Is IE6 obsolete? Options

[joyful]

Hey!

Is it worth building a site to run on IE 6 (and before)? How obsolete is IE6? According W3Schools, (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp) 2.0% of browsing happened on IE6 in August 2011. Do you think it is worth creating site to run nicely on IE6? (seeing as it is a night-mare to develop for!)

Thanks in advance!

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[pandy]

Is it worth building a site to run on IE 6 (and before)?

Yes, I think so. Depends on the site of course. And there's no need to make things look all dandy, making it work and be usable is enough IMO.

CODE

According W3Schools, ([url=http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp]http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp[/url]) 2.0% of browsing happened on IE6 in August 2011.

So people interested in learning web languages don't use IE6 much...

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm

[Darin McGrew]

Is it worth building a site to run on IE 6 (and before)?

I wouldn't go out of my way to make a site look pretty on such an obsolete browser. But I try to design sites so they work in any browsing environment.

How obsolete is IE6?

It's a 10-year-old browser. That's an eternity on the web. Okay, maybe only half an eternity, but it's still obsolete, especially considering how buggy its support for modern standards is.

According W3Schools, (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp) 2.0% of browsing happened on IE6 in August 2011.

Note that you'll get different numbers from different sites. The browsing environment used by visitors varies wildly depending on a web site's audience.

Do you think it is worth creating site to run nicely on IE6?

Nope. If the content is accessible on obsolete browsers, then I'm happy. If you want it to look pretty, then get a modern browser.

[joyful]

Thank you Pandy and Darin!

That answered my question perfectly!

I think I will (as you said) just make sure it "does run" (not how pretty it runs).

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[pandy]

I've been hanging on to IE6 until recently for testing purposes. When I upgraded to IE7 I realized that many people may hang on to IE6 because IE7 totally destroys the familiar interface and functionality of older IE versions. I know I hate it and probably others do to. So that is probably one of the reasons there are not so few IE6 out there.

[Darin McGrew]

When I upgraded to IE7 I realized that many people may hang on to IE6 because IE7 totally destroys the familiar interface and functionality of older IE versions.

Yep. I know someone who was using NN3 long after NN4 was obsolete, because he had grown accustomed to its interface and functionality, much of which was missing or had changed significantly in NN4 and other browsers.