Over the last few days I’ve been reading Andy Clarke’s blog article on Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS. This is my response to many of the points raised and a caution to anyone thinking of adopting this catch-all, or as the name suggests, “universal” approach.
Before I begin let me make a few disclaimers. Firstly I have the utmost respect for Andy Clarke and have had the pleasure of hearing him speak on two occasions. He’s a very articulate, intelligent, funny and lateral thinking kinda guy and a world class speaker. So any opinion I give comes with the addendum, no offence Andy! Secondly I reserve the right to change my mind after this post. I’m not a pig-headed person and if I can be convinced I’m taking nonsense I’ll hold my hands up. Lastly, I don’t pretend to be an authority on any topic but I do have over 8 years experience working in Northern Ireland Government, with a vast range of customers, so I do have many war wounds and t-shirts as evidence.
Ok a healthy discussion has broken out over on Andy’s blog (I prefer to call him Malarkey having known him from accessifyforum.com for some time) with many people supporting the notion of a stylesheet for IE6 users.
If you haven’t read the article I suggest you do so but in a nutshell my taking on it is that Malarkey is encouraging developers to stop supporting IE6, where possible, by spending large amounts of time on bug fixes, css hacks, javascript/jquery patches etc. I think he’s largely getting at sites which are content driven, which lets face it most are. So to clarify I would suggest the notion is sites which aren’t big on design but big on focused content.
I feel this article could prove very damaging and needs to spell out more clearly what needs to be considered before implementing any kinda of ready made css framework for IE6.
I’ve harped on in the comments about browser stats as this is the first thing you need to consider. For example, if you have a personal blog which is mainly read by developers, it’s likely the vast majority of us nerds will be using Firefox 3 or Safari 4 for Windows. We like to show off with our nice new n shiny browser. Therefore if you serve up a dumbed down version of the blog for the odd IE6 user, does it really matter? No.
However, if you are building a site for a national company, have looked at their browser stats which tell you that 6% of their visitors use IE6, then should you continue to treat those users in the same manner? Absolutely not. To do so could prove very damaging for the company. Why? Because in these instances image is everything. Usually these type of sites are content heavy, navigation is important therefore CSS is important in order to style the site, improving usability, readability and comprehension.
There seems to be a real hate campaign at the moment against IE6 which may have some valid points but doesn’t address what is often reality. That is that users either LIKE IE6 or that they are unable to upgrade. So with that in mind go easy on the IE6 user, sure encourage them to upgrade but don’t treat them as second class citizens.
Due consideration needs to be given to your potential audience before considering adoption of universal ie6 css. I recently developed www.nidirect.gov.uk and as a baseline tested it in Firefox 3, IE6 and IE7 before going any further with it. Over the last day browser stats tell me that 80% of visitors to the site have been using IE, 31% of which are using IE6. That’s a sizeable chunk and not one I’m going to ignore. Have a look at NIDirect, just how usable would it be with little styling?
Perhaps I’m slightly blindsided working in Government. We have developed our own set of strict standards and still develop for IE6, working on the premise that the market share is still sufficient, not to mention most civl servants have IE6 on their desktop. Time taken to develop for IE6 is just part of my job and an ethos I carry through to any personal work I do because I believe in working to the highest standards possible. Perhaps if I ran a private business where my developers where developing IE6 was costing me money I might have a different viewpoint.
The point still remains though, this should not be looked upon as a universal solution, its an on-the-odd-occasion solution. Please approach with caution.
Interesting. It seems from your article that you work for an agency who are forcing employees to use IE6 which even Microsoft have stopped supporting. As such, your employers have a policy of developing for it.
I don’t think your post really addresses the problem being discussed though.
Your argument seems to be that even though nobody wants to pay to support IE6 (not Microsoft, not clients and not the people who refuse to stop using it) developers should still go ahead and do so. This is just the tip of the iceberg of course, supporting IE generally but especially version 6 inherently means a departure from web standards in most cases. As a freelancer myself, supporting IE6 goes at the bottom of a long list of priorities that many clients are stretching to pay for including (but not limited to and in no particular order) accessibility, seo, photography and illustration. You aren’t alone of course, there are still people moaning about lack of support for ie5.
Thanks for a stimulating post!
Hi Andy, thanks for your feedback. Just to clarify one thing before I respond, I don’t work for an agency, I manage the central web team in the NI Civil Service. Any policies in place to cater for any specific users come from my team and are backed up with good reasoning.
With reflection my original post was more militant that originally intended but I still think the point I tried to convey is valid. In the NICS we have valid reasons for using IE6 and its so complicated I couldn’t begin to explain without wearing my fingers out. Regardless of what I or anyone else thinks of IE6, if my user base is significant then I think we are right to cater for IE6 users as much as possible. A “Universal” stylesheet is not acceptable in my opinion and I guess it’s this misleading name that I take exception to. Yes there may times in the private sector when it’s ok to serve this stylesheet up and not cost effective to spend additional hours developing for IE6 but a Universal solution? Surely not? Only when appropriate to do so IE6 CSS would be a much catchier name!