By Matt Langer: One of my tasks today is implementing a very special greeting for all of our IE6 users. This may stand as some of the most gratifying work I’ll do for many years to come. Added bonus: patronizing them with a piece of angry burnt cartoon toast almost makes up for all the days of my life I’ve lost to that godforsaken browser. This is so much cuter than mine. I need to hire this guy to make a cartoon version. I’ve been saving this in my head for a while, but I have a feeling more of these are going to be popping up. Yes, let’s piss off the visitors who have no choice but to use IE6. Let’s face it. People still using IE6 probably don’t have the permissions (or the know-how) to upgrade their browser (think: work computer with crappy IT staff). To get this far in life and stay with IE6, you’d have to be actively suppressing the request to upgrade from the OS. Also, believe it or not, it is possible to design for IE hack-free. Once you learn IE’s quirks, it’s not a big deal. Give it a try sometime before alienating any percentage of your visitors. If you can’t get your site to work in IE6 in any capacity, messages like this speak more to your Web design skills than a client’s browser choice. P.S. Probably not a good idea to refer people to a browser that isn’t yet out of beta. P.P.S. The DoD, along with many other corporations and agencies still require that workstations run IE6. Why? They need to make sure their old-school internal Web services (which only support IE6) work for everyone. Why punish these folks when all they want is a break? Hell, look at the PDAs they have to use.
