Trash All IE Hacks 513
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 We all know that IE6 is outdated and has horrible CSS rendering engine.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As mentioned early, IE6 is outdated and doesn't support PNG alpha transparency.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 another thing, most of “normal people” i mean, who doesnt use computer like us, you know, like your mother, or uncle, who doesnt know how to use it properly, they just DONT KNOW how to update browsers and stuffs, they only notice that when they get a computer problem and hire some technical support and the guy says “hey, you know, im formating ur hd and reinstaling windows” and only THEN they get their pc with the new version…. its sad but, most of the people are not so friendly with computer and internet stuffs.
“Here’s a suggestion: How about educating visual designers so that they can design websites that don’t require web developers to create browser specific hacks?”
Terrific quote that I couldn’t agree with more. I haven’t used an IE hack in over 2 years and all sites I design and develop work. Bloated visual sites like this one is what really should be trashed.
Yes, I’d love to trash IE!
Unfortunately, almost all of my small business clients use IE6. So I must make them “happy” by using IE hacks so they’d see the website “correctly”, else I won’t get paid! ;)
Design for success,
Sherman
First, sorry for my poor English.
I think that many users have illegal copy of windows and probably they don´t update their Windows. I use Firefox but i recognize i expend too many time fixing bugs with css. 50% of users use IE 6.0 :o(
I`m currently redesigning my site have had to spend the last two evenings filling out the CSS with useless work-arounds and extra containers to make it display the same as Firefox and Opera, so I so right now I’d be glad to see the back of IE!
Unfortunately though, as mentioned many times above it’s still the choice of a high percentage of internet users, mostly whom simply do not know the difference between browsers or how to change them.
One solution would be that we all go back to designing with nested tables and spacer Gifs! At least they look pretty much the same in every browser haha!
I wonder if these people who complain that “85% of my time for css is wasted with hacking it to work with ie6″ or “have had to spend the last two evenings filling out the CSS with useless work-arounds and extra containers to make it display the same as Firefox and Opera” are actually just bad coders? There’s NO WAY you should have to spend that much time correcting bugs in IE6! I’ve just finished a huge project with close to a thousand lines of CSS, and my IE6 stylesheet was 8 lines long.
I wonder if they’d like to post links so we can see these cutting-edge designs that they’re working on that require such herculean effort to make compatible.
Do they even consider for a second that the problem might not be with the browser?
I feel IE6 definitly needs to be trashed.But who will be the loser if we don’t user CSS hacks for IE6. Who will tell the users that the crappy looking site is due to faulty IE6 rendering and not because of the website developer.
I stopped using IE hacks a while ago and have yet to find it a problem. If I have a CSS property that requires a hack to render effectively in IE6, I find another solution. Now, that doesn’t mean I may never find myself in a bind and HAVE to resort to a hack in the future, but so far I’ve been pretty lucky.
I hate tomatoes and IE6.
First of all, you should not look at the w3c stats (30% or 50% using ie6), you should look at your own stats, then you see how many is using ie6 at YOUR site.
w3c stats doesn’t mean there are 50% ie6 users on your site.
But I totally agree with that we should trash ie6 hacks. Though imo, there are not that many hacks you need, but you will have to tweak your site alot to look good in ie6, i.e the margins and things. I spend alot of time (sorry, wasting my time) on making it look good in ie6 aswell. But I have to.. if I make a site for a client I just can’t say I’ve trashed the IE6 hacks so now it looks horrible for about 30% of your users.. I wish I could but I can’t. Maybe we should all add something that makes it impossible for IE6 users to even see the site :)
Another option in the poll…
I’d love to throw them away, but our work-rules (boss’ rules) say that minimum requirements include ie6 support.
I’d second the notion of Christos.
However, too many potential customers in Malaysia (where I’m located) are still ‘caveman’ in terms of even knowing the difference of Internet Explorer and Firefox. Hence, the requirement to still even support IE6 over here. sigh…
Although I like the idea of finding a way for people to be required to upgrade or switch browsers, that just isn’t always an option. Some, though probably rather few, have no idea how to update or which browser they should choose. So, for a while at least I’m just going to stick to catering to their whims no matter how irritating they are.
web (post 53) said: “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.”
I totally agree. W2k is till most used MS OS by big and middle size businesses, and their IT staff often supports IE only for maintenance and training reasons (to name couple).
W2k extended support ends 13/07/2010. Don’t expect big companies just to jump to XP or Vista – it is a huge operation, not just money, but making sure that the new environment is tested and secure, all apps are working correctly, staff is trained, etc..
So I would say that your call “Trash All IE Hacks” is rather silly (to name it nice). Do your designs carefully, so you use only absolutely needed IE hacks, and don’t need to apply some of them just because your markup forces it.
I vote: “No – because I have time to fix IE6 bugs”. Not the first time, not the last one.
Regards,
Peter
@Peter,
I believe Win2k supports Firefox, right? Why are you still using the old crappy outdated browser. Switch to Firefox and browse correctly.
Not addressing IE 6 anymore is certainly “an idea” for personal sites, but not for commercial or organizational sites yet.
You know why there are lots of people using IE6; It’s because they are using pirate version of Windows XP. Especially here in my Country. That’s why it is hard for them to upgrade to newer version. Other says that they are much comfortable with IE6 because they got use to it’s interface. But if I ask my friends of which of the two browser (Firefox and IE) is more faster and reliable, they choose Firefox. In my country there are lots of Internet Cafe and using IE6. Because they are using pirate version of OS. Even other company in my country are using pirate version of OS. But I don’t know from other country what browser they are using. Coz there still 50% more users using IE6.
Important Article : IE6 – We Can’t Ignore…
TRASH!!! I want to trash those hacks so badly!
must die, must die, IE6 must die..
:)