guest post by RICK!
Joe Lifrieri, at Hugs For Monsters, created confrontational and extremely funny splash pages for visitors viewing his site in Internet Explorer 6. This is what half-ass PNG support and CSS compliance does to fragile developers.
images via Hugs For Monsters
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{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
As fragile as we are (and I can feel Joe’s rage) we do try work with that hunk of junk since 25% of the net uses it. We also have less aggressive ways to try and get people to upgrade, especially now that IE 8 is here as well as like four other solid choices. Stupid Microsoft.
They seem to be mimicking American Eagle Outfitters font and size ratios….
The problem is the companies who are stuck with IE6 due to implementations and such. Some would love to upgrade but can’t. Anyway IE8 is rather great.
@Miquel: That 25% is shrinking all the time, and perhaps if web developers stopped giving a shit about that 25% it would shrink even faster.
Try browsing the net with IE6 sometime. You’ll notice some people are already not caring.
You don’t design for the browsers you like. You design for every browser and every user. If you can’t handle that you need to find a new hobby.
Amen
yes, said by the guy rockin’ his beta max and cassette tapes. force change, don’t hand hold.
True, but there’s a limit. The web development world is trying to get it’s shit together for once. This active rejection should be encouraged for the overall health of the field.
No, you design for the browsers used by each user you want. You assume every designer wants every user. That’s especially untrue in hobby-space.
I am NOT using IE. I am using Firefox, and have so for quite some time now.
The whole set would be quite funny, if it weren’t for the second-to-last one being a bit homophobic. Some of us don’t consider that activity a “nasty habit”, though using IE regularly *definitely* qualifies as one….
I disagree with Patrick’s comment regarding designing for EVERY browser and EVERY user. If I did that, I’d have to cater to about 100 different browsers, and every language on the planet. Nobody does that, not even Facebook, Google, CNN, etc. (Though they do try to accomodate a LOT of people.)
The fact of the matter is, we as web designers are fucking fed up with IE6. Most of a designer’s time is spent trying to hack shit together to work on IE6 versus other browsers, and that’s just stupid. First off: Hacks are not cool. They’re… hackish. They can break other things, too.
Second: That’s a shitload of time that could be spent on writing more content, making the page more streamlined, or ANYTHING!
I have no sympathy for anyone still using IE6 at this point, because in almost all cases it’s either ignorance, or just masochism.
Companies that still “have” to use IE6… why? IE8 does compatibility pretty damn well. I’ve worked at places that still used IE6 and told their employees they “couldn’t upgrade” due to software conflicts, etc. Guess what? Eventually, they realized it wasn’t such a big deal to start using a later version of the browser. AND THEY SWITCHED!
There is no defense for IE6. None. If you’re defending it, you’re probably still using it. And if you’re still using it, we… uhh… well we don’t care about you. No offense. ;)
Lee, I love you. You stated that very well. As for Patrick’s suggestion that some of us find a new “hobby”, maybe he should consider how much time he’s spending debugging and hacking together fixes for IE6.
If you think that those of us do that do this for a living should just buck up and deal with the users who refuse to upgrade, then you keep on catering to them. I’m sure that you’ll get plenty of customers who are completely backwards.
In the mean time, I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank while I safely ignore the >15% of users who refuse to upgrade.
For the few people that DO use IE6, I make sure that the sites I develop aren’t entirely broken – but I won’t spend more than a few minutes fixing it. If it’s a seriously broken website in IE6, i will just use a plain black and white page for them.
There is absolutely no point in continuing to support a browser that is no longer supported by the company that made it even. Seriously.
Found this through Stumble and laughed so hard!
I keep telling people this. If we ignore it then one day it’ll disappear. Generally I’m referring to IE as a whole but I can see the point in targeting IE6 in particular.
Most people are only allowed IE6 at my work, luckily I’m one of the few who’ve been allowed to download Firefox so I can use the developers tools
Viewing this on Fiefox via Stumbleupon.
Does viewing his site with IE6 cause him (or his site) actual problems? Or is he just being an abusive c*ck for the sake of it? Makes no sense. Just an ego trip as far as I can see.
Okay, now those are funny! I’m stuck using IE6 at work, except when I sneak my USB stick in and load up my lovely Firefox. I really don’t care about having sites designed for me in IE6, I know I’m using an inferior browser – for god’s sake it doesn’t even have tabs. So I find this rather amusing.
Unfortunately, I’m stuck with IE6 at school, and I can’t run firefox from a usb stick – living without tabs is annoying.
…. Next he’ll go after PC users. Get off your high horse you prick. It’s very, very easy to instruct different browsers to render the page properly.
He is just trying to impress firefox fanboys. I use firefox but I think its a memory hog and doesn’t handle flash videos and ajax super well, which is like, found on pretty much every modern website.
If that guy talked to me that way in person i’d probably haduken his balls off.
@Misanthropy Today:
Doesn’t handle ajax well? Evidence, or even a rumor would be nice to back that up.
just for this I fired up IE 5 and refreshed this page 10 times
@liam well theres some rumor here
http://www.misanthropytoday.com/2008/02/10/when-did-firefox-start-to-suck-so-bad/
don’t mind that i wrote that blog.
The evidence is from years of firefox usage. Anytime you run demanding web technology, like AJAX, firefox can get very confused. I run about 10 tabs at a time. Don’t tell me you’ve never used meebo or some other AJAX rich site and haven’t seen crap from other pages jumping to your ajax page.
No matter what, its unreal that firefox uses more memory than OUTLOOK. Currently, Outlook 30k Firefox 234k
WTF
Let’s make a revolution! I suggest someone make an VERY powerful virus that works only on IE6. They will surely be forced to change the browser ^_^ .
IE6 is an incredibly insecure browser, and plenty of malware sites, etc., already exploit it. I don’t think most IE6 users know that (or possibly care). And IE6 viruses wouldn’t really affect bigger institutions that restore individual computers’ disks to a master image every night.
People who use it at home probably don’t know any better. And people who use it at work probably don’t need to access the few sites out there that are blatantly against IE6 (like this one).
Or a virus that wrecks IE6 and forces an install of another browser. Of course we would still give them a choice on which browser, so long as it wasn’t a version of IE. XD
I wonder if anybody has every run correlations to see how many people using IE6 actually translate in to sales. That would be interesting. If only a fraction of the people coming to your ecommerce site that used IE6 ended up completing a purchase, then it really justify giving those users a Blue Screen of Upgrade and be done with it.
For me, I have some projects that are for San Francisco shops where IE6 is not a worry, but making sure it works on a Mac is. For my main project, I have to have my site working in IE6 and even IE5.5 to some extent as it’s based in Africa and people really don’t have the latest and greatest browsers there. My little http://www.end6.org is horribly annoying to them as their connections are too slow to download an update.
-miquel
I browse the web using firefox, and when I encounter a site that does not play nice with firefox, and I absolutely need to use the site, I open ie6 to view it. I refuse to upgrade to even more broken versions of internet explorer, and I do not see why you feel the need to expect people to upgrade the most sturdy version of IE to mostly untested and broken software. So I guess I won’t view your sites.
Haha, Wish i could give more Cursing messages who are using IE. It took thousands of hrs of my life and still continuing to do so.
personally, ie6 is fussy about what it likes and what it does not like but if you’re any good at writing mark-up, the fixes are generally quite simple to get cross browser support of ie 6,7,8, firefox, safari and chrome. while i personally don’t care for ie6, the majority of people do still use it and therefore it should be accommodated by anyone who is serious and catering to a broad audience. if it’s a personal website or something then you can deny access to people who use ie6. but for a small business or similar where accessibility matters, it’s important.
Since when did <15% become the majority? I was under the impression that a majority was more than 50%!
Why would anyone use IE at all? The only reasons I can think of is ignorance or because an employer basically forces you to use it.
LOL nice stuff, IE is awful. It’s like the Republican of internet browsers. It’s almost as if they don’t care about our internet experience!!!
and this is why mac is so good. it ships with safari. which is infinitely better than IE. it must be said though, i am publishing this comment from firefox because it’s simply the best.
For reference.. i have used firefox extensively on ubuntu linux, windows vista ultimate, and windows xp pro. it makes ubuntu lag, crashes all the time on vista and just feels slow on xp. i suggest using google chrome.. it needs a little work on its js engine, (the “hide” button that shows up on everyones post in the news feed on facebook doesnt work) but it is SO fast. and you can resize any text boxes (like the very one im typing in right now.) how awesome is that? :D
There’s no excuse for IE6. You have to draw the line somewhere, and designing a site for the latest two versions of IE, Firefox and Safari on Mac and PC takes enough time (and hardware) as is. Adding obscure Linux browsers (unless your main audience is Linux users) and IE6 (no matter who your audience is) puts constraints on design and usability AND increases the cost of the project exponentially due to troubleshooting.
IE6 is utterly antiquated and needs to die. And I love this guy’s punchy F.U. to the whole deal.
I wouldn’t make these statements on even my own site or on any client’s site, but I think they’re hilarious. I am a web developer myself and HATE IE6. I’ve been fixing what IE6 breaks all week and am to the end of my rope with this browser. It’s 5 years old…let’s let it die. Why should we, web developers, have to program for it when such a small percentage of the population use IE6?
I may not like IE6, but I still cater for it. Rarely do I find myself making a website now that doesn’t work in IE6 – I develop for IE6, and then it’s much easier to just tweak to suit anything above + Firefox. No float issues and such, all valid markup and working in all browsers. Maybe some people should just spend more time learning how to lay elements out and stop whining, and cater for that minority as well as it shows you don’t half-ass your work, just because you can’t be bothered.
google chrome FTW.