Good riddance IE6
With the upcoming release of Windows 7 in October, I hope that all users will finally make the move to upgrade Windows XP. Unlike the disastrous Vista, there are many solid reasons why Windows 7 is better (more on this later!) but from a web developer’s point of view, I can’t wait to see Internet Explorer 6 finally being phased out. I’ll admit IE6 was useful when it was released back in August 2001 but with the advent of various web technologies over the years, IE6 is simply outdated. The problem in the past was that because IE6 had such a commanding market-share, websites needed to be compatible with IE6 which often meant limitations, work-arounds, hacks, etc.. in order to accommodate features on the website.
Looking back at IE6, here are some of the quirks that I’ll (not) miss:
- PNG transparency
- :hover in CSS for all tags
- underscore CSS hacks
- fixed width centering alignment
- border, padding width inconsistencies
- absence/broken of CSS elements such as first-letter, first-line, vertical-align
It looks like IE6 has dropped 5% this year to 13.6%(as of August) and hopefully by year’s end, it’ll be at a point where we can definitely remove support for this aging browser.
« Back to Top