A day of mourning for Internet Explorer 6

Internet Explorer 6 is dead!

Before I get further into this story, I want to get you in the mood for what I’m going to do next. To do that, I’m going to ask you to watch the video below. I hope you’re strong enough to muscle through at least half of it.

Ok, ready?

It looks like Internet Explorer 6 – *puts on sunglasses* – has been rendered obsolete.

Wow. I really can’t believe I just wrote that. Or that I spent half an hour trying to think of a good line and that’s all I came up with.

But yes, the bell has tolled for Internet Explorer 6. As of March 1, 2010, Google has officially started phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6. A statement like that is enough for web developers to rejoice and start singing songs. If you don’t believe me, check out this video.

I won’t break down all of the reasons that led to Google making this move but I will be so bold as to sum it up with one word: security. If you wish to know more details, you should read their excellent blog post regarding their decision.

Now that you know what Google is doing, I bet you want to know what zu is doing!

At zu, we have a two-tier browser support system. We build sites so they look and function identically in any Tier 1 browser. With Tier 2 browsers, we have a level of “acceptable losses” in terms of display and functionality discrepancies.

Our definition of “acceptable losses” is the following: “any discovered bugs that affect the usability of the website should be fixed.”

This means that if we notice extra spacing between the top navigation and content, we won’t spend time debugging and fixing that issue in Tier 2 browsers. If the top navigation doesn’t show up in Tier 2 browsers, we would spend time to correct that issue.

Internet Explorer 6 has been a Tier 1 browser dating back to before we introduced our tiered system. I’m happy to announce that as of March 1, 2010, Internet Explorer 6 is officially a Tier 2 browser at zu.

Some may wonder why we haven’t simply dropped support altogether for IE6 as Google has done. I’ll sum that up in one word: 20%. That’s the estimated market share of IE6 as of February 2010. And while we want our developers to not be restricted by a decade-old relic of a browser, we also want to ensure our client’s sites are as widely viewable as possible.

There will be funeral services today and while we won’t be attending, we will be wearing our best mourning attire. I’m guessing there won’t be too somber of an atmosphere though. In fact, it’s likely to be one of the most jubilant funerals ever!