A couple of years ago I thought I was done with IE6. And thankfully so. Even my handful of web design clients, didn’t seem to care if their pages looked correct in the Jurassic browser. But now, it seems to have had a resurgence.
I recently took on a client who does business with the government and military of several NATO counties. And evidently in the government sector IE6 is still the standard browser.
And let me tell you, it is pull-out-my-remaining-hair frustrating to design webpages and blog templates that work correctly in new browsers like FireFox and Opera (and OK I guess I should throw IE7 in there among the fringes) that also work in a Neanderthal like IE6.
There’s not just a slight difference between IE6 and IE7, there’s worlds of difference. In between those browsers Microsoft fought and lost a legal battle for unquestioned dominance of the browser market. And as such, Microsoft had to actually develop a browser that met people’s needs.
So earlier today I took a look at some of my blog stats to see which browsers my readers were using to read this blog. I was shocked to learn that IE6 is the second most popular browser to access this site. Now I’m sure much of this has to do with the fact that the computers at work use IE6 so I’m sure that has a little to do with it, but IE6 users drastically outnumber IE7 users on this blog.
For anyone interested, the most common browser was “Generic Gecko”. Gecko is the rendering engine used by FireFox and many other smaller browsers, so I don’t know specifically what “Generic Gecko” breaks down to.
So I guess I can’t call IE6 extinct yet. And I guess I’d better make sure that all the website I design work well enough in IE6 to look professional.
Sigh…
Where Is My Spot? 