Earlier on this month I posted about the IE6 Deathblow (Link to my old blogger.com blog) and how we should stop supporting older non standards compliant browsers in an effort to motivate users to upgrade their browsers. While the idea was to relaunch your sites on May 1st along with the CSS reboot. Since I am currently on schedule for a January 1st release of my new blog, I will be using it as an opportunity to perform a study. I will study the amount of users visiting my site and the overall traffic using google analytics and see how the the results change over time
I believe that by the number of users using IE 6 or below should shrink by time the May 1st reboot arrives. IT is worth noting however that I have the luxury of doing this do to the limited risk in my traffic. Currently due to the nature of the advanced web users and creative professionals that visit my site, only 22% of my sites traffic comes from a Microsoft browsers with only 23% of those users having IE6 or below.
Update:
Well, positive space has been launched and has been built in a way that kind of leaves IE6 users hanging. To those of you who have ie6 you have probably seen the css pop-up window stating that you should upgrade. While I know that not everyone wants to upgrade for various reasons, I feel that this solution has is rather elegant for a number of reasons:
- The first and most important reason: It does not exclude older IE browsers
- it encourages the progression of web technology by encouraging users to upgrade their browsers in a more timely manner.
- I raises awareness that not all browsers are made alike, and that Microsoft might not be doing everything it can to make the web a better place.
Ultimately this is a pretty idealistic environment for such and experiment. I would not suggest, or practice this on comissioned site any time soon unless asked to by the client for some reason? However this blog is about discussion and collaboration, so what do you think?