Is it Time to Lay Internet Explorer 6 to Rest?

People love to hate a lot of things, and in the browser world, it’s Internet Explorer 6. The hatred isn’t unfounded though, and even non-techy Internet surfers understand just how much it’s lacking. I found this out in a big way late last week when my brother, who in no way is a software geek, complained to me after designing his website, saying that “Internet Explorer needs to die”.

His comment really caught me off guard, because coincidentally, social networking tracking site Mashable posted a story with almost an identical title, “IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On”. If you’re a web developer, you already know all of the reasons, from incompatibility with web standards, to incompatibility with web standards, to, and most important, incompatibility with web standards.

It’s true. Try to view a PNG with a white background or no background in IE6. Most often, what’s supposed to be transparent is pure black. Or the lack of support for CSS 2, an absolute standard code-type that lays as the backbone for many site’s themes and layouts (including ours). Then there’s the fact that upcoming web technologies are only going to make things worse, such as HTML 5, since IE6 in no way will fare well with what it brings to the table. Bottom line? Make sure your family and friends drop IE6 and use a more modern browser (even IE8!).

Other companies have cited IE6 as holding them back as well. 37Signals, the maker of some of the most popular web-based business apps around (i.e. Basecamp) very publicly cut support for IE6 because according to them, “continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps.”