I have been reading for a little while now about how web designers/developers plan to drop support for IE6. While I can understand the reasons behind this and I do agree with them to some extent but ultimately I will have to contest this decision.
In reality, there are two sides to this story, both of which are dependent on your target audience.
If you have a website that is not necessarily designed for a general target audience, say a website where usually only designers may visit, support for IE6 may not be necessary at all. This is due to the fact you are expecting your visitors to be up to date and anyone who isn’t most likely would not be the type of visitor you expect to stay and explore or convert.
On the other hand, if you are developing for a corporate client who sells products online, or depends on their website for a steady stream of income, no doubt the client is going to want as much traffic and conversions as possible. You cannot rely on every user having the most up to date browser, if they are unsure how to upgrade and we want to make a conversion, then it is our responsibility to make it work given what they have.
Personally, I don’t think IE6 is that bad.
Its true IE6 is outdated but I believe designers and/or developers just love throwing around how much IE6 sucks to show they “know what they are talking about.”
I can honestly say I do not run into many issues whilst developing for IE6. I have spoken to developers, who believe an entirely new stylesheet is required while developing for IE6, and I find myself dumbfounded as to why, or how, they can run into so many problems. The main issue I tend to face is a margin/padding issue which can be easily modified with a few additional lines of CSS.
Code:
//the following css would add a 10px padding to the top in all browsers
h1 {
padding:10px 0 0;
}
//lets pretend for some reason in IE6, 10px looked wrong and about 15px would look better.
//the following css would apply to only IE6
* html h1 {
padding:15px 0 0;
}
The above CSS would overwrite that particular style for the element. In this case h1. This VERY easy fix, as well as many others which help make development for IE6 almost as simple as most other browsers for all website designers.
It’s not uncommon for web designers to implement a some form of a CSS reset. I generally use one, as it can be essential to reset some key elements. Unfortunately I am seeing a helluva lot of unnecessary and quite lengthy CSS.
The most used reset I have run into is something similar to this…
Code:
html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
outline: 0;
font-size: 100%;
vertical-align: baseline;
background: transparent;
}
… and this is around half of it.
It frustrates me when I am working with an existing webpage and someone has implemented so many resets. I find myself wasting time to define styles that should have never been reset in the first place. I do not see the point in resetting so many elements, if so few are actually affecting the layout. Looking at the example provided above, I do not see why there could possibly be the need to apply a transparent background, 0 padding, and 0 border to a strong, em, strike etc.
Now I know some people are going to be thinking “Hey! I include ‘blah’ to make sure that ‘blah’.” NO! I won’t bite.
Can anyone honestly tell me they have run into an issue where their strong element suddenly has 10px padding? Or for some strange reason your em tag has miraculously vertically aligned to the top? Never has anything like this happened to me and until it does I see the better part of the reset CSS to make the author feel “pro.”
As I said at the beginning, I do use a CSS reset. This reset will cover most the same bases as the lengthy css above… but this way is much simpler and hasn’t let me down yet.
Code:
* {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
img {
border:0;
}
I know it isn’t perfect, but I’d rather reuse code that I can actually remember off the top of my head.
Give it a try, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed, but if you are… you’re more than welcome to go back to your 50 lines of CSS, before you even start your new webpage.
I am not a web developer, nor do I pretend to be, but as a web designer I do like to dabble. I have built up quite a range of useful scripts that I have written and I continually use over and again.
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Well, that’s a good question? Not quite sure I can give a proper answer though, as I don’t really know yet. How about I say what I would like it to be and just pretend that’s what it is? Ok… Go!
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