Is it 100% true? No, not really. I can probably spend 12 more hours to find a way to make it work in IE6, but it’s a waste of my time.

My question to you is why would you expect people with older systems to upgrade to the bloated IE8 browser to deal with overall system slowness, new security instabilities, and untold privacy issues?

This goes mostly for static websites with low volume of visitors, like for non-Internet businesses.

I had to explain several of my customers that it does not pay to develop for IE6, and most of them eventually chose the cheaper (non-IE6) solution.

But to be honest, If I design a community (high-volume of visitors) site, I keep IE6 in mind for sure. Again, it’s not impossible to develop a site for all browsers, it’s just a load of basically useless work.

There are 2 sides – From a standards progression point of view I agree that we need to get as far away from IE6 as possible and strive for a developers utopia where we didn’t need to worry about such problems and get on with the work – but sadly from a business point of view where money is at stake, supporting IE6 is always going to win. In the end it will always come down to money.

Boss: “Will it cost us if we don’t support IE6?”
Dev: “Yes”
Boss:”In that case we must support IE6″
Dev: “But it will take longer to develop”
Boss:”Irrelevant – the money lost from IE6 exclusion will surely surpass the money spent on longer development”
Dev: **cries**

We all agree that the program/platform in question is poor and should be replaced – but it’s easier said than done.

At my work I must develop for IE6 no question because it is a known fact that many of our subscribers use IE6. The company won’t simply ignore this and lose thousands of dollars in favour of supporting the standards movement.

It is not ‘a little work’. It fundamentally changes the development of a website, and forces the developer to use hacks, or non-standard ways to ‘fix’ the site. This is not only bad practice, it also corrupts the standards these browsers claim to be compatible with.

In the long run, it’s much more important to deliver standard-compliant websites, since the amount of hard- and software with web-browsing capabilities is only going to rise. Text-browsers, mobile phones, etc.

Also, to make your content accessible to machines it’s of the utmost importance to have separation of content and visual design. If a program/platform forces you to change content based on design demands, that program/platform is poorly thought through, and should be replaced. (I want to make very clear here that I don’t mean hardware limitations such as resolution!)

Seeing the enormous drop in Internet Explorer usage in the past 10 years, I am confident we will get rid of IE6 eventually. If Microsoft produces an Operating System that performs as well as XP, people and companies will transfer and we can forget about the scourge of IE6.

I personally do not develop for IE6. I will try to keep the site acceptable in that browser, but I draw the line at having to change the content.

I agree that every single designer/developer hates IE6 – but one very important point is the developer has absolutely NO RIGHT to say what browser a user should or should not use.
This is not the decision of a developer. Should we stop designing for screen readers either because it take a little more work? Where does it end?

Yes, most people would be better off with FF or IE7, but there are situations in a some environments that might not allow a person to use anything but IE6. It is thus wrong (and frankly unprofessional)l for the designer/developer to penalise these people just because IE6 makes their job a little harder. Especially when the percentage is 20 odd percent.

For a personal website it is probably acceptable to only design for FF – but any commercial website is a whole different story.