The Internet Needs Your Help
Internet Explorer 6 is an old and outdated browser that does not support web standards.
We tend to bang on about it a lot, and spend a good deal of time walking the halls shaking our fists to the ceiling. It sounds like a developers-only problem and something we should solve ourselves, but it in effect causes problems for everyone.
The technology society and research society Ireland is to be building for a more sustainable future, which is to be so pervasive across all sectors in our country suffers because of this problem.
Some examples:
The public sector, which is bound by European Law to deliver information and services fairly, accessibly and consistently without discrimination. This is true for browsing environments, whether you are on a linux browser, your i-phone or a screen reader for the blind. Another realm altogether where the newest brand of console gaming, where kids with WII's or Playstations, or Nintendo DS's are accessing the internet. Internet Explorer 6 contravenes this legislation in that it doesn't adhere to web standards that most of the other browsers adhere to. There's nothing legal to be done about it, it is just flawed and doesn't work correctly.
In an ideal world flawed products would be treated like a recall for cars that explode, or lead paint in toys that affect children. Is Internet Explorer 6 in the same realm? It could be argued possibly, by restricting the access people have to information by not accepting and implementing these standards correctly.
Internet Explorer 6 also causes waste of time in our own daily working lives, as we have to custom create stylesheets that when the browser is detected, gives differences in spacing, throws up bugs that cause items to disappear, and generally make graphics look poor. This is a very shortened list of the problems, believe me. Do any search on google for 'IE6 Issue' and see how many links you find. It is our nemesis.
We think the time spent working with a kludgey browser would be best spent on research. For our own clients, this could mean a better way of importing images into a gallery, more clever design implementations, search engine work that help their websites be found easier, etc etc. Why should we have to battle on against outdated and half-baked software, so that this population using our site can see it spaced correctly?
Our own stats on the site show that 37% of the people using our site are using Internet Explorer. Out of this 37%, 22% are using IE6.
As a result, we are encouraging people to upgrade their browsers, especially if they have and XP operating system. We have a bit of bumph that shows up if you are using IE6 on our home page. This gives links to the other browsers out there. Try them, you might like them. They don't bite, and they run right along Internet Explorer 6 and pay together nicely, if you want to leave it in its original state.
This is part of an international campaign of developers calling for the end of Internet Explorer 6, which is in fact Microsoft supported. Even the creators of the browser think it should be scrapped. What would you do if the car manufacturer of your vehicle said the same? You'd change it fast.
To get the best possible experience using our website we recommend that you upgrade your browser to a newer version. The current version is Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 is available as a beta. The upgrade is free. If you're using a PC at work you should contact your IT-administrator.
If you want to you may also try some other popular Internet browsers like Opera, FireFox or Safari
