Drop IE6 support in Drupal core

Progressive Enhancement is fine.

Dropping support for IE6 completely is still a pipe dream.
As long as a browser still commands 5% market share and higher, then I don't believe we have the option to completely drop support for it.

Perhaps a better plan would be to put our weight behind
http://www.savethedevelopers.org/
or a similar initiative,
in the spirit of gophp5.org

Alan

I agree, only sites with technical audiences can really think about this now. Drupal serves a wider community.

Well, I'd say the "admin interface of Drupal core" has a technical audience, which is where we'd most likely be dropping support in any real sense.

Marking -Postpone to Active. Otherwise, this discourages discussion and debate. We are all about discussion and debate. There's no patch here so it's all academic at this point.

Here are some reasons off the top of my head for Drupal 7 to add to the discussion.

Pros
1. For garland: Code cleanup and removal. We can remove fix-ie.css and fix-ie-rtl.css and phptemplate_get_ie_styles(). There are still some IE7 hacks in style.css but not as bad as the dedicated fix-ie.css.
2. For garland: Tiny performance increase. Less data transferred. One less CSS file to bootstrap in IE browsers.
3. Less debugging, less work doing fixes and any future new theme for Drupal. This includes any new DHTML/AJAX/AHAH features and fixes in jQuery code. As we can all agree, IE6 is a major waste of time for every web designer and developer since August 2001.
4. As previously mentioned, we can accept PNG transparency in our themes. No need for CSS or JS hacks. This opens up a whole can of creativity and possibilities for garland or any 3rd party theme.
5. Gives a gentle nudge for people to upgrade their browser to "Anything But IE6" (TM)

Cons
1. We annoy people who simply refuse to upgrade especially conservative corporate IT staff, people using old computers, the laggards, people who use default themes in Drupal.
2. We may break old sites/upgraded sites based on IE6 themes.

It may not a big of a problem as in may seem since most custom sites switch out their CSS for custom themes. I would guess most big Drupal installations, are NOT using Garland or any default Drupal theme. That just leaves custom module CSS (which is out of scope here) and jQuery IE6 hacks.

Supporting data for December 2008
-Market share quotes IE6 at 21.53% and IE7 at 47.39%
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2
-thecounter.com quotes IE6 at 35% and IE7 at 42%
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/December/browser.php

In the timeframe of D7 release, I'm guessing that'll be Q2-Q3 2009, IE8 will have been out a few months. I'm guessing IE8 will release Q1 2009. At that point IE6 will become the IE5.5 of today. IE6 market share will plummet precipitously as everybody will finally make the move.

Another less disruptive path... We may accept a new default theme, other than Garland and choose to break IE6 compatibility there.

Any more ideas?

I can understand using market data , but what about the real world, its affected by usersbase, so has anyone checked their sites?

I will just throw in REAL statistics for my own site for consideration for or against the argument

These are January 2009 figures so not a full month but the percentages should help as a guide. I have only broken it down to show the major browsers with IE6 as a comparison.

MSIE - 1101390 hits - 55.8%
comprising
IE 8 - 16175 hits - 0.8%
IE 7 - 809441 hits - 41%
IE 6 - 272170 hits - 13.7%

Firefox - 685751 hits - 34.7%

The rest 185815 hits - 9.2%

As a thought, formal release of IE8 may not mean a drop in IE6 but in IE7.

IE8 RC1 was just released. It'll go gold in a month or so. It'll have really good CSS 2.1 support and Acid 2 compliance. Meanwhile Dries stated D7 will hit Q4 of 2009. Also, Windows 7 will release Q4 2009 or Q1 2010.

Hitslink and thecounter are huge stat aggregators across thousands of sites spanning all genres. The sample size is as good as any.

Just to put my $0.02 in: For 2009, I am no longer working to make my new site developments work fully in IE6. I'm still fixing show-stopping bugs and layout problems, but if there's a 10px gap somewhere, or if a PNG has a grey background, so be it.

It's my view that the world would be a better place if we leave IE 6 stragglers out to dry so they will be forced to upgrade. Even the 'conservative old guard IT shops.' The only people that actually require IE6 anymore are the few shops that wrote heavily customized IE6-only apps and database interaction software. I would venture to say that 20% of current IE6 users can upgrade, but are just too lazy. Let's give them the impetus to do so!

We dropped PHP4 support for Drupal 7 when there was still a considerable percent of servers using PHP4. Why do we have to continue to sacrifice for the sake of backwards-through-the-hoop compatibility and IE6 when we do not do the same internally? Do we need a GoIE7.com? :)

There is one big difference when we talk about which version of PHP and browser versions. The person developing the site has control over the hosting choice and therefor PHP version. Same developer has no control over end users and the reality is there are still more than a few people using IE6.

I must agree with nevets. As much as I despise IE6 (I loath it. I really, really loath it.), accessibility is part of my organization's mission. That includes schools and individuals who are too poor to afford even remotely modern computers. In the last month, over 17% of our site's visitors were using IE6, so I expect I will need to support it for quite some time (sigh).

Pushing developers and hosting companies to use newer/better/safer technology is one thing. Forcing users to upgrade is a good way to loose users.

Just to add some perspective (warning: offensive language inside): http://hugsformonsters.com/

(And no, this is not a serious solution to the problem ;-)

I'm pulling refining the title. New core themes, such as "Stark" and new core themes to be included should work with IE7 & above and not support IE6. We can all agree to that I hope. Garland will be a snapshot in time back when we supported IE6.

Regarding D7 core CSS, there shouldn't be any specific IE6 hacks. If there are, we need to rip them out!

We're using jQuery 1.3 in Drupal 7, which keeps the IE6 support. As much as I hate it, I think we should follow what jQuery supports in terms of browsers for Drupal 7. Drupal has a very handy browser compatibility CSS conditional goodness, so we should use it. I vote a yes on dropping the IE6 support in Drupal 8 though, because come on, how much of your time have you given to Microsoft already over IE6 issues? Seriously.

This definitely isn't a place for Stark though, like momendo mentioned.

@Dave Reid at #8: Maybe a GoOpenStandards.com would be better ;-) . Gecko and Webkit are much better rendering engines then any of the Internet Explorers, and they conform to the open web standards...

Let's at least move all IE6 hacks to a specific ie.css so we know where they are for later removal.

I also think we shouldn't go out of our way to deal with PNG transparency issues and stuff like that.

@ catch/#14 - I agree with you 100% there. With IE 8 out now, we would need to make sure conditionals are targeted for IE6 and IE7, because if you use the normal "If IE," then IE 8 gets screwed up, because, ironically, it's actually fairly compliant.

The difference is that we can control which version of PHP or jQuery we support.

Drupal sites cannot control which browser their visitors are using.

Neither can we control which browser an organization is using. If we would do this, we would lose a fair amount of potential Drupal users.

This is an utopian feature request.

I agree that the lack of control over users for IE6 makes it still mandatory to support IE6 in the core where visitors to the site are concerned, and that each of us as site administrators will choose to what extent we support it in our custom themes (my latest site has downgraded functionality for IE6). Also, that if the functionality is in the admin. section that IE6 is irrelevant, as a developer and/or site admin. I have enough influence to simply make everyone use FF for the admin. of Drupal - and for the most part I do.

One question remains in my mind which is given that:
a) Last I checked bots & scanners of various kinds will most likely use an IE6 looking agent
b) That my corporate users who have IE6 mandated by their arcane IT depts., also have FF3
, how accurate is this 18% or so of IE6?

I have very little faith in this number but since I have nothing better reluctantly base my decisions on it. I have even less faith in elevated levels of FF use on my owns sites since I already know my own influence on them greatly elevates that percentage above the norm.

Regarding catches comment #14 and geerlingguy's follow #15: this is how I do it on my custom themes and with IE8 will probably drop the first condition but haven't had time to test with IE8 yet. Agreed, all IE hacks (perhaps not just IE6) should be in a specific (or set of) CSS file(s).

New title.

New scope, category, and priority.

New direction.

Berdir pointed me to (yet another) announcement on the net of a major web site dropping IE6 support.

Just like the PHP5 initiative, the entire issue seems to turn into a provider initiative. When major internet players drop support for IE6, Drupal should support this campaign.

Well.... Mozilla Firefox is free, and runs on older computers.... No cost except a time for an install.

While Firefox is free if you work in corporate America, you can easily stuck with the companies choice of browser.

Sorry guys, I just opened up #522006: Conditional Styles in Core :-P . Definitely a big plus from me on dropping complete support for IE6 though.

Although I can definitely see the benefits of dropping IE6 support, I wanted to point people to the relatively recent WebAIM survey of screen-reader users http://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey/ .

Although the survey is not necessarily a representative sample, it does show that around 33% of screen-reader users are still using IE 6. One of the reasons for this is that upgrading a browser also means ensuring that the version of assistive technology that is being used is compatible with the newer version of the browser. Assistive technology can be costly and some people may not be economically, or technically, in a position to upgrade their technology.

Although browser support is typically a discussion around visual design, I wouldn't want problems to arise in core that would decrease functionality for assistive technology users on IE 6.

Just a point to consider.

@ Everett Zufelt / #23 - I think that 99.9% of the reasons for dropping IE6 support have to do with CSS support and would not affect the structure or the way a screen reader would read the page. It would be useful to keep in mind, though, that things should be tested for accessibility!

While I wish IE6 could be diasppear for a lot of reasons, it is still a standard for many many large companies and US federal departments. Security issues one, and internal apps that have been built to run correctly only on IE6. OK IE6 is not 100% secure, but the thought process is better the devil you know. The other thing to keep in mind is that users can not install any software on machines. Telling them to put on FF or IE7/8 will not happen.

I remember many years a when Netscape was just getting started. I hated websites that checked my broswer and incorrectly determined that I couldn't display the site becuase I was not using Netscape. I know that locking out IE6 users is not being proposed, but my reaction was to het upset and forget about that site if they didn't respect my browser.

If you want people to use a site, you don't piss them off. If people don't use a site becuase it was built with Drupal, then not that many will want to use it as a framework.

Just my $.02

I think IE6 is on its deathbed and D7 shouldn't care about any measures to prolong the suffering. When youtube decides the turn its back on IE6 this is a very good sign that it is time. I guess that other major players will follow soon. So given the amount of extra trouble IE6 support makes I am opting to stop the support.

As a sidenote: Is it an option that D7 drops the core support for IE6 but a contributed module could replace this? Or is this not feasible in contrib?

Big names like YouTube, Mobile Me, Digg, and 37signals have all announced the end of IE6 support. IE8 and Firefox 3.5 are available now. Windows 7 will be out before Drupal 7. By the time Drupal 7 is preferred for production sites, IE6 will have a small sliver of market share & remaining users will (should) be used to sites looking a bit off.

IMO, it is reasonable for Drupal 7 to have a policy of IE6 being a very second class citizen. As long as D7 sites load and key functionality (add a node or comment) works, that should be good enough. Why make sacrifices or extensively test for an increasingly irrelevant 8 year old browser? The drop needs to move on...

FYI: http://mashable.com/2009/07/16/ie6-must-die/

Another FYI, #481682: Update to Farbtastic 2 is blocked by an issue with Internet Explorer depending on a Canvas plugin for Farbtastic to render the control properly. When you're on IE, it looks like this:
http://skitch.com/mattfarina/bj2ru/farbtastic-v2-ie6 .... Grrrrrrrrr.

What percentage of Drupal users, specifically those using IE6, will ever touch Farbtastic? Or any other D7 config page for that matter? I've venture to guess the number is very small. Reminds me of Digg's statistics showing that only 1% of logged in users were on IE6 (http://blog.digg.com/?p=878).

Drupal is gaining traction currently amongst government. Many government agencies around the world are still saddled with IE6. Stop supporting IE6 at this point - functionally - and all those big government projects currently turning to Drupal will go elsewhere.

This is not just about people with IE6 not being able to access your sites, this is about government agencies, companies, and non-profits which will still require IE6 support either way.

As much as I hate it, dropping support for IE6 is a foolish move.

I believe this issue is less dramatic than some people depict it. If we were to Drop IE6 support officially it is not as if IE6 will not be able to access Drupal sites. They will see some minor deficiencies in Drupal core's themes and maybe a bug like in the farbtastic colorpicker as described in #481682: Update to Farbtastic 2.
All that governmental agencies and companies that rely on IE6 will have to do in most (=99%) cases (i.e. on what kind of site does the average user get to see the colorpicker) is write a custom theme.
...Which they will do anyways. They will just have to keep IE6 in mind along the way. Big deal.
Therefore I think dropping IE6 support is not a foolish move, it is another much needed signal to the IE6-using world and means in no way the exclusion of a major part of internet users from all Drupal sites.

I agree with tstoeckler.

This issue is about dropping IE6 support in core!

Themers and developers will not be restricted about supporting IE6. As mentioned a few times above, Drupal themers will be able to support IE6 if they choose.

This is mainly going to effect the Admin interface to Drupal, as most sites will use a custom, user facing theme. Most developers will be using something newer than IE6, so I think that we are only keeping legacy code around which isnt used.

D7 is continually being updated. All the code in Garland, for the most part, still works with IE6. We dropped most of the older themes. If you want to see IE6 still work, you must be able to help in the Drupal 7 issue queue, code and test patches against IE6 to make that happen. This is a do-ocracy.

I know many want to drop IE6 support and make a philosophical, ideological stand. I feel the same way. But if someone commits the hours to keep IE6 working, its yours to give.

There are plenty of IE6 issues in the queue to look at.
http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal?text=ie6&status=Open&priorities=...

Rebasing. This isn't *critical* by any stretch.

This is something that Dries needs to say " We will commit patches that look broken in IE6 ". I would think that would be a good thing, yeah. Oh, and 37signals dropping IE6 is way more important here than YouTube.

Note that IE6 users already get degraded experience - sticky tableheaders don't, have never, and will never work in IE6.

I think Sun marked this critical due to #523058: Optimize check_plain(), we managed to find ways to speed it up a bit, but I'd guess it could be twice as fast again if we actually said "you're on your own if you're using IE6, good luck" in that case - and in that case every Drupal site suffers just in case an admin happens to be using IE6.

dropping that is not acceptable, it's one thing to give users a degraded experience it's another to give 'em an insecure one.

@chx, although I tend to agree with #38, technically IE6 has been unsupported for quite a while and, hence, as soon as you install it you (willingly) have an insecure experience.

sadly "officially" IE6 still has Mainstream Support from Microsoft until at least 21 April 2013 and when used with Windows XP SP3 (just like Windows XP SP3 itself) and till 13 July 2010 when used with XPSP2

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps/#Internet_Explorer
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/#Service%20Pack%20Support

I really hope W7+IE8 will replace WXP+IE6 quickly so it deminishes IE6 marketshare.

I agree with chx on this one, considering how many people are still (forced to be) using IE6, I don't think entirely dropping support is a good idea here

if the issue is just the alphatransparent PNGs, then either serve them with an ugly gif alternative or just serve them the same PNG and shift the blame to the browser

dropping support altogether seems like something we can't afford, now that governmental instances are starting to get interested in Drupal (as you probably know, most gov instances think IE6 is still the most secure and they have stuff that only runs on IE6, so they only use IE6)

I have never tested anything against IE6. I am thinking about adding IE 6 Update module to every site, just to make sure there is no problem with IE6.

A few disparate issues suggest the following:

We can't drop IE6 support for security (check_plain()) because a lot of big organizations wouldn't be in a position to use Drupal any more.

We can't render IE6 unusable in core in terms of markup / CSS / javascript, but it seems to me like less and less patches are getting tested with it, so it's likely it'll be functional but not necessarily pretty. Actively removing IE6 specific hacks isn't going to fly at this point, forthe same reasons as above.

I reckon that's the best we can do for now, nothing stops contrib themes from actively failing to support IE6 - and it's sites not working which will force users to upgrade, rather than the admin panel of a CMS.

So, moving this to Drupal 8. And putting it back to base system since we have IE6-specific code not only in the theme layer.