Trash All IE Hacks 510
Let's admit it, we all hate Internet Explorer 6. About 80% of our CSS debug time are spend on IE6. We all know that IE6 is outdated and has horrible CSS rendering engine. However, most average Internet users haven't realized that yet. Why? Because we put our hard work on it and patch the bugs by various IE hacks. Well, it is time to do something...
Common IE hacks
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CSS Conditional comments
In order for our sites to work on specific verson of IE (due to improper CSS rendering), CSS conditional comments are used to apply special CSS specifications to fix it. If you haven't realized this yet, read the IE bug articles on positioniseverything.net (warning: you might hate IE more after you read them). -
PNG hack
As mentioned early, IE6 is outdated and doesn't support PNG alpha transparency. In order to display PNG (with alpha transparency) properly in IE6 or older version, we use this hack.Aleksey asked on "Simple Double Quotes":
"Hello Nick. I see some bug.
The Close button ( X ) don’t transparent. Test on IE6 and MyIE."My response:
"Yes, I know the PNGs don't display probably in IE6. But guess what, I'm not going to bother to fix it. I'm sick of hacking IE6 bugs. You should upgrade your browser anyway. Why are you still using the outdated browser?"
Why trash IE6 hacks?
I know this is difficult because about 37% (according to w3schools.com) of internet users are still using IE6. But, together we can make a different. Stop using IE hacks on your sites and let them see the ugly side of IE6. Eventually, they will find a better browser (ie. Firefox) or at least upgrade to newer version of IE.
Update:
Agree with the comments below, the statistic from W3schools does not reflect the entire internet. According to TheCounter.com, the global browser stats of IE6 users is 52% in July 2007.
Support me
If you agree with me, please support Web Designer Wall by making a vote and spreading out the word. Let's trash all IE hacks and code happily ever after...
Loading ...Conclusion
85% voted yes
15% voted no
Here are what people have said:
- "My boss will fire me if my sites don't work in IE6" because 52% of internet users are still using IE6.
- Display a message (in yellow bar), "You are using an outdated browser, please upgrade your browser" to IE6 users.
- If it is a personal project, you can ignore all the IE6 users. But for professional or commercial projects, you can't live without them.
- Avoid using any features (ie. PNG, CSS selectors) that are not supported by IE6.
Great , Trash All IE Hacks
Great article. CSS saved web design
Just wanted to chime in that i found out recently from someone who works there that Shmershmizon (can you hear me now?) corporate systems and all employees have ie6. wow i said. for corporations like this, their own website doesn’t work in ie6, why are you still using it in your company!?!?!?
great information thanks
I hate IE hacks too, but the majority of people still using IE6 are at work and are not allowed to upgrade their browser because of corporate policies. They are stuck with IE6 because of legacy intranet applications that don’t work in newer browsers. This is common in large organizations (especially government).
I support IE6 (within reason) because I don’t want to lose out on potential corporate consulting contracts.
I agree that we shouldn’t be working overtime to fix our websites for ie6 (or any other version for that matter) . . . . when people get a chance to use Firefox they enjoy the web more for that reason because their favorite look and feel much better . . . take twitter for example . . . view twitter in IE 6-7-8 . . . it doesn’t matter . . . . thier are no rounded corners because ie still to this day even on a brand new Windows Sleven PC does’t recagnize webkit css – On my home computer with Linux – Ubuntu 9.10 and Firefox – Twitter Looks GREAT!!!!
A pox on you IE6 – a pox I say! :P
I agree that web developers found IE6 ugly due to its un-support for newer trends in web. But still IE6 has its percentage use in web, so we can’t deny or ignore to look into IE6 fixes. It might required some additional coding/s whether its CSS or Javascript, web developer need to prepare themselves as well until IE6 completely wiped out from the web. There are solutions, we need to find the way. That’s it!
Trash All IE Hacks, Visit on http://ie6update.com/
nice tutorial i will translate my language
I find it amazing, that in a world where people always “need” the latest.. design, gadget, TV.. so many still insist on using a buggy browser. If we all designed solely for IE6.. no PNGs, no great effects.. that is very much holding back progress in my view.
I rather liken it to “I like riding horses, so why do we need gas stations all over the place.. why not horse troughs?”
The designs showed here show what simple and tasteful design is all about. Another one to consider
Completely agree with your reasoning behind stopping supporting IE6.
I think the main restricting factor to its death is that schools ond buisness have it as their browser – what do they care if their pupils or employees go on sites which don’t render correctly? There is no incentive to spend money to get admin upgrade all the workstation’s browsers.
My visitors are mainly from non personal machines of which 25% are using IE6!
it is pretty funny that I came across this looking for the png css hack… I so wished I could throw them out the door but I still work for a corporation for my day job so coding inside the bounds of the approved browser makes me refrain from lets say jazzing up some of the functional sites I work on. I vote yes to ditching the hacks for the greater population… get with it!
Why not just place a Bad Browser script :
http://think2loud.com/build-an-unsupported-browser-warning-with-jquery/
I am doing just that for all projects. You can do a redirect to a page which enlists various browsers or even place a full screen div which doesnt allow you to navigate the site if its IE6 (LOL… if you use that stuff, you do NOT deserve to browse the WWW).
Moreover most users who are still using IE6, are generally users who arent aware of the newer browsers… In that case place a security message stating the facts relating to security flaws and so on.
I’ve long since given up bothering to accommodate for IE6. With the web moving as quick as it is these days, there’s no possible way any of the new trends of CSS3 will enjoy widespread support if laymen haven’t any incentive to upgrade. Nowadays, I simply make sure the basic layout in IE6 is usable, but ugly. And CCs are used to display a big, unmistakable message to the person to upgrade their goddamned browsers. I dumb it down to avoid intimidating newcomers – “It is VERY important that you download the latest version possible!”
And that’s all. There’s no reason to use shit browsers anymore. Absolutely no excuse – it isn’t as though upgrading costs anything but a few precious minutes of your time. >_<
Well youtube is stopping support for IE6, hopefully this moves people onto newer browsers. I agree with what’s been previously mentioned tho, if folk are still on IE6, either they’re lazy suckers who deserve a screwed up website; or are full-on computer illiterate, and don’t even know what a web browser is!
I have IE6 on one of my computers because I have hardware and software on it that IE8 actually will cause to stop working. I would just install 7, but for whatever reason I could roll back to 6 but not 7. It can be really frustrating getting things to look right in IE6, so many features I like just don’t really work on earlier versions of IE, and weird bugs. I would be pretty happy if IE just disappeared from the face of the earth all together, it’s the worst browser out there as far as I’m aware. There really ought to be a movement to get Microsoft to stop making it required for Windows to have IE.
Trashing IE6 hacks would be great but I don’t really think it’s a realistic option. Bottom line is, your client won’t notice an IE6 hack, but they will notice if their website doesn’t display properly when they view it on their dads old computer.
I would love to stop hacking for ie6, but unfortunately with so many of our users still browsing with it I would get fired.
On a project I am working on I am not fixing IE6 for now… BUT, I think I have to after the project is done for all major browsers. This pisses me off already :-(
We still have about 15% of our clients that access with IE6… what a pity.