Aug 05
Trash All IE Hacks
Let’s admit it, we all hate Internet Explorer 6. About 80% of our CSS debug time are spend on IE6. We all know that IE6 is outdated and has horrible CSS rendering engine. However, most average Internet users haven’t realized that yet. Why? Because we put our hard work on it and patch the bugs by various IE hacks. Well, it is time to do something…
Common IE hacks
-
CSS Conditional comments
In order for our sites to work on specific verson of IE (due to improper CSS rendering), CSS conditional comments are used to apply special CSS specifications to fix it. If you haven’t realized this yet, read the IE bug articles on positioniseverything.net (warning: you might hate IE more after you read them). -
PNG hack
As mentioned early, IE6 is outdated and doesn’t support PNG alpha transparency. In order to display PNG (with alpha transparency) properly in IE6 or older version, we use this hack.Aleksey asked on "Simple Double Quotes":
"Hello Nick. I see some bug.
The Close button ( X ) don’t transparent. Test on IE6 and MyIE."My response:
"Yes, I know the PNGs don’t display probably in IE6. But guess what, I’m not going to bother to fix it. I’m sick of hacking IE6 bugs. You should upgrade your browser anyway. Why are you still using the outdated browser?"
Why trash IE6 hacks?
I know this is difficult because about 37% (according to w3schools.com) of internet users are still using IE6. But, together we can make a different. Stop using IE hacks on your sites and let them see the ugly side of IE6. Eventually, they will find a better browser (ie. Firefox) or at least upgrade to newer version of IE.
Update:
Agree with the comments below, the statistic from W3schools does not reflect the entire internet. According to TheCounter.com, the global browser stats of IE6 users is 52% in July 2007.
Support me
If you agree with me, please support Web Designer Wall by making a vote and spreading out the word. Let’s trash all IE hacks and code happily ever after…
Loading …Conclusion
85% voted yes
15% voted no
Here are what people have said:
- "My boss will fire me if my sites don’t work in IE6" because 52% of internet users are still using IE6.
- Display a message (in yellow bar), "You are using an outdated browser, please upgrade your browser" to IE6 users.
- If it is a personal project, you can ignore all the IE6 users. But for professional or commercial projects, you can’t live without them.
- Avoid using any features (ie. PNG, CSS selectors) that are not supported by IE6.
Illustrating the Flower Pattern Neil Duerden
Comments
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Post Your Comments
230 Jon Hughes http://www.phazm.com/notes/productivity/stop-the-hate-ie6-isnt-so-bad/
October 24th, 2007 at 8:55 am
This is becoming something of a pet-peeve for me. Why abandon 25-50% of your visitors simply because you don’t want to spend a little extra time?
I’m not sure what your background is in accessibility, but it is based on the same premise. Even if less than 1% of the people that come to my sites have a handicap, I want them to be able to have as good of an experience as possible.
I have very recently blogged about this post here:
http://www.phazm.com/notes/productivity/stop-the-hate-ie6-isnt-so-bad/
I offer a few tips regarding how you can speed up the whole process for coding for multiple browsers, in specific, IE6.
Certainly no hard feelings, just a professional disagreement.
229 Des
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:27 am
It boils down to your intended audience and how willing you are to risk losing them. About 48% use IE6 on our site and as its an eCommerce site we don’t want to lose them so we add additional resource to cater for them. Its not difficult, its just time consuming.
If you’re running a site that you don’t mind potentially losing half your audience then there is no need!
Many people don’t care or know what browser they are using they just want to look at websites
228 Bert Mensche http://www.watchthis.co.uk
October 21st, 2007 at 7:57 pm
IE6 is outdated and has a horrid CSS rendering engine but most web users don’t have a clue about this. Eventually, they will find a better browser or upgrade to IE7 but for now IE6 is a necessary evil. Until then, keep IE6 hacks in their own stylesheet to be deleted at a later date. If you work in a corporate design firm then this is the only option.
227 james filtness http://boudaki.com
October 21st, 2007 at 4:51 am
What a totally ridiculous article. IE6 is the most widely used browser. Why one earth would you boycott it and make yourself look totally incompetent at the expense of a few png hacks. If you code properly and know what you’re doing then IE6 is not a problem.
226 Simone Icough
October 19th, 2007 at 7:03 am
Not a lot to say apart from we should stop programming for IE6, it is a pile of old crap! The more we keep developing for it the less chance there is of people upgrading to IE7, which is a much better version than IE6. It causes us no end of problems and yes we DO know how to programme properly in PHP, CSS, Javascript, tables etc, however, we do not use tables for various reasons, one being that we are also SEO programmers and tables are not good for engines more than 2 deep.
225 IamDodo
October 18th, 2007 at 4:00 am
IE has its drawbacks but its not that bad. If you know how to go around the corner you can write up a w3c valid yet IE compatible code…
Altough they really should do something about them PNG’s.
224 Douglas Neiner http://www.pixelgraphics.us
October 12th, 2007 at 2:37 am
I do not see IE6 as a limitation in design… sure it takes a little extra work, but if your programming style is valid, and you think through your project before you start, the problems are limited. You really start to run into problems when you start to clutter up your CSS with this hack and that hack. I much prefer to use IE conditional statements as they are ignored by every other browser.
Also, base your sites on a good javascript framework like jQuery or MooTools, and let it carry the weight of the browser differences.
It is not how bad IE6 is, it really comes down to how good of a developer you really are! Happy Coding!
223 art http://www.webmediacenter.com
October 8th, 2007 at 4:19 am
i agree about it, BTW i hate IE browser, but it’s necessary for our job and our client. Half of them still use it for surfing. actually they complain about IE bug specially about design like border, pixel etc. Unfortunatly that is our mistake (programmer and designer web) not IE bug. So who’s wrong here?
222 Jason Anderson http://www.jasoco.net
October 4th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
You know what this is? Corporations are like the new kid in school being picked on by the bullies, but instead of standing up to them and making them change, they decide to just bring him cookies every day.
I stood up to my enemies in school. And I was a geek. A skinny geeky kid. And they laid off for the remainder of my stay there. If I can do it, corporations can do it. No excuses. This is the 21st century.
221 Carly http://twisted-barfly.co.uk
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:15 am
Agreeing with some of the comments about people who don’t understand what a browser even is, I was behind the bar at work yesterday and I heard a group of men chatting about the internet and one was wrongly informing the others that you have to have internet explorer to go on the internet. I was very close to going over and correcting them but had people to serve, lol