What’s all the fuss about?

The main reason for a widespread hate towards IE and especially it’s oldest still recognizably active version #6 is simple: Where the web elsewhere strives to reach some sort of consensus on how to do what, a big company from Redmond seems not too interested in these standards and the related discussion. So does IE 8 — MS’ latest browser— finally implement CSS 2.1 to the most extent, while the rest of the online world has already moved on to implement CSS 3 and HTML 5.
Sites usually just don’t work out of the box in the Internet Explorer series, even if they’re build using the most established techniques and it usually requires an extra effort to make things look and function somewhat as intended as well in IE.

IE 6 — by now over 8 years old — has caused an unseen amount of anger and pain among developers (and users) through – out the past, and yet: w3schools claims that still a stunning 14% of all users browse the web via IE 6.

How to deal with Internet Explorer 6?

Developers all over the world have searched for ways on how to deal with IE 6 and many (many!) articles have been written about this topic — angry rants as well as a long lists of supportive suggestions.
Scanning the web, it seems front – end developers are currently choosing one of the following solutions for their projects:

• Try to “fix” your page for IE 6: Assuming a certain level of skill (and luck), one is usually able to trick IE into rendering one’s website somewhat acceptably, but advancing technology makes it more and more laborious and time consuming to do so. Some developers are estimating more than 30% of their time to be going into solving browser specific problems. This solution is still chosen by most agencies and often leads to unpaid or not previously estimated working time which usually makes nobody happy.
  Weapons of choice are conditional comments or CSS “hacks”, lots and lots of Javascript (often causing additional accessibility issues) and dirty tricks à la CSS expressions and layout tables. 
• Ignore IE 6: This option is chosen by a few smaller and mostly private sites but generally regarded as discriminating. If you decide to simply “not do anything” to deal with our favorite browser, you’ll in the best case show a clear disrespect for your visitors who are using IE 6 to browse your pages. 
• Ignore IE 6 and tell your users that they’re idiots and should GTFO: Well, unless you’re trying to p*ss people off or keep your site a private venture, this option is really not very recommendable. Still — it’s all out there. 
• Ignore IE 6 but tell your users that you do so and offer help: Recently more and more (bigger) sites such as Youtube and Digg have announced, that they are going to drop IE 6 support. The common practice in these cases seems to be to display a small notification telling the user about the decision and offer download links for the latest browsers from different vendors.
  While this seems like a good idea in the first place, it might backfire and leave most IE 6 users helpless, though: Big companies rely on browser based intranet applications, which simply rely on IE 6. And since it’s not possible to install multiple versions of IE (or almost not possible) on the same computer, IE 6 remains the browser “of choice” in many cubicles out there, since IT departments and security guidelines rarely allow it for the regular employee to install his own additional browser, such as Firefox or Chrome. While upgrading or switching the browser is good advice, it’s in this case merely a slap in the face since the user simply can’t follow this advice. 

What’s left?

My personal favorite approach is a combination of different solutions around a tactic suggested by Andy Clarke.

In order to deal with IE 6, I’m assuming that

• my page has been constructed using valid and semantically meaningful mark – up
• and that the content within my page is more important than the presentation

My goals are clearly defined

• I want to push agencies to stop supporting IE 6
• I want companies as private users to update their browsers or (even better) switch to a standard compliant browsers
• I want my users to stay and enjoy the content provided on my page and hopefully come back

How to get there?

Provide a alternative fall – back style sheet only for IE 6, using server – side browser detection or conditional comments. This file could be containing only the most basic styles to make things somewhat look good and which can be re – used for every single project you’ll be working on, until IE 6 is nothing but a distant memory.
Provide a notification for your IE 6 users, again using conditional comments or server side browser detection and tell them why things look different for them than everyone else.
Let your users know, that there updates and better browsers out there and where to find them.
If you are a decision maker at an agency or a software house, inform your clients about the situation and let them know that you’ll be forced to charge extra in case they want full support for legacy browsers. If they — on the other hand — decide to neglect IE 6, you can shine and tell about the solutions your company provides by default to offer a usable site to all users (see above).
Inform your users about the possibility to install Firefox as a mobile browser on e.g. a USB stick to get around company restrictions, if security policies allow to do so.

The last point comes with a disclaimer: Out of security concerns, many companies will probably not be too happy, if personal data storage are connected to company computers and I can’t recommend to do so. Nevertheless: a company that forces their employees to connect to the world wide web using IE 6 doesn’t seem to be too concerned with security issues in the first place — security problems are almost a part of IE 6’s feature set.