My Top 5 reasons why you should upgrade from IE6

Let me start out by saying that I have nothing personal against Internet Explorer 6. I just feel that it’s time everyone moved on and upgraded either to a more upto date version of Internet Explorer or moved onto a better browser (in my opinion), FireFox.

So here are my top 5 reasons as to why you should upgrade from IE6.

1. It’s a nightmare for developers and designers to code for IE6. This is my top reason because I have bent over backwards to try and code for IE6′s quirks and issues. So much so that I really have had nightmares about it.
   Increasingly, more and more developers are beginning to leave IE6 out of their ‘to design for’ agenda and it might be a good idea to upgrade.
2. IE6 has so many problems that even Michael Jackson is having trouble keeping up. IE6 security is a joke, to the point that it’s been ranked the 8th worst product of all time by PC World Magazine.
3. IE6 is over 8 years old now. It was released in the August of 2001 (correct me if I’m wrong) which makes it the perfect tool to use if you’re Fred Flintstone.
4. IE6 follows it’s own web standards. It throws out all logic while rendering pages and sometimes that can be a big issue. More often than not, if a website displays incorrectly on your browser and you’re using IE6, it’s not a design flaw. The way CSS is interpreted by IE6 is just absurd. It’s like a monkey trying to reproduce the works of Shakespeare.
   There are so many issues with the way IE6 functions that even Microsoft has completely given up. They know about the issues but don’t care enough to do anything about it. We should all take the hint and move on.
5. And the most logical reason to upgrade from IE6 is because there are newer versions out there of the same browser that do the job much better.
   Not only are there newer versions out there, but also a million different web browsers to chose from that will do the job for you much better than IE6.

The internet will be a much better place without IE6.

And think about it, if designers and developers didn’t have to waste precious work hours to code seperately for IE6, they’d have more time to develope more fun stuff for Techtites to write about.

As a bonus to the Sevenup article here’s another piece of Javascript that you can comfortably add into your code of your website that will ask an IE6 dummy to upgrade.

if ($.browser.msie && $.browser.version == 6.0) {
alert(“Upgrade your browser, you big dummy!);
}

Thanks to Nettuts for the JS.

So there you have it. Please upgrade from IE6.

About Nikhil

I'm a 23 year old Web & Graphic designer, currently living in Mumbai, India. Most of my time is spent on the internet browsing through new ways and means of betting myself at what I like to do. As a big guitar enthusiast, I enjoy listening to a lot of Blues, Jazz and a few select rock and roll bands. Classical, if I'm in the mood.

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