure, a lot of complex designs will never work in IE6, and that’s something that only Microsoft can be held responsible for, but with a bit of time and effort (which I agree is not always practical) but a lot of relatively simple problems can be fixed. IE6 interprets margins and paddings in a different way to the rest of the world (well, the world of web browsers) and this can often lead to what I call “droopy” sidebars. In a two column layout, one column will often drop down below the other. When these columns’ widths are specified in percentages, one column will often drop if the widths add up to exactly 100%. Change the total to 99%, and IE6 will stop dropping the sidebars.

IE6 is like an old acquaintance to me. I’ll be sad to see it go, but equally, the time has come for us to move forward. I don’t think there’ll ever be an answer to the whole “IE6 discussion” that I’ll 100% agree with. I do think everyone needs to move on from IE6, but I don’t think that IE6 is the worst thing ever to happen.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on IE6, be they good or bad. But, because IE6 causes such heated debate, please try and keep profanity to a minimum. IE7 still has young ears, and we can’t insult its older brother too much. Apart from that, let loose!

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