Brian Burns

Recently I read a post on the 45Royale RSS feed by Matt Downey entitled: ‘Being nice to Internet Explorer 6, even though we shouldn’t be’. It inspired me to have a good hard think about supporting older versions of the IE browser here on mrbrianburns.com.

This site receives 8% of its viewers from the IE browser. Pretty much all IE visitors leave within 5 seconds. The majority of my hits are going to come from guys and girls within the design/multimedia industry or tech-savy individuals. My analytics show that most of these people use Mac’s (Firefox/Safari). Those tech-savy people on PC’s; well they, for the most part use Firefox. Those who use IE should be opting for the Acid2, web-standards compliant IE8 browser.

As my IE 6 and 7 visitors are leaving as quickly as they arrive, I decided that I should try to grab their attention and educate them about their lackluster web browsing experience before they take off. I aim to achieve this by redirecting all IE 6 and 7 visitors to a webpage that’ll quickly inform them of the errors of their ways while encouraging them to upgrade their browser to either Firefox, Safari or IE8. You can view this page by clicking here. I’m using the same method that 45Royale are using (coded by Dao by Design) to redirect their IE6 visitors. It’s incredibly easy to implement and seems to work seamlessly (…fingers crossed it remains that way).

Supporting older versions of IE remains a sticky subject with many valid arguments on both sides. Deciding to axe IE6 was an easy decision to make; many big names on the web (including Google) have officially stated that they no longer provide support for the eight-year-old browser. Deciding on what to do with IE7 was a little trickier. However I was able to assess my website stats and make an educated decision based on facts and figures. I’m fully aware that I run the risk of losing out on freelance work by redirecting users; I can only hope that any potential client will take that small step (and at the same time, mammoth leap) and follow the upgrade process. If I get the pro-web-standards message across to just one IE6/7 user… then, in my view, it will have been a worthwhile exercise.