Time for IE6 to die... so let's just kill it

Of late, I've been doing a lot more designing and coding than I have in previous months and years. With this has come a lot of new skills and techniques but one thing that hasn't changed and has become increasingly frustrating is getting our sites to look and work the same in Internet Explorer 6.

If you're a web designer or developer reading this, you'll have undoubtedly come across this headache and many of us have discussed it at different events as well as online. I quite regularly tweet my frustration and have read many similar tweets.

Many clients are unaware of the work that goes into making sites look the same across all browsers. The newer browsers (such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome and even IE8) are more standard and are easier to get looking consistent. It's legacy browsers that cause us designers and developers the most problems and take up the most time testing and fixing, which can also add costs to a project.

Well, I think it's time that we take a stand and really make a push to kill IE6 for good. According to Statcounter Global Stats, IE6 currently equates to 17% of all browsers around the world (8% for Ireland), and it's losing about 1% per month. With a final push, we could finally get IE6 out of our lives forever!

What can we do?

Update Now
Well, if you're an end user and you're viewing this site with Internet Explorer 6, it's time for you to upgrade... seriously! Most likely users of old browsers don't know they are using an old browser and we're waiting for the cycle of new computer purchases to actually rid the world of IE6.

Inform IE6 Users
As a designer / developer, there is something you can do. I recently came across Update Your Browser that has a little javascript file that you can include on your websites and it will detect the users browser and if it's an old browser, it will display a simple and unobtrusive message to the user. This links back to their website and gives the user information on why they should upgrade and how to do it. I like the way this loads and looks like the information bar in IE6 so these users should notice it. I've seen similar type campaigns but none as simple and elegant as this one.

Spread The Word
If you've got a blog or use twitter/facebook, spread the word. Write a blog post, tell your followers, get people over to updateyourbrowser.net.

I felt it was time to give it a plug and see if we could get more designers and developers involved. I think we'll approach clients about this as well and increase the IE6 users we can put this script in front of. I remember the death of IE4, IE5 and IE5.5 and I'm truly looking forward to seeing the back of IE6 for good. I'm already anticipating the next browser kill campaign when we're looking to get more support for HTML5 but I'll leave that talk for another day.

I've also had a little bit of a chat on twitter about a retirement bash for IE6 - there could be lots of fun around the send off plus lots of sponsorship opportunities. More on that down the line.

So, what do you think? Are you sick of IE6 yet? Will you use this script on your sites? When will you stop supporting it - 4% or less?