It’s no secret that IE6 is the nemesis of pretty much every web developer or designer on the planet. It’s CSS support is garbage, it’s javascript performance and support is just as bad and it’s got a boatload of security flaws. In general, it’s everything you’d expect from a browser that was released years before Firefox and Safari hit the market. Normally a piece of software as outdated and maligned as IE6 is phased out quickly. However, IE6 continues to hang on.

While there are many various anti-IE movements, most of them have an overly aggressive and often juvenile approach to the problem. A quick look at current browser usage statistics shows that this isn’t working. In many cases, these groups are just preaching to the choir and rarely make a solid case for those entrenched in IE6.

Who Uses IE Anyway?

While using a modern browser is an obvious choice for most tech savvy individuals, for many IE6 users upgrading becomes a cost-benefit analysis. The vast majority of sites on the internet still support IE6, so there isn’t a huge drawback for many users. They don’t care about CSS support because the sites still render correctly and performance is still rarely an issue for most sites. Also consider that there are a rather large number of older applications that rely on IE6’s broken rendering. Combine these together and you get a large number of corporate IT departments that are facing a huge cost to upgrade older software with a minimal benefit to their organizations.

How to Kill IE6

The biggest thing that our industry can do to eliminate IE6 is to stop supporting it. While some major sites like YouTube and Digg have already started pulling support, these aren’t likely the sites that employees at big corporations are visiting at work. If Salesforce and Constant Contact dropped IE6 support, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a huge drop in IE6 usage almost overnight. Unfortunately, we can’t really expect these big business companies to take the risk. Hell, even 37 signals still supports IE6 for their apps and they’ve been some of the most vocal Microsoft haters out their.

The next thing that we can do as a web professionals is to make sure our clients are aware of IE6 problems. In general, I would recommend avoiding discussion about CSS and instead focus on security issues. Most clients would view CSS rendering as a tech problem and point to other sites that work fine in IE6. However, there is a huge amount of literature around regarding IE6 security flaws. Remind them that while they likely aren’t legally responsible for security flaws in their users’ browsers, people are quick to blame any issues on the site their visiting rather than their own browser. Finally, if you’re building a site that needs to be secure, consider creating a waiver of liability for issues caused by IE6 security flaws. In most cases you wouldn’t be liable anyway, but having a document that clients sign helps it sink in that this is a real concern.

The last thing, and the one I will most likely get crap for, is to recommend upgrades to IE8. I know that things would be much easier if everybody was using Webkit and Gecko browsers, but requesting that users switch “brands” often comes across as a sales pitch. If you’re really dead-set against all IE versions, at least take the time to explain how Firefox or Chrome is better. I frequently hear developers say things like “It’s just better, trust me”, but this doesn’t really provide a compelling argument to users. Tell somebody that new browsers can use transparent pngs, and they won’t care; tell them their credit card number could be ganked and they’ll be more likely to pay attention. It’s about finding the issues that are relevant to your clients and users, even if they aren’t the issues that are relevant to you.

How not to Kill IE6

Don’t expect Microsoft to make IE6 magically disappear. For the most part, everybody at Microsoft hates IE6 as much as the rest of us, but their hands are essentially tied. They can’t force people to upgrade anymore than I can randomly upgrade old client sites from PHP4 to PHP5. Most of the companies hung up on IE6 pay for some other software from Microsoft. You can’t really expect any company to risk losing paying customers by forcing them to upgrade a free product. Even with that in mind, Microsoft has had newer versions of IE listed as critical updates for years, so I doubt most IT departments really care what Microsoft says.

Don’t forget to be an adult. If you make a huge deal about spending 2 hours fixing a CSS glitch, people will just think you’re whining. Our clients and users don’t understand the issues and likely won’t be receptive to hyperbolic statements about how much time you spend fixing IE6 issues. Present your case in a professional manner and people will respect your opinion.

Feel free to post any other ideas on how to effectively eliminate IE6 in the comments.