Should developing sites compatible with IE6 be abandoned?

[Guest]

Hello all,

With MSIE 8 as the latest MS browser, the question mentioned in the subject line bears asking, especially to a recently new developer such as myself:

Should we abandon all thought of considering IE6 when we develop our pages?

Personally, I use the latest version of Firefoxfor my daily browsing and as the primary browser for testing in Dreamweaver. I also test with Chrome, more for the heck of it (and not regularly). And while we're at it, should Safari be considered as well?

I'm looking for personal preference and opinion in addition to practical advice.

Cheers and thanks!

Sincerely,

wordman

PS - And as for testing goes, should one test in IE7 and IE8?

[DwFAQ]

As far as your opinionated questions regard, develop for the browsers that your visitors are using. Simple as that.

[Guest]

Thanks! I was actually looking for the opinions of those of you who are more up to date with various trends such as browser use. I ask because IE6 is getting long in the tooth and I was cutious to know if anyone is aware of its eventual demise? I will only have a good idea about my customers' browser usage once I go live. I asked simply because it was a curiosity that came to mind as I was coding.

Any and all thoughts appreciated.

Cheers,

wordman

[jon8]

if you're website is designed well, there should be very few hacks that need to target ie6 for it to display correctly.  pain, yes, but you should continue to support this browser for at least another year or two.  if your pages/applications are on the internet, then some % will still be using it.  in some cases as high as 40%, in some cases as low as 5%... but do you want to turn anyone away?  and don't bother with the javascript browser checks reminding or suggesting people to upgrade... if they haven't upgraded by now, it's for a reason.

[David_Powers]

Wordman-GL wrote:

I ask because IE6 is getting long in the tooth and I was cutious to know if anyone is aware of its eventual demise?

Microsoft has pledged to support IE6 until 2014. One analysis of browser usage shows IE6's market share in October at 23% (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2). How accurate those figures are is difficult to gauge. However, I've been monitoring those stats ever since the release of IE8 (mainly because I've been writing a book on CSS). The signficant thing is that IE8 is gaining market share at the expense of IE7. The share for IE6 has barely moved.

One reason for the stubborn persistence of IE6 is the large number of corporate users still on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It won't be until corporate users move to Windows 7 that IE6 will finally die.

How important is IE6? Just make sure your site doesn't fall apart completely in IE6, but don't spend a huge effort on trying to squash every bug that it triggers.

[Guest]

David and Jon,

Thank you both for the insightful answers. That's just the sort of information I was after.

Now...if I could only get my dbQuery to open my database locally, I'd be on my way...

Thanks to you both!

Sincerely,

wordman