Supporting Old Web Browsers

As a web designer/developer nothing is more of a necessary nuisance than having to support old web browsers. Specifically Internet Explorer 6. The good news, (according to StatCounter) is that IE6 usage is now down to 3.62% in the US.  That’s down almost 2/3 from its usage a year ago (11.47%).

Many large websites have dropped support for IE6 including YouTube, Amazon, Google Docs, Google Reader, Apple’s MobileMe, Basecamp (all 37 signals projects), etc. While this is helping to accelerate the trend, some large corporations are still clinging to the aged browser due to the need to support legacy enterprise-wise applications. For the regular computer user however, most have upgraded long ago. The problem with IE6 is that it doesn’t support many of the methods and techniques used to make modern websites visually appealing and easier to use, because well, it was released August 27, 2001.

If you are using any flavor of Internet Explorer, I would strongly suggest you download a better browser. Your web experience will be greatly improved. They’re all free, here are 3 fantastic browsers that I use interchangeably.

Firefox (Mozilla)

Safari (Apple)

Chrome (Google)