Be Excellent To Each Other

Hi guys,

I have just found out that the first words of the text on my website is cut off on IE6. Nobody has ever mentioned this before and I have not any clue on how to fix it, but before I spend the next lifetime trying to work out how on earth to go about fixing it, is IE6 much used? I just looked to see when the browser was made and it seems to be 2002 or before, so eight years old at least.

I just wondered how 'common' IE6 is? Also, as I haven't got a machine to run IE6 on, is there a way to test if what I have tried works on IE6 if I do decide to go down the route of trying to fix the problem?

I think it's more prominent in businesses these days, where the IT department haven't updated it and their intranet software won't run on later versions. I don't have any stats, and they're different for every site. Do you not have any webstats of your own to look at?

If you've only had one report in a long while, I'd put the bare minimum of effort into fixing it, if you can be arsed at all.

If these stats are anything to go by, 7.1% still use IE6 (more than Opera and Safari combined). We've still got a few machines here with it on, because Windows 2000 won't let you install 7 upwards. I would imagine it's primarily in corporate environments where machines still run 2000 and alternative browsers aren't allowed to be installed. For home users, there's little excuse.

Yes, one of the people that checked and found the problem was on a work PC. I do have google analytics malabar, aye. I don't recall them showing visitor browsers. Maybe I missed that. i will go check...

Where I work they only upgraded most machines to IE7 last month. But that was because there are so many different web applications in use that each one needed to be tested and if necessary updated by the company responsible.

Damn. That's bad, isn't it?

That's just all versions of IE though. If you click on 'Internet Explorer', you'll get the version breakdown (I've just done that here actually)

That's all versions of Internet Explorer. There should be a way to break that down even further into specific browser versions, I think.

edit: curse you, man-devil!

Interesting IE split for the company I work for...



999.1?

IE6 at work, Chrome at home.

Ah, yes Ok, then the usage of IE 6.0 is closer to 9% which is still a lot and will need to be looked at, but possibly not today.

Stupid IE.

Our HTMLy guys reckon IE6 usage is still about 15% of the total - I'm not sure where they get that from though.

A quick prod at your HTML / CSS with by IE6 browser suggests that it might be getting confused by your



item for your .entry class in your css. You could try getting rid of / changing that?

I assume that's 9% of the IE total rather than for all of your visitors? I'd only fix the problem if I had nothing better to do. I make sure the work website looks ok in IE6 as it's a corporate-type thing, but for Consolemad, I can't be bothered.

9% of all, or 9% of IE?

edit: ffs, man-devil.

Making websites work in IE6 is bad for the Internet.

http://iedeathmarch.org/

/glares at IE6

Indeed. Not everyone can drop support, of course, but for personal projects I'd just say “tough, basically.”

I installed Win98 (not SE, by mistake) on one of those old computers last week, and it has like IE3 or something on it.
Almost no websites worked in it and it crashed every time it encountered something it didn't like.

I wouldn't change my website (if I had one - I don't) for the benefit of IE 6 users.

No, they really can. They just need to do some work, that's all.

Be aware that IE6 visitor numbers are probably going to be slightly high, as some search engine spiders identify themselves as IE6 (or used to, anway).

Oh, yes, you're right (and you, Malabar) it's 9% (or 8.8% of IE users, not browser total. Oh, that's not so bad, then.

Ah, yes - I remember doing that... I can't remember why now, though P

I may have a prod around later in the week.

I'm getting early Noughties nostalgia flashbacks now. Thanks.

Even your subconscious hates IE6.

It is official...
IE6 is no longer supported from 13th July 2010!

Party time!!!!

We've paid for extended support...

Oh, that is so worth going out to celebrate.

hehe, look what I just found posted:

I'm serious about this, by the way, fellow geeks.

Works for me.

Under 9% of under 33%? If my maths aren't wrong that's 3% (sub please check). Don't even worry about it, Mimi.

Leeds City Council is hopefully knackered for internet in that case. We use IE6. It's horrid.

Well, I technically use Firefox 3. But I'm not supposed to.

Once IE6 is no longer supported, it would be nice to put the few Windows 2000 machines we've got onto Firefox or Chrome instead, but unfortunately Microsoft Dynamics CRM is strictly IE-only. Still, it'll be an excuse to buy more PCs.

Windows 2000 goes unsupported at the same time, so that would be a bit of a wasted effort.

Ah, fair enough. Although we seem to specialise in 'wasted effort' at the moment so I wouldn't rule anything out.

Hmm: http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-respons ... ie6upgrade

I was working on one of our machines with IE6 on yesterday and I noticed that the WIP version of the new company website I'm doing looks pretty horrific. I haven't put any pngfix type stuff in yet so I should be able to improve it a little there, but some of the positioning was wrong too. Do those of you that do web design test for IE6 still or would you just ignore it?

If it's consumer-facing, I'd ignore it. If it's company internal, I'd ask them what they're using.

Tried the IE9 beta the other day.

It's pretty nice. Easily as nice looking as Chrome or Firefox.

Bearing in mind I've not used IE since I think before Firefox 2.0.

Looks like a fairly decent non-expert browser.

What's an "expert browser"?

Some one that plays on the internet all day

I guess someone who uses the more complicated features of other browsers.

Like extensions for example. No support for anything along those lines for IE9. That's probably the big one.