God how I wish we could get away with using this on our sites. Sadly enough we're in a similar situation as Dan, with a lot of government and multinational clients that are stuck on IE6 with their entire computer park and no privileges to upgrade.
Lately we've finally stepped away from making sure IE6 is "identical" to newer browsers, and just spend some time making sure IE6 is functional without any ugly hacks or extra markup to accomodate bells and whistles for it.
Same here, we just make it work in IE6 without too many ugly hacks and have to leave the users with a slightly less polished design. That's alright though, they're already used to the ugliness that is IE6 and Windows XP! ;-)
Degrading IE6 is a fine solution, then only offering extra goodies/bells and whistles for those browsers that support it. The tipping point for me was Google and Microsoft both issuing the "please upgrade" message. This if passed on to the right managers normally can help them bite the bullet and make the push to getting at least IE7 installed on those machines that need it which would at least be a start.
I understand that this package is not something we can all install but the more that can the better ;)
Also there is nothing stopping you showing a "Please upgrade" message elsewhere on the site in a less "in your face" manner.
I don;t think there is anything wrong with showing all IE6 users an "in your face" message, but only once. If they get this everytime they hit the home page it will be really annoying. I think the package could be improved by setting a cookie when the message is shown so they only see it once every X days.
Offroadcode.com
This is the site we originally created this package for. If you hit it in IE6 you get the lovely looking popup appear.
Soon IE6, soon you will be dead!
It would be nice if we were able to use this but we have government clients that are still stuck on IE6 with no option to upgrade.
I'm also still yet to see a "standard" website that couldn't be made IE6 compatible with only a few hours extra work.
Nice package for those that can though!
God how I wish we could get away with using this on our sites. Sadly enough we're in a similar situation as Dan, with a lot of government and multinational clients that are stuck on IE6 with their entire computer park and no privileges to upgrade.
Lately we've finally stepped away from making sure IE6 is "identical" to newer browsers, and just spend some time making sure IE6 is functional without any ugly hacks or extra markup to accomodate bells and whistles for it.
Same here, we just make it work in IE6 without too many ugly hacks and have to leave the users with a slightly less polished design. That's alright though, they're already used to the ugliness that is IE6 and Windows XP! ;-)
Degrading IE6 is a fine solution, then only offering extra goodies/bells and whistles for those browsers that support it. The tipping point for me was Google and Microsoft both issuing the "please upgrade" message. This if passed on to the right managers normally can help them bite the bullet and make the push to getting at least IE7 installed on those machines that need it which would at least be a start.
I understand that this package is not something we can all install but the more that can the better ;)
Also there is nothing stopping you showing a "Please upgrade" message elsewhere on the site in a less "in your face" manner.
I don;t think there is anything wrong with showing all IE6 users an "in your face" message, but only once. If they get this everytime they hit the home page it will be really annoying. I think the package could be improved by setting a cookie when the message is shown so they only see it once every X days.
James @ Offroadcode blogged about the case for keeping IE support for those who might be interested:
www.offroadcode.com/2010/8/17/why-dropping-ie6-support-is-down-to-the-numbers.aspx
Thanks for the link, Peter. Interesting read.
We might actually have an upcoming project for which this package will come in handy too.
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