Comments on: Could We / Should We Drop IE6 Support?

By: madbadcat

madbadcat — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:07:10 +0000

i stopped supporting IE6 spring 2009, its time. concentrate on bigger better and badder themes.

By: Chris Robinson

Chris Robinson — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:29:24 +0000

Here’s an idea for when it is phased out (apologies if this has already been mentioned). I know you would have a message for users along the lines of “You’re using an old browser, please upgrade to view this website properly”, but how about having an option in your themes that allows us (implementers of your themes) to then redirect the user to a HTML/PHP file or whatever of our choosing? That way, if we decide a particular customer really needs to have a page come up displaying at least their contact details/ opening hours etc, then we can do that of our own backs?
Just a thought )

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 08:28:43 +0000

Wishful thinking… Unfortunately (and I think the comments above prove this) web developers will need to support IE6 for at least another year or two, because those companies & organizations just aren’t upgrading. #sadface

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:04:07 +0000

I recently created a form on a site that had some non-ie6 areas. I assumed I was in the clear but the main audience of the form was elementary school librarians or principles. We’ve had so many complaints that seem to be IE6 related. I’m assuming that audience just doesn’t have the IT resources to upgrade often. I wish we could leave IE6 behind, it’s a ridiculous waste of resources for web developers but it seems some areas are still not ready for that.

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:30:39 +0000

Don’t worry… It doesn’t seem like we’ll be dropping IE6 support in the near future…

By: Kevin Sprague Kevin Sprague

Kevin Sprague Kevin Sprague — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:25:33 +0000

I’d love to have you drop it BUT I’m currently installing thestation on a site specifically because another theme I am using does NOT provide IE6 support and its not working out for my client, who is getting a lot of calls…. IF you were to pull the plug, could you indicate in the spexs for themes if they do/do not support IE6 (or create “archival” versions)…..

By: Christian Reuter

Christian Reuter — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:27:06 +0000

@John I agree fully with you.

There’s no way that a dropping support for IE6 is going to influence corporations to upgrade their hardware.

Unfortunately, I can’t decide for my clients, especially for the biggest ones!
So, please continue to do the extra-work for IE6!
Otherwise, the pro-licences for woo-themes would be nearly usseless for me.

By: Janvier

Janvier — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:31:55 +0000

IE6.. humm didn’t realize that thing still exists! I develop themes on a regular basis but this is definitely time IE6 did with dignity.

So, yeaH …pull the plug

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:40:26 +0000

It sounds great… But… The IE users would still need to install it to be effective.

By: Stephan

Stephan — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:41:32 +0000

Saw this today: http://blog.chromium.org/2009/09/introducing-google-chrome-frame.html

Might be a reasonable cure/bandaid to the IE6 problem.

By: Serve IE6 Visitors the Default WordPress Theme — Nathan Rice

Serve IE6 Visitors the Default WordPress Theme — Nathan Rice — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:08:12 +0000

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| Splesh!DigitalArt — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:50:55 +0000

[...] e più giovane dei primi due ma leader nei template per Wordpress) che ha deciso di metter su un sondaggio tra i propri clienti per decidere cosa fare: più del 70% ad ora vuole [...]

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:31:52 +0000

Unfortunately we are in the minority (even in the comments on this post) and the corporates using IE6 far exceed the designers / developers / internet-savvy people that want IE6 to die. That’s almost basic democracy for you just there… Unfortunately though…

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:30:24 +0000

I totally agree, but unfortunately IE6 is still a massive cog in the corporate machine. So for the time being, we’ll settle down a little and we’ll continue to support IE6. We have however decided to phase this out, but am yet to decide a final date to stop IE6 support by.

By: Jean-Baptiste Jung

Jean-Baptiste Jung — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:48:58 +0000

As pro designers and developers, you guys have to show the right way to the dummy user.
When people using IE6 will see 50% of screwed up websites, they’ll understand that a browser from 2001 HAVE to be upgraded.

IE6 have to die. Period.

By: Dalton Hurd

Dalton Hurd — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:39:08 +0000

As much as coding should be smooth enough to (almost) work in IE, I still think that everyone should stop paying attention to making sure everything works perfect in IE.

Since the big sites (ex. facebook) aren’t up for the job, it’s up for the slightly smaller websites (like woothemes) to do the job of ridding IE.

If enough of us do it, then eventually IE just has to die.

By: Bradley Halpern

Bradley Halpern — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:37:22 +0000

Sure… its time for IE6 to die, but unfortunately, not all users know to upgrade (somehow). As much as I’d love to, market share on IE6 is not low enough yet to drop support… and when paying for a theme, IE6 support is something I would expect.

By: Adii Rockstar

Adii Rockstar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:25:23 +0000

Hehe… The last line in your comment really makes an impact:

But you need to listen to people who are in the trenches and not just geeks who hate Microsoft.

And that’s probably the most true observation that anyone here has made. I take myself – I’d LOVE to drop IE6 and haven’t supported it for ages on adii.co.za, but yes; some of the Woo users do want to support it and to an extent it’s smart business doing just that.

By: Caryn

Caryn — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:51:17 +0000

The 40% number used above is not a lie. I worked at a company where 42-45% of our site visitors came in using IE6. We HAD to support it. We HAD to debug it. We HAD to explain to the business why we had to spend two weeks debugging stuff that looked great in IE7 and FF. The numbers didn’t lie.

The other post that represented reality are the ones talking about budgets and upgrading to WindowsXP. You can’t say “well no one should be surfing at work” because there are plenty of work-related, professional sites that use WP and your themes.

Frankly, as much as a PITA as it is, continuing to support IE6 and make sure that it works to your very exacting standards will be an enormous differentiator for you. It means that you understand that your themes are being used by everyone, and not just LOL Cats. It means that you support the enterprise.

I really do get how much time it takes and how impossible it is. I have sat up until 3am during a production release because of a last minute IE6 bug a dev had to fix. I get it. But you need to listen to people who are in the trenches and not just geeks who hate Microsoft.

By: TechThem

TechThem — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:34:24 +0000

Hell yeah! It’s time for IE6 to die right now
R.I.P IE6 > always living in Our heart
because Sometime Removing IE6 Bug takes more time than creating wp theme