Sugar always try to support as many forms of browsing as possible when developing websites for our clients, testing them on mobile devices and game consoles together with the popular browsers.
But, is full support for IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) becoming one step to far?

Funnily enough, there are several campaigns out there to rid the world of IE6. StopIE.com, Bring Down IE6 (by .Net magazine)to name but two. There are also the pro IE6 campaigners at SaveIE6.com providing us with some (sometimes laughable) arguments to keep the browser alive.

But as firm followers of web standards, we put a great amount of weight in the opinions of standards gurus’ such as Jeff Zeldman who has recently been quoted:

“IE6 is the new Netscape 4. The hacks needed to support IE6 are increasingly viewed as excess freight. Like Netscape 4 in 2000, IE6 is perceived to be holding back the web.”

Clients sometimes pressure designers to ‘force’ sites to work in IE6, and designers, not wanting to lose business, comply, using hacks and workarounds. This wastes time and money. Microsoft needs to fix this, designers need to unite, and we all need to move on to bigger and better things.

This IE6 problem has become an issue in a current development at Sugar, where a once beautiful design and interactive experience  is in danger of being diluted to fulfil its duties on the IE6 platform.
The question we are asking ourselves is ‘how far do we go?’. Do we say good bye to IE6 users with a detection script to warn them of their shortcomings or do we spend additional time and money on workarounds that have the potential to hold back the development and have a negative impact on the end result?

Additional reading at BringdownIE6, Wired.com and the Facebook campaign.

Quality illustration by robotjohnny