There is no other way to say it, I absolutely despise IE6. The folks over at Wikipedia tell us that:
Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001, shortly after the completion of Windows XP. IE6 is the default browser shipped with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and was also made available for Windows 98 and Windows ME. Microsoft dropped support for Windows 98 and ME partway through the life of IE6, making this browser (minus more recent patches) the last version of Internet Explorer to run on these systems. Although IE6 has now been superseded by newer versions of Internet Explorer, Microsoft still supports it in Windows XP SP3.
2001 people!!!!! This browser is as old as Stonehenge in web years. It’s time to move on to bigger and better things. I used to advocate that everyone should move to FireFox (which I use most of all) but I’d settle for people to upgrade to at least IE7. And I am not alone in this either. A quick search on Google found 570,000 results for my search.
There are many sites that detail the reasons IE6 should die, but the one I agree with most is by David Walsh.
- Lack of PNG Transparency Support
- CSS Float + Margin / Padding Issues
- Lack of CSS Pseudo-Class & Pseudo-Element Support
- No Min-Height CSS Support
- CSS Anchor Background Image Flicker
- Crashing With Code
Anyone out there who works on a website that uses anything closely related to web 2.0 features, knows the pain of trying to make the site behave as desired with IE 6. That being said, the install base for IE6 is so high that you just have to make it work. The trick with that is trying to find a version of IE6 to test your site on. This was a major pain for me until last week.
I found an entry on a Microsoft Blog that detailed the process of setting up Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 with an image that had XP with IE 6. All for Free!!! I went out and downloaded the 2 files and just as the instructions said I now have a virtual PC image with IE6 for testing. As with most VM applications it saves the state so I do not have to boot the virtual pc each time. 2 clicks and about 15 seconds and I have a full version of IE6 running in the Virtual PC. It has made testing new features on all the browsers we support, much easier.
So if your reading this using IE6, please uprgade. Now is a great time! Microsoft is even running a promotion to try and get users up upgrade by offering donate 8 meals to “Feeding America” and if you upgrade from IE6 they double it!
Feed the hungry and help purge the world of this ancient terror of a browser!
-Rudi
(I think that IE6 is made from Soylent Green)
4 thoughts on “I Loathe IE 6”
What does it tell you when Microsoft is sponsoring an effort based on upgrading to their latest browser and gives DOUBLE POINTS to those who are ditching IE6.
How much greater an indictment of their own POS browser can you have when the publisher of that coded vomitus treats it like an extra special “thank you” when you abandon it.
Lord knows, in my time I’ve had plenty of occasion to happen across my own old work product and exclaim “who the hell wrote this steaming pile of sh-” before I notice that it was me.
Yeah, Microsoft just did that. Too bad they couldn’t figure out a way to send every dev who had to write code to work around that wonky POS a dollar or a gift card or something to say “hey guys…sorry…no hard feelings?”. Yeah, guess feeding the poor is a good substitute tho.
I think the story here is that even Micro$oft is tired of supporting this browser.
-Rudi