Internet Explorer 6 - who is going to kill this browser?

I dont’t remember where I read it, but it sounds good:

“80% of your time is waisted trying to make a website look good in Internet Explorer 6”.

In other words you make a website which looks the way it should in all serious browsers and you spend an amount of time, let’s say 20 hours. You need 80 extra hours to make the same website look OK in ΙΕ6.

OK, I think there’s a bit of exaggeration here. However for me the relevant percents are 50%-50%. It is too bad as well. I can accept the differences between browsers and the way they read code. I can accept each jobs includes parts which are not fun at all. But I can’t accept such a bad browser which makes your life more and more difficult. There at least 6 reasons why IE6 must die. (Really? I thought there were 600.)

I get this point. What I don’t get is who consists this 37% of users who still select IE6. Take a look at the numbers. The moment IE7 starts working there is a 60% of people who select IE6. This happened approximately 18 months ago. Why more than half of those users didn’t abandon IE6 for IE7?

That’s easy. People who didn’t switch to Vista or owned pirate Windows couldn’t upgrade Internet Explorer. Why these people don’t use a better browser such as Firefox, Opera or Safari? That’s difficult.

What makes it difficult is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Someone for whom the Web is a hobby or a minor part of his job. I ‘ll make an effort to explain what happens in their mind.

• Some people don’t know there are better ways of using the Web. There must be a few but they do exist.
• Some others know about better browsers but they are afraid to change/install a new one. There must be a few as well.
• Some people who can’t drop their habits out.
• Others (e.g. stubborn ones who still cling to IE6)

If I haven’t made a huge mistake, this list describes people who are not up to the latest trends in Web technology. This is not an accusation; it is a fact. An expert plumber or a great lawyer might have learnt to work a specific way when it comes to the Web. Isn’t it difficult? I am afraid it will take a lot of time to these people to make this indispensable change.

This post surely won’t be read by people who still use IE6 since this website is incompatible with it. I did this because I felt I owed it to do so, even though there could be arguments against my decision. I think IE6 will be here for some time. This is why someone should kill it.