Trash All IE Hacks 517
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 We all know that IE6 is outdated and has horrible CSS rendering engine.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As mentioned early, IE6 is outdated and doesn't support PNG alpha transparency.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.
Just boycott IE altogether.
The majority of commenters obviously don’t work in a corporate design firm and have have high-demand clients to please. There is no way we can ditch IE6, live with it, work around it, build up skill and altogether it might take an extra hour (few hours if it’s an advanced layout) per website to fix the problems. Fix them with conditional comments and charge client.
I totally agree with Wolf! Clients aren’t interested in details about browsers and they won’t use Firefox or iE7 just because this browsers have a better rendering engine. The site they are paying for have to look great and work without any problems. And that’s it! And by the way… many companies have good reasons to run iE6. Maybe 90% are running windows and for example, a lot of applications built a few years ago aren’t working properly in Firefox or ie7. So why using a newer version?! I know this is sad, but it’s reallity.
Somewhere we have to draw the line even with our clients on whether or not to support IE6. If we don’t, users will still be using IE6 even when IE10 comes out. (if it ever does.)
So, whether you work for a corporate design firm or your a full time freelancer, now is the best time for a boycott.
Debugging IE 6 is the worst nightmare of all time. But what to do, we need to cater to IE users….thats frustrating man! I hate IE personally too, couldn’t agree more than that!
Check out this site http://www.artofadambetts.com/weblog/. Seeing is site on IE6 is horrible, but in FF nice!
We’re not the ones “supporting” IE6. The supporters of IE6 are the people who still use it, whether they choose to or not. Our job is to make a site usable across browsers, not to evangelize the use of one over the other.
A better alternative to trashing IE hacks altogether (there are Firefox rendering bugs as well, surely you realize) is to practice the art of transcendent web design, as Andy Clarke puts it. This involves utilizing forward-thinking technologies like CSS 3 and transparent PNGs wherever possible, and working around various browser limitations accordingly, while making clients aware of the limitations of IE6 and below. This doesn’t mean you have to hack.
For the record, conditional comments aren’t considered a hack. They’re a legitimate, though proprietary, method of browser detection. A hack is the use of a piece of software in a way other than its makers’ intention. They beat the crap out of browser-sniffing JavaScript.
It’s hard to take a decision like this, there are so many users that won’t change their browser. They will think your site has something wrong.
I’d like to stop supporting IE6, but there will be at least another year of agony.
This is a subject very close to my heart, Nick. In fact I recently spoke about it at an event! Here’s the video and slides, if you’re interested.
In essence I agree with you but sadly I don’t think we’re at a stage where we can completely disregard support for IE6. At the moment I think it’s more of a case of selective degradation.
Half of the internet is still browsed by IE6 and it is important to design keeping them in mind.
One of my clients’ websites have IE6 visits of over 80%; there’s no way I can tell them we’re dropping IE6 support.
The problem as I see it is twofold:
1. Some people don’t know – or don’t care – what a browser is. As far as they’re concerned, it’s the internet. Unless we can make a case to them that’s better than “IE6 means more work for us”, we’re never going to persuade them to change their browser.
2. Some (many?) users at work can’t install software on their machines, and have to wait for their IT department to upgrade. Why haven’t more IT departments upgraded? Who knows.
If you use a correct doctype and valid code, and reset the browser defaults, you’ll find that IE6 isn’t very much of an issue; any small fixes can be done with a conditional stylesheet. If you want to use progressive enhancement to make sites look prettier in modern browsers, that’s a better way forward.
I couldn’t agree with you more. But.. as everyone already pointed out too many ignorant internet users still use IE.
It scares me to see how poorly people use the internet. Sometimes a wonder why I put so much effort in designing websites.
We really should punish them for it by not supporting IE ;-)
You *can* use PNGs with alpha transparency in IE *without* that hack if you’re willing to live with minor image degredation for IE (depending on how the image is constructed): http://www.kevinfreitas.net/pro/articles/png-magic/. I use this whenever I can because creating alpha trans pngs in Photoshop requires png-24, which is a rather bloated image size. One of the comments links to png-quaint, which works similar to Fireworks, but doesn’t produce as high of quality image.
Personally, even if I wanted to, I could not use IE7 because I’m still using Win2k, even though M$ has officially dropped support for it. I have yet to see an app that is going to force me upgrade.
I don’t usually have trouble with IE unless I’m trying to do something *really* bleeding edge, like reformatting tables (IE6 explodes on that). Conditional Comments are only used as a last resort (I’ve only used them on *one* site). Advanced CSS selectors and !important are my “hacks” of choice for helping disabled browsers along, and even then it’s only a few lines here and there in my main CSS files. I am willing to live with minor inconsistencies in IE as long as they aren’t hindering the user. Then again, I gave up on being anal about pixel-perfect layouts long ago: my designs are fluid and forgiving.
If sites are broken in a user’s browser, the user will blame the designer before they blame their browser and spend their money at your competitor’s site.
I have started reconstructing my site with pure css, and I am not taking IE into account for. I should, but then again people should not use IE. I feel a strong education in why IE is a poor choice of browser to use. It may be a bad business move, but any potential client that uses IE is a a client I start not wanting to deal with since it usually means more work.
Quit being lazy.
People have the right to use whatever browser they want to. Sometimes you dont get a choice.
I know lots of huge companies who’s IT teams only support microsoft products and are still running windows 2000 so they CANNOT upgrade to IE7.
We all know the crap which is the IE browser — but whom are we to command people what software they use just because we think its proper?
What if someone tomorrow told you tomorrow that you could no longer use Firefox? You’d be pissed.
I’ve been doing this a while and to be honest, its alot better that it ever was before. You try supporting IE4 and Netscape Navigator 4 .. IE6 is cake.
Do your job RIGHT or don’t do it at all.
Just my .02 cents.
Cheers.
I think businesses with corporate usage of Microsoft web browsers should be upgrading to the latest versions anyway. If their IT usage policy states that everyone has to use a vastly outdated browser, which is more vulnerable than the average alternative, and not update everyone to the latest version, then that’s surely their problem and not ours.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past trying to work around problems that I’ve found appearing when I test my pages in IE — random borders and line breaks, gaps, things not lining up, et cetera. And even limited myself on my creativity and expression because I can’t use alpha blending a PNG file to make the page look more beautiful, and save a whole lot of work.
I say to hell with IE, especially on personal sites, where there is greater flexibility. I’m not going to waste my time when I know the majority of my visitors, and my target audience will be using a sensible browser choice anyway.
We just need to relieve ourselves of this pseudo-requirement we impose on ourselves to workaround old problems.
yes,I hate ie too
for a beginner learning css,it must be interesting,but when I switch it into ie,
It’s awful…
Dugg and voted. Trash it!
As long as microsoft hold the market we wont see any improvement with IE browser. MS just stop tryng. So help yourself get an alternative browser.
@web:
It’s not about being lazy at all. It’s about educating those who don’t know any better.
Doing the job “right” may mean dropping IE6.
It’s understandable that not everybody can just up and ditch IE6. I am, like many others, stuck developing for a Windows 2000 environment. It’s a place where vendor lock-in chokes out attempts to move forward without additional cost. It sucks for designers, developers, and end-users.
However, I still wanted to make a few observations.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us here used IE back in the day. We’ve already had to switch browsers. I wouldn’t be pissed if I had to switch again–not if this somebody gave me a list of logical reasons to switch.Education is part of the battle in getting people to upgrade software.
This is another key. When do we throw IE6 into the “Outdated” barrel with Navigator 4 and IE 3? At the release of IE8? At the Windows XP end-of-life? Is that too long? How much time has to pass before this is acceptable?
At some point the people with the technical knowledge have to take charge and educate the people without it. And, when that fails, you do the same as you would with a NN4 or IE3 request—charge more money for having to develop in an “obsolete” environment.
How could a person ethically support internal combustion engines when green car technology exists? It’s not just an issue of market-share. There are several factors to take into account, such as the security of our users. The ethics are blurry, that’s why this conversation is taking place.
One other thing I’d like to point out: if I recall correctly, new versions of Flash seem to get scooped up. Are there lessons we, or the browser developers, can take away from that fact?
We can’t just sit around and hope change will happen. Each one of us is capable of making a difference.