Give IE6 Users a Warning… Or Crash Them!

Web developers in general do not like IE6. Even its maker, Microsoft, aren’t too fond of it anymore, and who can blame them? It’s had no end of security updates, and still flaws are being found. Back in 2009, Microsoft said they wouldn’t be dropping support for IE6 for a while. Google officially announced they would drop support in 2010. We saw a number of different “Kill IE6″ campaigns, and even a form of after-party for those who have dropped support. Eventually, IE6 was repented for and a countdown started for its DEATH. Records show that Norway was the first to go below 1% (now, 0.4%). Fantastic work—shame the UK is still at 2.6%, and the US at 2%.

If you hadn’t already guessed, TechRant runs on WordPress. Having worked with WordPress for a number of years now, I have come across a few plugins that I really rather like. One of those plugins I make sure is always installed is Shockingly Big IE6 Warning, which detects IE6,  then displays one of two warnings: a smallish banner waning at the top of the browser, or a larger warning that dims the page and displays the warning in the centre of the browser. Both examples can be seen on the plugins page.

This week, we will up the settings to “Crash”. Could be interesting to see the results—since our launch, TechRant has received only 19 hits from an IE6 browser. That’s less than 0.4%. Not bad! (Some clever person from the future is using IE version 999.1, wonder what THAT will be like?) Overall, less than 5% of you use IE to visit TechRant, with over 50% Chrome users, and 25% for Firefox. I think you’ve pretty much got it sorted on the browser front!

The Shockingly Big IE6 Warning plugin itself has a few settings, like choosing which browsers you display to your users, as you may be biased. Further, it allows you to change the URL to this, making it trackable. It’s nice to know you’ve pointed over 5k IE6 users towards the light.

So, if you dare, visit TechRant in IE6 this week—and watch it crumble and die.