For me, my job is over when I provide a beautiful, error-free code, that works on all the current major browsers. Troubleshooting a dinosaur should be a premium. Banks and large corporations have no choice but to offer backward compatibility. But you are overlooking one important point: They have extremely high resources and entire teams of developers working on specific aspects of their site. I don’t have those resources.

We acknowledge that some companies rely on IE6, as their tools were specially written for this platform, but imho also these companies have to rethink and maybe put some money in their hands to get a system that is independent of the browser used. It’s nearly 10 years now since this browser has been released – simply compare it to a car, it won’t take you from a to b forever. One day it’s time for a change.

Those who have been building web sites for a long time (since IE3 for me) seem to have little or no trouble supporting IE6, but it’s a real problem for newer developers who see nothing but roadblocks with it.

@MRL had some really good tips, but you can skip the rule about always applying position and just use zoom: 1. It won’t validate but it will trigger hasLayout in IE6. hasLayout is the main reason layouts break in IE6. Learn how it works and how to fix it and you’re mostly set.

There’s no need to be religious about IE vs Firefox vs Safari, etc. I just tell my clients that IE6 isn’t supported, but if it’s important to them I can add another 10-15 hours to the project, because that’s how long I’ve found it takes to patch an otherwise standards-compliant website to work.

Funny, it’s stopped being important to them.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17681961/Why-Your-Company-Should-Offer-an-Alternative-to-IE6

-Arsen
http://mitto.com
Your Safe and Secure Online Password Manager

For this who struggle with it, here’s some tips:

1. Structure your entire page/theme/template before you start applying any CSS rules. Adding major DOM elements after you’ve started writing your CSS rules is a recipe for CSS bloat (i.e. disaster).

2. Use a CSS reset before you start writing any CSS rules.

3. Use a good cross-browser Javascript framework like jQuery.

4. Make sure you give *every* major structural DIV a position: relative or position: absolute CSS attribute.

5. Understand that IE6 will get the z-order wrong if it guesses them, and work correct z-orders into your CSS. This will also save you time in other browsers BTW.

6. If you find yourself using negative values in CSS for margin, top, left etc go back and revise – you’ve either got a crappily defined DOM or you’ve fallen victim to CSS bloat.

7. Use a good IE PNG fix, and include it using conditional statements along with the defer attribute.

8. Just be better at what you do. If you’re struggling with IE6 support, it’s just because there’s some key browser differences you just haven’t clicked on yet. In these cases, you’re probably also missing some Opera and Safari specific quirks too.

If IE6 has been around for 9 years, then 9 x 35 = 315. That would make Internet Explorer 6 almost 315 years old!

Can someone go postal at MS HQ and put us all out of our misery please

Yes, we all hate IE6 as designers or developers.

But our customers don’t know that.

Most don’t even know what IE version they’re using.

Bank of America, Facebook, Twitter, imagine if they stopped supporting a still-highly-used browser.

Millions of users would see quirks. Millions….

If you can afford to drop it, go for it!

Most big business can’t…so until the usage rate comes down (like, I’m talking IE 5.5 levels), don’t look for a mass exclusion anytime soon.

So- we just ignore IE6, and offer a “use-it-at-your-own-risk” disclaimer.