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I am interested to know, with Internet Explorer 8 on the way, should web developers continue to support IE 5.5? Microsoft ceased support for the product in December 2005, almost 2 and half years ago and it's market share is down to around 1.7%, according to w3schools.com.
Microsoft recommends upgrading to at least version 6 and I believe web developers have been more than generous in their efforts to continue supporting such an out dated product, for so many years.
Is it finally time to let go of IE 5.5? -
YES!
I wrote up a post that might help answer your question: Cross-Browser Compatibility: Which Browsers Matter? -
If you ask me,
it is also time to let go IE6! Not only, that all IE users browse with crap, they aren't even able to upgrade their crap to the newest version. This is a very cusrious thing, because in every other case of software usage, the user pics the best product in his price area, except for browsers. You have the possibility to choose between many great products, all for free and many of them much better than IE. I do not understand how lazy people are. They aren't too lazy to download the newest movies via P2P, though. I don't claim, that there is a connection between IE and P2P, but rather want to point out, that people show ambition, as long as there is a value. Well, what value do they get using a different browser? No one. Because all (good) sites are cross browser compatible. So everything is ok, right? No! Why? Because we, the poor web developers have to care about the cross browser compatibility of our sites, only because of a single crap piece of software out there, which isn't even able to stick to official, years old standards. How much faster would web development be, if I didn't have to care about IE... and how many pains would I have saved... I have a dream. Namly that all web developers out there boycott IE and stop support for it!
Dave. (Opera since 2000) -
- CommentAuthorLuminance Design
- CommentTimeApr 8th 2008
Yes it is - and IE6! Web developers spend too much time getting quality sites to work in older browsers due to their commonality. If users with IE5.5 or IE6 were actually encouraged to upgrade - by informing them of the benefits (nevermind the security upgrades), then everyones life would be better.
As there's several free browsers out there that offer a plethora of features, are are more stable and compliant than aging browsers such as IE6 (released in 2001) there is NO reason not to update.
For anyone that doesn't upgrade due to Microsofts Windows Authentication checking their machine - don't have sympathy - it's often because they're running a pirated version of Windows and don't want to be caught out by the checks. You wouldn't want to be assisting piracy by doing all that backwards engineering just to get your cool site working for them do you?
It's annoying too that HTML is now 10 years old and yet IE6 that is 7 years old still can't render pages correctly half the time. True, IE7 is better and even the beta of version 8 is promising but it's still a pathetic effort from the biggest software company out there.
Time to educate people, not pamper them with hacks.
Move on - IE is dead! -
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CommentAuthorkari.patila
- CommentTimeApr 8th 2008
It's all well and good to mock IE, but I'd rather see that done for reasons other than laziness or incompetence. Not that I'm implying you people are either of those...
Lately I've been noticing something quite unusual: my latest designs work with IE as well as other browsers straight from the beginning, without any problems at all. And that has nothing to do with my abilities as a programmer or writer, but rather with the fact that I've been conditioned to do things in a certain, almost obsolete way. I'm all for experimenting with new techniques and technologies, but what's the point in making ice cream if you don't get vanilla right? -Right? -
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- CommentAuthorLuminance Design
- CommentTimeApr 9th 2008
Kari,
I know what you mean - it's surprising that sites will work in IE first time, a pleasant one at that! I think it's down to becoming aware of its quirks and automatically coding with IEs idiosyncrasies in mind - albeit subconciously. I've never used hacks to get things working on IE6 in the past. If you make the effort to construct a website properly you don't need ANY hacks - it can be fiddly, but just think of the future proofing of not using proprietry hacks and lengthy workarounds.
As I said in a previous post, IE is getting better - as are all the other browsers. This is a gooooooooooooood thing!
Code on!
Mike
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