Notification for webmasters using IE 6
Are you still using Internet Explorer 6? Then this article is for you. Please read it, and find how backward you are still.
Microsoft introduced IE6 with its XP operating system in 2001. The main drawback of IE 6 is that it doesn’t support Web standards, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and RSS which are necessary to describe the web style and to publish frequently updated works. Since it was released there have been very few new features if any, and few attempts to make it more inclined towards the W3C standards.
Some of the common problems encountered with the IE 6 are:
1. Security
An attacker can execute a malicious code on a user’s system, when a user visits an attacker’s website. It paves a great way for attackers to take personal and credit details of a user without their consent.
2. Alignment
The alignment of text plays a major role in the look and feel of a site. With IE browser, sometimes the text spills out of its container and spoils the very style of a website. When the total web style is distorted, you can’t really enjoy the essence of a website.
Actual format of a website:
Website format collapsed in IE6
3. Flash
Nowadays, most webmasters use Flash to give special effects to their websites. But visitors using IE6 cannot enjoy it, as the flash player in IE6 cannot load xml files that use HTTP compression and no caching from web servers.
4. Disappearance of background image and floating text
One more bug that is frequently found in IE 6 is disappearance of background image and even text that having floating elements around, when a web page is scrolled up/down.
5. Web Style
Another problem encountered with the IE browser is that when you shrink the browser down from 800×600 resolution, the frame fixed at the left slides to the right. This occurs due to the lack of IE6s support for min-width.
Owing to all these issues, most websites like Facebook, digi.no present a notice and ask visitors to upgrade or switch browser when they visit their websites with IE6.
Even Microsoft has joined a campaign against IE6, and claims that its latest browser, IE8 which is in release candidate 1 status, will be the most standards-compliant one it has ever released.
With the increased awareness of Web standards among developers, they have spent lots of time to ensure their pages are compatible with all browsers.
It’s time to upgrade to IE7 or switch to other browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari, and enjoy worldwide web sites.
Tags: IE6, IE6 issues, IE6 problems, Switch to Firefox, Upgrade to IE7