Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS - I Disagree

Andy Clarke has written a lovely stylesheet that removes all layout styling from Internet Explorer 6 and instead focuses on displaying the content.

Instead, you and I should provide simple but effectively designed HTML elements. This means great typography for headings, paragraphs, quotations, lists, tables and forms and no styling of layout.

In general, I like the idea. I mean, I hate IE6 just as much as the next guy. But I think this an incorrect approach to the problem. Andy states:

That is why I’m now advocating to my clients (and to you), that where feasible, not to waste hours in time and a client’s money on lengthy workarounds in an unnecessary attempt at cross-browser perfection.

Yes, I realize I am in the minority on this, probably the one guy actually, but I whole heartedly believe that if a majority of my clients customers are visiting their site in IE6, that I will make IE6 look like gold.  Perhaps this is the “where feasible” portion of Andy’s statement lies, and if so, thats rad.

In a more broad stroke, I am not an advocate of IE6.  I am an advocate of my client.  I can see how using Andy’s CSS could encourage a user to upgrade their browser to something more robust.  If that were me, I know I’d upgrade.  Trouble is, the majority of folks out there aren’t me, or you or anyone else you may know in the “web world”.

They are folks like my client Jake.  Jake just bought a brand new computer that guess what, came bundled with IE6.  When I advised him he might want to upgrade his response was, “This computer is brand new, why should I upgrade?”  I rattled off a bunch of reasons, none of which mattered to Jake.

Take cases outside of Jake.  Corporate users often don’t have an option to upgrade browsers.  Home users don’t even know what version of operating system they are running let alone what version their browser is, or that there even are other browsers.  Is education lacking?  Yes.  Is it up to us to educate them?  Not at the cost of my clients business.

So as much as I’d like to utilize Andy’s CSS and by doing so help promote folks to upgrade to IE6, the bottom line for me is that it’s my job to support it as long as there are a majority of my clients customers using it.