My internet provider be Broadband has had a redesign of their branding. While you can discuss the aesthetics of their new website what I found interesting about it was the postscript of their email telling me about it:
P.S. We’ve not designed this to work fantastically in IE6 because it’s really old and. well, we’re all about the future. So, if you’re on IE6 please upgrade to IE7 or IE8 or even Firefox. Sorry if you’re stuck with IE6.
Youtube and digg.com dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 was widely discussed throughout the web. This may not spell the end of IE6 but it is still nice to see that other companies are following the example.
The more companies drop support for IE6 the more companies will follow. And eventually websites like the BBC and Sky will see no point in supporting it because the market share is so slim.
I am currently working on a project that is used and visited by a huge amount of ie6 users. So – we are hacking all the time and qa is mainly based on this browser and version. Problem is that the target audience sits in front of small monitors in big firms with admins (I’m wondering if they are real admins?!) who are not willing to upgrade or to hop on faster or even more secure browsers. It’s a cash thing and apparently the ROI is high enough not to drop support.
Very true. But if more and more companies drop IE6 support less and less visitors with IE6 will come to websites that still support it. Making it less reasonable to keep spending the cash on development for it.
There will still be far too many IT departments not upgrading a long time from now. But that doesn’t mean that websites that are not finance related for example will keep supporting IE6.
And then IE6 support is not a true or false thing. There is always progressive enhancement. Websites can look reasonable in IE6 and great in Firefox
I totally agree with you that support dropping means browser death acceleration. Problem is, no one wants to be first ;) – I’ve recently learned (from a podcast afair) that it’s important, that websites like the bbc or SpOn, that drop support can have a bigger impact than every social media website…