It seems more and more developers and designers are dropping support for what has by now become the embarassing uncle who turns up at your wedding and ruins the day with his dodgy, outdated dancing moves. Yes, we're talking about Uncle IE6, born in 2001, a whole lifetime away in internet years.
Often the bane of our lives are designers (especially in the areas of CSS support), the release of IE8 is finally hailing the end of an era for Microsoft's once all-conquering browser. As a result we have taken the decision to drop support for IE6 in development projects, and will only consider it under extreme circumstances (for example where a client, by the nature of its environment is forced to support IE6, such as in corporate networks, NHS, etc).
Given the fact IE6 commands a paltry 14.5% of the market share (W3 Schools, June 2009) and dropping fast, we feel this move is entirely justified and it makes no sense to support a browser that is nearly 8 years old where there are so many better, free alternatives out there.
Our view on this is that by dropping suport for IE6 and clearly telling site visitors that their browser ain't no good here (preferably in a decidedly Wild West Sheriff accent), it eventually forces users to upgrade to something more modern and secure, and make the internet a prettier place... and hopefully our lives a little easier too.
Further reading: here's an article from fellow Joomla developers Rocket Theme... enjoy.
http://www.rockettheme.com/blog/design/336-ie6-end-of-life-at-rockettheme
