WordPress kills Support for IE6

Free at last!!  Free at Last!!!  Thank God We are Free at Last!!! 

Those are the word’s from the infamous speech “I have a Dream”  by Martin Luther King Jr but these words also express my utter and complete joy that WordPress has killed off support for Internet Explorer 6.  The support has been initially dropped on the WordPress.com platform but will also be dropped with the upcoming release of WordPress 3.2 sometime this June.

I have to tell you, as someone who develops websites, I hate Internet Explorer 6.

Why you may ask?

Because it is not Web Standards compliant.

What am I talking about you say?

Well, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the official organization of individuals who work together to develop standard for the web.  This organization is headed by Tim Berners Lee, the man who invented the internet.

But what are web standards you ask?  I’m glad you did.  Basically the people at the W3C along with developers and industry feedback regulate how the web is going to work and look based on programming code such as HTML and CSS that enables all individuals to experience the web the same way no matter what browser they are using (well almost the same way as developers have to account for different screen resolutions, monitor sizes and even monitor color displays, designing for the web really isn’t that easy)

Unlike most other browsers currently in use, IE6 does not fully nor properly support CSS version 2, which makes it difficult for web developers to ensure compatibility with the browser without degrading the experience for users of more modern browsers. Developers often have to resort to strategies such as CSS hacks, conditional comments, or other forms of browser sniffing to make their websites work in IE6.

About IE6

That being said, back on August 21, 2001, Microsoft released its 6th revision of its popular internet browser, just after the release of Windows XP.  

However, what the folks over at Microsoft didn’t do was make it Web Standards Compliant and it is also plagued with web security issues.  In fact the product is so bad that it has been voted as one of the worst tech products of all time and the least secure software ever invented.

And because of its lack of web standards you have to write a huge amount of hacks in order to get it to display like a modern browser would.

Basically the product SUCKS big time.  I’m sorry if you’re still using it but…

Even Microsoft Doesn’t Want You to Use it…

That’s right, Microsoft is trying to move past one of its biggest blunders (besides Windows Vista that is) and wants every to upgrade to IE9 which really is an opportunity for Microsoft to sell more software as most of their biggest customers will have to upgrade to Windows Seven in order to use it also which means that they will have to upgrade their hardware and operating systems.

In fact they’ve even got a count down website dedicated to informing the world about IE6 and reasons why you should upgrade to a different browser.

Some of the benefits are improved speed, better security, better privacy, tabbed browsing (I have no idea what I would do without tabbed browsing when surfing the web) and a whole other slew of reasons.

Why WordPress Dropped IE6

WordPress cited the “increasingly complex code trickery to make the WordPress dashboard work,” for IE6 as one of the main reasons for dropping IE6 support, however I’m sure they had more reasons than that.

Whichever their reasons were, I for one am estatic, I said it before and I’ll say it again, IE6 sucks.  If you’re still using it feel free to see what its like to experience modern browsing with either Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari, (I use Chrome and Firefox mainly but have them all installed on my PC so that I can see how each of them renders my sites differently) 

Once you do upgrade you’ll ask yourself why you stuck with a 10 year old browser for so long.

Please feel free to post in the comments what browser you use as well as why its your favorite.

Thanks for reading.

Until next time,

Matt Fraser

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