As a web designer and WordPress developer – hell, as a plain ol’ Internet user – Internet Explorer 6 has been the bane of my existence for years. Thanks to quirky rendering of stylesheets and a host of other nagging bugs, creating a website that looks the same in IE6 as other browsers can be an absolute nightmare. While the modern versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari all play relatively well together, designing for IE6 usually entails CSS hacks and conditional styling, and the smallest of style changes always have the potential to cause yet another rendering issue.
While web and graphic designers have been imploring stubborn IE6′ers to upgrade for ages, our pleas were mostly falling on deaf ears. But finally there’s light at the end of the tunnel! Google has announced that it will phase out support for IE6 in Google Docs and Google Sites on March 1st – but the big news is that some current and future YouTube features will no longer work for IE6 users as of March 13th. Huzzah! I’m expecting that more major sites will follow suit in the near future, and there’s really no reason not to. After all, the vast majority of folks who still use IE6 are likely only doing so because they either don’t know how to upgrade their browser, or don’t have any idea that it’s out of date – and with some not-so subtle nudges in the right direction, I’m hopeful that the number of hold-outs will dwindle significantly.
But if you’re one of the defiant 6′ers who abjectly refuses to upgrade for your own incomprehensible reasons, maybe this will sway you: a wildly unofficial (but hilarious!) IE6 funeral, to be held in Denver, Colorado on March 4th. Show up in your best funeral attire and get ready to pay your last respects, bishes!
Note: When I was researching this post, Google Suggest offered the phrase “IE6 is a bag of smashed buttholes” as a search option. Freakin’ made my day! =)
