A little while ago the guys over at RocketTheme – who initially served as a big source of inspiration for WooThemes (especially our club subscriptions) – announced that as of 1 January 2010, they will be dropping support for Internet Explorer 6.

Whilst we all know that IE6 is the bane of any web designer / developer’s existence, here’s an interesting look at why this move would be viable:

According to w3schools.com, from the high in November 2003 of 71.2%, IE6 usage had dropped to 32% in January of 2008, and 18.5% in January 2009. By January 2010, this percentage should be around 6-8%. With the introduction of Windows 7 this fall, this percentage could be even lower. (via IE6 End of Life at RocketTheme)

And this is something we’ve been contemplating for a while now as well… Why? Because IE6 really is an ancient browser; especially in terms of how fast technology generally changes. If we were to drop support for IE6, it would mean:

• All future themes would not be tested in IE6; and
• Existing themes would however continue to support IE6 and we will provide support to users of those themes via our forum

We can most definitely not take this decision alone, as ultimately we need to keep you & your website visitors happy. So do you think we can drop support IE6 in future themes? Let’s have a bit of a discussion in the comments and also cast your vote…

[polldaddy poll=1950157]