There is still a sizable group of people still using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer version 6. Estimates seem to range from 14% to 24+%, depending on who you ask.
Why should I or anyone else care?
Because these people are potholes on the “information superhighway”!
When it was introduced on August 27, 2001, IE6 was an improvement over IE5.5. Not a great leap forward, but an improvement nonetheless.
Eight years, more than 2,920 days, have since passed, and some people are still using this toxic relic. Why “toxic”? Because in the intervening years between then and now, there has been broad acceptance of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as the way to control not only on-page text, but page layout as well. IE6 renders CSS position a bit differently than all other browsers.
The result is that in order to get pages to render identically on IE6, compared to all other modern browsers, developers and designers are often forced to use “hacks” to accommodate IE6’s quirks. This means extra programming and extra costs. When clients are unwilling to bear those extra costs, designs have to be “dumbed-down”, impeding the design process.
Some of the IE6 users are just Luddites, too timid or too lazy to update their browser. Some of them are trapped in corporate Hell, held hostage by their employers’ IT departments that are too slothful or too under-budgeted to step up to the plate. Some are just “special”, as in “Special Olympics”. In any case, they need to get a grip.
When IE6 was introduced:
You could still book a dinner reservation at “Windows on the World” atop the North tower of the World Trade Center.
One could still fly from Miami to London in less than four hours on the Concorde.
Pontiac and Oldsmobile were still making cars.
Luciano Pavarotti was still performing.
The rovers known as Spirit and Opportunity had not landed on Mars.
In short, GET WITH THE PROGRAM!
Chrome, FireFox and even IE8 are all excellent browsers, and they are F-R-E-E!