Don’t be lazy, download a good browser

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, August 13, 2009 @ 2:38 pm

Why are we developers still taking a hit for Microsoft's IE6 by doing additional work for it? Well we are certainly not eager about it . "The Market" is directing us by showing us that people use it a lot.

The market says that about 15% of people today are using IE6 which is 8 years old now.

Nothing to be surprised about.

Recently, we at Pathfinder were presented with statistics of usage for a desktop software created in-house showing the biggest drop in workflow at software installation reinforcing the point that people have a hard time installing software, so why would they go around installing a new browser when they already have one? Most people are under the impression that "the site" or "the internet" doesn't work and not the browser they are using and there's nobody there to tell most people what the problem really is.

Microsoft is not going anywhere and it didn't listen to it's own developers and users pleading for mercy and help. So why would anybody go through the horror of using or developing for IE6 when there a great browser options today that implement HTML and CSS standards comprehensively (including IE8 which is not bad)? Because they don't know any better.

That's where people who do know better should step up and offer insight. "Oh, but that's too much work and I don't care about educating people about browsers". Fellow internet dweller, next time you are writing a hack for IE6 and wasting your creative energy, write an email to your mother, friend or cousin and inform them about other browsing options and tell them to pass the word. That small ripple will have a bigger effect than all your hacks and related whining put together.

Or - to make it the least effort possible (because we don't want anybody to strain a typin' finger ) , you can use this code to inform people about their choices, that they are possibly even not aware of.  Maybe even, and I'm just talking crazy here, offer a suggestion.

JavaScript is adopted from Microsoft's article "Detecting Internet Explorer More Effectively" which is exactly what we want to do.

What to pass in the message is a thing of your personal flavor and a good place to really get creative.

Here is my lite take on it.

Thanks to my colleagues from Pathfinder on inspiration who have put together a similar but way more creative informing system on one of our internal applications, not to mention the the development cost reduction it resulted in.

Related Services: Ajax Rich Internet Applications, Custom Software Development

Related posts:

1. .NET Web Browser Control Gotchas
2. IE6: The zombie browser
3. Hacking the :first-child pseudo-class into IE6 with jQuery and CSS
4. GWT 2.0: Cool Beans on In Browser Development Mode
5. Hacking transparent PNG support into IE6 with IE PNG Fix, CSS and jQuery (part 1 of 2)

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