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Is the decision to end support Internet Explorer 6 premature or long overdue?

There is no doubt that Internet Explorer 6 is the bane of our - web designers and developers - existence. Nathan Smith came up with ten great reasons in “Time to Drop IE6″. Dan Rubin offered “The Final Word on IE6″. 37signals, effective 10.1.2008, is phasing out IE6 support in its products. They all offer good reasons to end support for IE6. But we cannot ignore the reality of IE6: usage hovers around 25-30% as of 9.08 (1,2).

Can we truly ignore IE6? Could you afford to turn away 1/4-1/3 of the customers that walk through your door? I’m guessing most clients would say no.

So where does that leave us? Are we destined to support IE6 for years and years to come? I seriously hope not, but it all depends on your audience. If your site is catering to people most likely to be using modern browsers like Firefox 3, Safari, Opera, Camino, Chrome, IE7/8, etc., then it probably doesn’t matter if your site supports IE6. If your site trends towards a lot of IE6 users, well… you’re obviously going to have to support that browser until usage drops below a tolerable level. At which point, it would then be wise to make a decision on whether to support it any longer. (We have these same conversations regarding minimum browser resolutions to target.) The client and the client’s audience and what they are using on your site is what dictates what you should be designed for.

The idea of using ‘web standards’ isn’t so that designers can make kick ass designs that only the most bleeding edge browsers can render. Rather they’re more about making content viewable in any browser, regardless of its age.

The logical decision, then, is to use progressive enhancement in designs. If a site visitor is still using IE6, they should be able to see, at the very least, a “low-fi” version of your site. If there are only minor issues preventing a layout from rendering properly in IE6, take the time to write some conditional CSS targeting the browser, and fix it.

The challenge with progressive enhancement lies in educating a client that there will be variations in the design presented to site visitors. For some clients, variations are unacceptable. For others, they’re likely not going to care.

Maybe by March 2009 the browser share will change radically, and IE6 usage will drop to record lows. But I’m staying realistic. I might not like IE6 or the extra work it requires to support it, but it’s too early to start ignoring it completely.

1. w3schools - Browser Statistics
2. w3Counter - Global Web Stats

Are you ready for something brilliant? Yesterday Adobe announced that it will unveil the new Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 lineup in a special web event on 9.23.08. Register today to be among the first to learn about CS4. This is not something you’re going to want to miss. Trust me.

Gedeon’s “100 Reasons Why McCain Won’t Be President of the United States” touches on a lot of the reasons I have a hard time supporting McCain.

For years I greatly admired Senator John McCain. He had a reputation for being a political maverick and seemed to vote with his conscience instead of with his party. When it came down to choosing between what was right and what the GOP wanted, John McCain more-often-than-not chose what was right.

Then he set his sights on the White House.

I voted for McCain when he was running against Bush prior to the 2000 elections. He was a different candidate back then. When he lost to George W. Bush, it was like the GOP beat the heart out of him. Now he just feels like more of the same. I suppose that’s why I’m leaning more towards Obama these days. I’m not entirely sure what we’d be getting in terms of a President, but at least I can expect that it won’t fully be business as usual with Obama at the helm.

Nine Inch Nails - Discipline from Chris Harrison on Vimeo.

(First things first: Sorry for the shakiness.) I shot this at last night’s Nine Inch Nails concert at the Gwinnett Center in Duluth, GA. The show was epic, to say the least. The song is Discipline off of their latest album, The Slip. See http://theslip.nin.com for more info.

NIN’s “the slip” is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license. This video, obviously, falls under the same license. Enjoy!

Just in case a torrent of posts comes through your RSS feed… I apologize for the inconvenience. I was playing around with trying to import Disqus comments into my site as regular comments… and they were imported as posts instead. As you can see, the experiment failed miserably.

I like Disqus, but dislike being locked in to them. I may risk losing 40 comments or so, but I’m close to disabling Disqus for good this time.

I had the idea to start a local group for a while now. Having read about the success of Refresh in other cities, I was intrigued to try and do something like it here in Augusta, Georgia. It wasn’t until recently that I started to get serious with the idea. Tonight we’re holding our first planning meeting. Next month, we’ll hold our first meeting. I’m nervous and excited at the same time. I can’t wait to see what this group can accomplish for Augusta.