There is a concentrated effort in the web design community to push users to ditch IE6. Many, such as myself, display a disclaimer somewhere prominently on the website warning users that their web browser is out of date. Some are even taking it a step further and no longer catering to or making concessions for IE6 altogether (depending on the target audience). There are many aspects of IE6 that are now hindering progress in web design, and many designers are taking a hard line and saying, “still running IE6? Well tough”.

Heck, some of the top websites in Norway have begun informing their users it’s best to ditch IE6. Imagine if USA Today, the New York Times, eBay and Craigslist all began to prominently display messages to their IE6 users asking them to upgrade? The impact would be huge!

The amazing thing to me is IE6 is the only “old” browser that users are still holding on to. Anyone using Firefox or Safari or Chrome or Opera are almost always up to date. For instance, Firefox users to our intranet site at SPARTA account for 16% of the population. Of that 16%, 86% of them are using Firefox 3.

Compare that to 52% of IE users still using IE6.

The general consensus in the community is that IE users aren’t necessarily complacent, nor are they consciously resisting change, they just don’t know any better. They see the blue “e” and know, “that’s the internet”. It works for them just fine, it’s all they need; and that’s all well and good, but they’re not going to upgrade unless its done for them or they’re forced to. They may not realize they’re more vulnerable to security threats, or attacks, or that Microsoft has abandoned their browser.

I’ve come to the point now that most websites I develop work perfectly in Firefox and all other standards-compliant browsers, but that I have to make changes to them in order to get them to work correctly in IE6. I know several users who have resisted using Firefox (or other more standards-compliant browsers) because many of the websites they frequent “don’t work in Firefox”. I think it’s time to flip it around and get people to stop using IE6 because their websites “don’t work in IE6.”

Until IE6 users start having negative experiences browsing the web, or Microsoft sends out IE8 as a Critical Update to XP users, they aren’t going to know there’s anything wrong with their browser and they won’t do anything about it. Hence why developers (myself included) are finally getting fed up and no longer making concessions for IE6, and in fact are beginning to pester visitors to update their browsers.

A future without IE6 is a bright one, we just need to get there first.