In the year 2000 the tech world was in a state of flux.  Still reeling from the widespread panic (and subsequent public humiliation) of the Y2K bug, and facing the anarchy of public file sharing, tech corporations were still hoping for a chance to reclaim their share of the quot;dot com" bubble. 

Microsoft, no exception to this mentality, embarked on a strange and confusing plan to release multiple versions of its own operating system in order to reach (and profit from) various sectors of the consumer market.  Windows 2000 and Windows ME were released in such proximity to one another that the differences were confusing to the general public. As usual, each release was plagued with a variety of errors that even caused some consumers to refuse to upgrade their operating systems.

Because of the confusion caused by those post Windows ’98 operating systems, the announcement of Windows XP and its release in 2001 was greeted with skepticism.  Although XP was available in multiple formulations for various user markets (i.e. XP Home, XP Pro, and XP Tablet) the jump in price for upgrading, the reported bugs in the program, and the complicated upgrade process inspired users in 2001 to consider alternatives to purchasing a license for Windows XP.  The file sharing boom of that era allowed users to acquire the software and a “keygen,” a custom designed program that could generate a valid product key and allow activation of an illegally downloaded copy of a Windows product.  Although the illegal nature of this activity has kept users from reporting their pirated copies, and therefore made concrete data on the percentages of illegal operating systems unavailable, there are other data that show just how many illicit copies of Windows XP remain to this day.

One of the unfortunate side effects to having an illegal copy of XP relates to the web industry.  Pirated operating systems are denied updates from Microsoft’s central servers, and so illegal copies of XP forge on without security patches and software upgrades.  As a result, users who began with XP’s built-in browser, Internet Explorer 6.x, may continue to use this same browser without update.

Considering that Microsoft has officially discontinued XP, and offers free upgrades to Internet Explorer 7 and now Internet Explorer 8 to all users with a legal operating system, it is a shock to read the reports from the WC3 (the governing body that monitors web page coding rules and propriety) that almost 14% of users on the market today still use Internet Explorer 6.x. 

This is even more shocking when one realizes that many types of coding common on the internet today are not supported by IE6, and these users must be aware that they are seeing broken and confused web pages.  With free upgrades offered and alternatives like Mozilla Firefox, one must logically deduce that the 14% of users on the market who cling tenaciously to this outdated browser must either be ignorant of the remedy to their situation, or unable to implement it due to their use of pirated software.

As a web designer I have been asked, even by web professionals, to ensure that my product was “IE6 compatible.”  Unfortunately, many machines with legal operating systems were automatically upgraded (as Microsoft tries to improve their user’s experience.) This means that an updated machine has no way to install the outdated software, and I have no means to test my coding on an outdated platform.  Alarming as this might seem, it is all part of the natural process that makes some products obsolete, and replaces them with newer and more useful alternatives.

Business owners sometimes worry that a site optimized for the newest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari may alienate 14% of internet users and ultimately cost profits.  I submit that this is, however, unlikely.  The abundance of free upgrades and alternatives places that 14% audience in either the category of “willful software pirate” or “digitally uninformed.”  It is reasonable to deduce that neither group is a likely source of useful internet traffic or business for a modern business, and can be excluded from consideration without fiscal loss.

Some web designers advertise being able to code beautiful sites for all browsers, including IE6.  Unfortunately, IE6 denies the use of transparencies, interprets CSS spacing in radically different ways, and denies several types of commonly used scripts (most often seen in photo galleries used by various social media sites and blogs.)  Restrained from these common tools, it is nearly impossible to envision a site designed to be compatible with Internet Explorer 6 that would be as aesthetically pleasing or functional as its more forward-thinking peers.  All that we currently consider “modern, clean web design” relies on these tools, and internet users with the money to spend online are savvy enough to spot a site with an antiquated aesthetic, and withhold their spending accordingly.

Finally, given the popularity of software piracy, designers who cater to the IE6 demographic may be unintentionally supporting the theft of a fellow professional’s intellectual labor.  Software piracy universally harms the tech industry by devaluing the work of educated programmers and designers. 

For these reasons I have made a direct effort to educate my clients about the need to focus the site’s design and coding towards clients with modern and legal software, and to let IE6 and its users fade into the quiet of history as Microsoft intended.

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