BoltPress

Matt writes that 37signals will no longer support IE6 in their web applications (Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire). His post really caught my attention, and also details some browser usage statistics for WordPress.com.

What about me? I have mentioned and ranted about IE6 so many times and have already maintained an anti-IE6 attitude for over six months, but ultimately… shall I forsake IE6 for real? Or shall I just wait a while more?

Let’s see now, searching this blog for the term ie6 brings up a whole bunch of posts ranting about Internet Explorer 6. Just so you know, the new theme happens to work very well (though of course not perfectly) on IE6, and it’s all thanks to the magic Holly hack:

/*\*/
* html #div-to-apply-hack {
    height: 1%;
}
/* */

But I continued to spend an hour or two, just on IE6, just to fix only a couple of display bugs. I had to go through about six or seven minor revisions of the theme to accommodate IE6. I’m honestly uncertain how much that was worth at all.

The following sentence from this post announcing Potassium eleven months ago perfectly sums up my attitude toward IE6 during the course of designing NOVALISTIC 3.0:

I may include a couple more star-html hacks just to have NOVALISTIC display sanely in IE6, but I won’t spend any other effort on it.

Now, I’m still as of now deciding on either carrying on with finishing up NOVALISTIC 3.0 “Oltanis” or just starting afresh with a new NOVALISTIC 4.0. You know, perhaps I should come up with some Oltanis screenshots for good measure since I’ve been like 60% done with it for over six months. It doesn’t look good in IE6, but of course I don’t care.

Here are BoltPress’s statistics from its launch on May 31, 2007 according to Google Analytics, click for full view:

Browser statistics for BoltPress in Google Analytics

22.94% of all visitors used IE, and within that percentage, 37.69% used IE6. Or, 536 out of 6200 total visitors used IE6. Do your math, and you’ll get 8.65%. That’s not really a lot. Besides, IE6 usage is fast declining, with the adoption of both IE7 as well as Firefox 3 coming up (31.4 million downloads so far!), so I honestly doubt it to be a long wait before IE6 no longer matters in my life.

Whenever IE6 comes into play when I’m developing a web design, it will definitely rob me of between two and six hours, depending on the design itself. It’s not very nice, especially when your efforts end up only in vain (i.e. IE6 simply refusing to cooperate, etc).

In any case, whether I’m going to continue Oltanis or start over from scratch, I simply can’t find a reason that will really convince me to maintain support for IE6 in my future designs and applications. I simply can’t.

I think I’m about done ranting. What’s your say on this whole should-we-continue-considering-IE6 thing? It’s happening and ongoing — and we all know it. For me, I’m ready. And I’ve been ready for more than half a year. To say goodbye to IE6. I salute 37signals. They must’ve had a hard time working with that pile of trash.