According to our analytics,  there is still a good group of people who view our sites in IE6, about 19% actually. This surprises me, considering that Microsoft has stopped supporting IE6. The browser is known for having a multitude of security issues, and for being slow, riddled with bugs, and generally unable to render CSS. Some users' reluctance to upgrade despite these problems is interesting to me.

Every web developer, like myself, dreams of a day without IE6. To be honest, in my experience, most companies still using IE6 are either stuck with Windows 2000 and cannot upgrade due to software costs, or the IT department is just too busy to perform the update. Then again, such IT departments might say that we developers should be content with IE6 since the other six browsers are not enough, and that IE6 came out in 2001 so maybe they should wait a full decade before the upgrade.

Unfortunately, we are not the only ones who have a problem with IE6, and this is nothing new. I have talked to a good number of individuals who work at the leading web designers firms and their companies have stopped altogether supporting IE6. I still use a png fix sometimes, but if you do not know much about web browsers, updates are very crucial and it will help speed up the way you look at the web. And considering that it is 2008 and IE8 is already out, I don't think an upgrade from IE6 is too much to ask at this point. In addition to these points, consider that IE6, IE7, IE8 really feel and render completely different makes my job as a front end developer that much more difficult.

Solutions

If you work at a company and do not have access to upgrade your browser, I came across this nifty website www.portableapps.com. You can download a portable Firefox application and just run it from your USB thumb drive at work. And even with Google Chrome out, the text rendering of Safari, and the fast speed of Opera, in my personal opinion Firefox is still the best browser I have used. An upgrade from IE6 is simple, and will improve your overall internet experience, so the faster you get around to upgrading, the better.