0 August 15, 2009
It’s been one of those things over the years, like fuel prices or video refereeing in football. We all moan about it but, in true British spirit, we do nothing about it. The horror show that is the Internet Explorer 6 browser has long been the bane of web developers everywhere but finally there is a group of people taking a stand (yes, they’re American) to rid the world of the IE6 plague.
Chances are if you’re reading this you will already know something about IE6 but for those of you who don’t then here is a brief history and a list of reasons why us web developers hate it so much.
Way back when (around the turn of the millenium) Microsoft had seen off the challenge of Netscape Navigator and had a near 100% share of the internet browser market and, as such, did pretty much whatever they wanted in terms of adhering to web standards. This meant that a piece of perfectly written CSS would often render incorrectly and a hack would be required to rectify the error. This care-free attitude from MS continued for several years and culminated in the launch of IE6 in 2001. At this point in time, everything was fairly rosy in the world of web development as sites were built to IE6 specifications as it was the predominant browser.
For all these years, Microsoft ignored web development standards to the detriment of future web users everywhere. A rather crude example in Lehman’s terms would be a car manufacturer changing round the pedals on a car so the accelerator is the brake and the brake is the accelerator. The accepted pedal structure is not written in a rulebook (as far as I know) but would cause havoc for drivers were it not to be adhered to. Obviously car manufacturers have a lot of competition in their market, unlike IE6 at the time, but you get the general idea.
It isn’t just small display issues for IE6 either. Blind users who may be using a screen reader browser (which ’speaks’ out content on a website instead of a visual display) will not be able to use a large amount of websites (because they were designed to the specification of IE6) so it could be argued that, by ignoring recognised web standards for so many years, Microsoft has discriminated against disabled users.
2004 saw the launch of Mozilla Firefox and, as it became increasingly popular amongst internet users for, as well as other things, tabbed browsing and useful add-ons, finally Microsoft’s domination was beginning to be challenged. The purists at Mozilla had paid attention to web standards and this meant that all of a sudden a web developer, as well as a regular user, would find that websites would look different in Firefox to IE6. This is where the issues with IE6 started to become obvious to the wider web development community.
Microsoft now had a problem. Firefox was eating into their market share at a rapid rate but they couldn’t completely re-write their web browser to adhere to web standards as most of the websites on the internet are designed to display in their abominable creation - IE6.
And so we fast-forward to the current day. Microsoft have released versions 7 and 8 of their flagship web browser which, although marked improvements on IE6, still have gremlins and have the ongoing problem of plastering over their predecessor’s mistakes.
Fortunately, the internet (and websites) are now getting to the stage where IE6 is no longer viewed as a primary browser but it still causes web developers untold problems with its querky bugs which can add large amounts of time to projects.
And this is where IE6 No More comes in to give the devil browser the final shove into the grave. Led by David from Weebly, the group has garnered a large amount of support from big industry firms such as Justin.tv and Reddit and has even started to get mainstream media attention which can only be good for the future of the internet. The idea is that web developers add a small piece of code to their webpage which, if a user visits using IE6, they will be shown a banner making them aware that they are using an outdated browser and recommending they upgrade. It is a simple idea but one that could, and hopefully will, prove to be immensely successful at encouraging users to consign IE6 to the tech-graveyard.
Another shot in the arm for the web browser community is the European Court ruling that Microsoft cannot bundle Internet Explorer with their upcoming operating system Windows 7. This means that, hopefully, more regular web users will gravitate away from IE.
In my view, this volunteer project is one of the most important groups for the short-term future of web development and, to show my support, I have added the IE6 No More banner on my website.
Do your bit too. If you are using IE6 then please please please upgrade to a web standards compliant browser like Firefox or Google Chrome. Hey, even if your using IE7 or IE8 move in with the good guys and ditch Microsoft.
Happy browsing.
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