It’s important for web sites to work on different computers and devices, and in different web browser software – and making sure that they work consistently is one of our jobs as web developers.

New browsers come out regularly, and as web users upgrade and change browsers, old browsers die out. That time has come to say goodbye to one of the more enduring thorns in our side, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6.

When it was released over nine years ago, IE6 was the most advanced browser available, and at one time held an astonishing 90% market share. Over time faster and more secure browsers came out – including two new versions of Internet Explorer and a whole raft of excellent competitors – but many IE6 users,especially in corporate and educational markets, were slow to upgrade. Having such a limited capability browser with such a large market share has really held back web development, limiting our ability to use new, more efficient and more advanced techniques when creating web sites.

In the past few months, IE6 market share has dropped to below 5% world-wide, and at Clever Starfish we’ve made the decision to drop support for this outdated browser. While web sites we create will work in IE6, they may have reduced functionality and will not look as good as in up-to-date browsers. This means we can take advantage of newer, better techniques on sites that we create, as well as reduce the time we waste trying to beat IE6 intro submission.

We encourage anyone running IE6 – or anyone with a friend, co-worker or family member running IE6 – to upgrade to a newer, more secure, and more capable web browser. We recommend: