Our Internet Explorer v.6 Support Policy (basically, we don't support it anymore)

RJ Pittman
by RJ Pittman // 09.18.2009

NOTE: Our IE6 policy has been updated and can be read here.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 is a non-standards-based web browser that was first released on August 27, 2001 and the last meaningful upgrade was published in August, 2004. It does not even fully support the CSS 1.0 standard released in 1996 or the XHTML 1.0 standard published in 2000. For reference, as of September, 2009, the internet community is developing with CSS v.2.2.0 and HTML5 and IE6 (according to W3C) accounts for 10.6% of all browsers on the web.

  • In June '08, Apple stopped supporting IE6 for all internet-based services.
  • Since December 2008 Digg blocks IE6 users from some activities.
  • In January 2009, You Tube took the stance that it would only support IE6 as far as delivery of content but would make no effort to support aesthetics or functionality.
  • Facebook (the second largest site on the internet) has been prompting IE6 users to upgrade since February, 2009
  • On April 14, 2009 Microsoft retired mainstream support for the product.
  • Since 2008 Google has been depreciating support for IE6 and it is rumored that the company will soon discontinue support for the browser completely.

    • Since March, 2009, We've taken a similar stance as You Tube and say that 'peeps creative and its developers will make a reasonable effort to be certain that content is conveyed to IE6 users, but make no guarantees with regard to aesthetics, functionality or interactivity.

    Here's the skinny: For real, the simple math is that developing for the web takes us (n) hours, then debugging IE7 & 8 takes us to (2n) hours and adding IE6 takes us to nearly (3n) hours — and usually results in bugs that cannot be corrected. I mean, really, how can we be held to a higher standard than Apple, Google and Microsoft itself?

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