Some web standards aficionados preach excluding Internet Explorer 6 citing that, “there are plenty of sites I’ve designed and maintain where the IE6 stats are low enough to drop the axe and move on.” That’s great for them, but it seems most of the websites these gurus are designing are geared toward… me, an above average Internet User (no horn-tooting intended) that hasn’t used IE6 since ever.

I’ve never used IE6 for anything other than “making sure something looks OK in it.” Therein lies my point. It’s fine to state “Death to IE6” and I fully support not supporting Internet Explorer 6, but that’s not a realistic option for most of the web designers out there. Myself included. When was the last time someone said, “You know, I don’t really care if my website looks different in other browsers.” It’s never happened to me. Never. And it probably never will, because website owners do not want to risk ostracizing their users. Who can blame them?

Are there alternatives that you can use to ensures that your IE6 users, no matter how few or many, will get a similar experience as the rest of your more standards-based browser users? Yes. Web designers have figured out plenty of options to serve up style sheets for Internet Explorer versions that are less standards-capable. I prefer the conditional comments solution.

In a perfect world could you neglect outdated Internet Explorer versions? Of course. However, the reality is enough users still use the outdated browsers that just completely neglecting them would mean cutting a percentage of traffic that you may not be able to afford to lose. Can you serve up a stripped down version for outdated browsers? Sure. If your website will still function properly for those users, you should not be afraid to give them a simpler design with less ‘bells and whistles’ in place. If the design and site still look and function how they’d expect then they will never know they are missing out unless you tell them.

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