Website designers have been swearing at Internet Explorer v6 for many years. Now, Microsoft themselves have said enough is enough and are trying to encourage IE6 users to upgrade. There are some alternative ways to advise your website visitors to upgrade though.
This week Microsoft launched The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown to try and encourage users of their old Internet Explorer 6 product to upgrade to a newer version. This idea is nothing new. With many sites such as YouTube, Google & Facebook already officially not supporting IE6 a number of sites already include a notification to IE6 users.
I tend to think that any people still using IE6 do not have the ability to upgrade their own machine. It may be locked down by the IT department or even a machine setup for a technophobe by another family member. Whatever the reason I do agree that they should be alerted to the issue but if you are changing your browser. Why not change it to something other than IE. Give the user the choice to use any browser. That is the whole point of the web and web standards.
So, here is my rundown of IE6 browser alerts for your website…
The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown
The banner is only shown in English as a picture (not good for accessability) and only redirects to Microsoft’s site for users to download IE9. The code is pulled from Microsoft’s website each time which means they control the banner.
A very cheeky little banner site that makes it look like the upgrade from IE6 to IE9 is a security upgrade! The big advantage of this is that you can download and install the code on your site. Quicker for site visitors and more secure.
A very nicely put together banner which is only let down by being old and still recommending the user upgrade to IE7! While IE is recommended first the banner also suggests other browsers such as Opera, Firefox, Safari or Chrome. The site does allow you to download the code yourself too and I’m sure you can change the references of IE7 to IE9
Multi language, multi browser recommendation and a nice landing page that explains to visitors why they should be upgrading. Only negative point is the banner is called from an obfuscated JavaScript file on a their website which some may see as a security issue.
My recommendation and the one I’ll be implementing on my sites. Used by a number of large sites already , the code is longer but only pulls images from it’s own server which you can easily copy to your site.
Whatever you choose lets all hope that IE6 dies soon!