Web Design and IE6

[Pino]

Ok, question...

"With Ie8 around the corner, as web developers should we still be developing sites that work on IE6?"

[alex_read]

Microsoft will offer Mainstream Support for either a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability, or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer.

IE6 was released way back in 2001 aparently with XP and it's lifecycle page is here: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2073 - looks like it's still live and well whic in that case means MS are keeping support for it until IE7 has been out for 2 years.

If Wikipedia is anything to go by, October 2006 was the release date of IE7. Usually this is an indicator to when 3rd parties should keep support for this also.

Edit:Ahh and from the very same Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interne...orer#Version_7, an average out of several different surveys shows IE6 has around 30% of the market with IE7 having around 45%, so I'd say it's definitely live and well...

[RobDog888]

IE8 isnt really "around the corner" but as long as XP is still a good chunck of the OS's being used in the market I'd definately say test your site with IE6.

[Pino]

Its interesting but, its kind of limiting developing to IE6 'standards'

[RobDog888]

You can use the conditionals to determine the IE version and code accordingly.

[Pino]

You can use the conditionals to determine the IE version and code accordingly.

Yes you can and in the past I have but I've picked up a new site design which is pretty complex and just wont be feasible to do that.

[RobDog888]

How about a redirect to a dup IE6 friendly page

[Pino]

yea thats what i'm gonna have to do with a big warning... "Update now" lol.
I hate browsers

[RobDog888]

Yup, and I hate web development because of them

Bottom line is that the site you inherited didnt properly or at all test for browser platform or version. Not an easy task to rewrite an entire site but just start with one page and expand from there. Eventually you will get it working properly for IE6. Its easier to look at the task at hand on a per page view instead of the entire site.

[Kasracer]

You can develop a website 100% standards based and have it look the same in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc. It can be difficult working around IE6's limitations but it's doable while being standards compliant.

One of the projects I worked on at my last company for a large bank had a requirement that all pages had to be XHtml and 100% standards compliant (no hacks) and it had to work on IE6, Firefox, Safari and even IE for the mac. We were able to accomplish this and it worked rather well especially for a complex GUI (it was an internal interface for transfering money, business invests, etc).

[Nightwalker83]

I am doing web design at school and even though I myself don't use IE6 I still write the code for that browser. You don't know what browsers other people are going to be using in a real world situation.

I was told be one of my lecturers that he knew of several businesses today still running Windows 98.

[dclamp]

I am doing web design at school and even though I myself don't use IE6 I still write the code for that browser. You don't know what browsers other people are going to be using in a real world situation.

I was told be one of my lecturers that he knew of several businesses today still running Windows 98.

if it works, why change it?

Any who, when i do CSS, i try my best to make it work with all browsers. cant say that i succeed all the time though. It is a difficult thing to do.

[Nightwalker83]

if it works, why change it?

There's no need to that's my point!

Any who, when i do CSS, i try my best to make it work with all browsers. cant say that i succeed all the time though. It is a difficult thing to do.

It is hard to get all browser to work with every piece of code. Usually, when testing websites I test them in 3 different types of browsers IE, FF and Opera.

[dclamp]

There's no need to that's my point!

i know, i was agreeing with you

[Nightwalker83]

i know, i was agreeing with you

Ah ok!

[Pino]

Hmm when I mentioned standards above I actually meant what is now standard css etc that doesn't work in Ie6 without hacking.

Pino

[mendhak]

Does IE8 not allow you to specify a tag in the <head> section, of some sort, that makes the browser go into quirks mode?