The Importance of Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) Browser TestingAdd to My Brief

Vince Scordino | 19/10/2010

Arguably one of the most difficult challenges facing web developers today is getting a beautiful and intuitive design to look exactly the same in every currently-used web browser (yes, this also includes Internet Explorer 6 guys). Since creating a consistent experience for every user, in every browser, in every operating system, for every project is quite the contest, I believe it is possible for every developer to get a website working in every browser to allow for future website maintenance to run smoothly.

Latest browsers statistics for September 2010 (source w3) show Internet Explorer holds 31.1% total market share; of which E6 holds 5.6% (enough to cause a stir and spend those extra few hours getting things right in this ancient browser). Further statistics show that IE6’s numbers have dropped from 10.2% in January 2010 – that’s a 50% drop in 9 months!

Does this mean we will officially drop support for IE6 in another 9 months? In saying that, HTML5 isn’t far from launch so we can’t be too far away. All I know for now is that 5.6% for IE6 is still enough to support for the time being.

Stay tuned!

tags: Web Development

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Comments

A few hours?

Spend a few extra hours? I think this might be a bit of an understatement... The amount of time building support for Internet Explorer 6 can easily increase the cost of a project by about 20-30% if you take the time of testing, development, and re-testing in all other browsers. With the likes of large companies like Google and Facebook dropping support for IE6 we should hurry it out the door and let the web become more innovative. And in the unfortunate case that a user is on IE6, educate them about the problem. Cheers, Craig

Craig Morris

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