Web Design, Browser Rendering, and The Death of Internet Explorer 6

Here’s a recommended best practice in web design that we follow as closely as possible:

Design your website so that it renders properly (i.e. looks the way it’s supposed to) in all common web browsers

The tricky part of this statement is the phrase “all common web browsers.” There are, unfortunately, dozens of web browsers. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Google’s Chrome are the major PC browsers, compromising about 96% of the total. So, from that basic picture, it seems like it should be a simple matter to create a website that will look “right” on anyone’s computer. If only that were true.

The problem, you see, is that there are different versions of each major browser, and some of the older version are, in a word, kooky.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

I can bore you with specifics, but believe me when I say that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer version 6 (IE6) makes proper web design about 20% harder than it needs to be. IE6 often refuses to display websites correctly because it’s a very old program – the original release date was August, 2001! The Internet has changed tremendously in that time, so much so that IE6 simply doesn’t work right when compared to more modern browsers.

IE6 has been a pest for us and other firms that offer web design services. We’ve wasted time and money making sure that our client’s websites will look OK on a broswer that was created before many design standards were implemented. We create special work-arounds for IE6 because it’s still fairly popular (about 6.8% of North Americans still use it)…but that’s about to change.

IE6 Is Dangerous

If you’re a web geek like me, you’ve probably read that Google believes they were hacked by the Chinese government. The hacking attempt is newsworthy in and of itself, but the wrinkle here is that IE6 played a primary role in the attack. According to numerous reports, one single Google computer with IE6 installed was able to compromise the entire network in China.

Again, because IE6 is an old piece of software, it’s not capable of working within the confines of today’s Internet. IE6 is simply not very secure. In fact, Microsoft has urged anyone using IE6 to upgrade to IE7 ASAP because of this latest security problem.

Still, security risks aren’t enough to convince people to act. Many IE6 users have older computers, and I believe they’re still using IE6 because, up until now, there’s been no reason to switch over. As long as most websites continue to design for IE6, a lot of people simply won’t upgrade. Therefore, if we want people to stop using IE6, we need the major web companies to stop supporting IE6. That didn’t seem very likely…until a couple of days ago.

Google Stops Supporting IE6

Imagine my elation when I saw an email from Google on Saturday that said the following:

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance…over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0

This is EXCELLENT news for designers. Google has officially decided IE6 is too old to care about, and combined with the security issues I outlined above, this browser’s days are clearly numbered. IE6 is a thorn in everyone’s side, and Google’s decision to toss IE6 users out into the cold is likely to be the first in a wave of similar announcements. If a few major websites stop supporting IE6 users, the use of that tired old browser should grind to a halt. And that means that we won’t have to worry about it anymore.

Therefore, I’m happy to announce here at Spork Marketing we are no longer considering IE6 in any of our web browser rendering tests. As far as we’re concerned, IE6 is dead.