Internet Explorer 6: the support dilemna
Microsoft will officially retire Internet Explorer 6 in July of 2010. The browser was originally released in late 2001. 9 years is not a bad run for a piece of software.
In the last year, there has been a growing movement to stop supporting IE6 for websites and web applications. There's a good reason for that: IE6 creates a lot of extra work for web designers and impose limits on application developers. With AceProject, since a good portion of our users still use IE6, we need to keep supporting it. However, we're thinking about our strategy next summer, when Microsoft will drop support for IE6.
- One one side, if the manufacturer does not support its own product, should we support it?
- On the other side, can we force our clients to upgrade their browsers? Organizations that use IE6 tend to be on the large side, with strict IT policies that are difficult to bend.
What are your thoughts?