Life, the Internet and everything.
July 31st, 2011
It’s time to stop supporting IE6. No not because it isn’t standards compliant, or because the biggest companies on the web don’t think it’s economically feasible to continue to support archaic technology, or even because we would be doing our users a favor by forcing them to upgrade. No, it’s time because I don’t know how to build a web page that displays properly in IE6. I just don’t know how to IE6.
I’m a 20-year-old web developer/designer/enthusiast. I’m an intern at a company where the social web and Facebook development is the name of the game. In the final week of wrapping up my first legitimate project, my boss dropped the bomb I was hoping to avoid. “Hey, Colby”, he said, “make sure it works in IE6 and up.” I grumbled a bit but I figured, how bad could it possibly be. IE7 wasn’t too terrible, sure it’s inconvenient but after an hour or so of CSS tweaks the layout was spot on. Boy, was I wrong.
I’m a rising Junior with top marks in my computer science program and I’ve spent the last two and a half years buried in CSS. Though I may be short on experience, I consider myself extremely well versed in CSS. I was in no way prepared for IE6. Turns out I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I was in a bizarre and at times terrifying world where conditional JavaScript fragments can be embedded in external style sheets and block level elements are affected by text alignment. I haven’t slacked on my school work over the last few years and I’ve retained enough of it to know that at no point did I ever receive any indications that I might need to worry about any of the issues that were thrown at me this past week.
It took me two solid days, but I managed to hack together something that vaguely resembled my app and retained most of its functionality. The problem here is that I spent two relearning how to build a web page for an obscure outdated browser.
There’s a fine line between supporting older technologies and letting ourselves get dragged down by relics of nearly forgotten era.
As a student, it’s a waste of time that would be better spent enhancing knowledge for building the future.
As a developer, it’s a deadline stretching, week of hell.
As a client, it’s money sucking vortex.
Now’s the time. Someone needs to start the ball rolling and just say no.
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