Should a web developer use CSS 3 when IE6 has 15% market share?

Question

Everything is in the title: should a web developer use CSS3 when IE6 still has about 15% of the market share?

There are some impressive features in CSS3 that will make things better. If you are not aware of this, see the latest journal violation post regarding the subject. The problem is that almost all of these new features are not supported by IE6 ... therefore, if you want the site to be accessible to everyone, you cannot use CSS 3.

So ... what now?

Wait for IE6 to disappear with CSS 2? Use CSS 3 and use hacks for IE6? Learn CSS 3 but Don't Use It in Real Life Projects?

Answer 1

If you find the feature appealing, use it.

But when you do, you have a choice for users of older browsers:

• Simulate the same effect using Javascript, alternative CSS, etc.
• Competently, i.e. just make sure the site doesn't break in older browsers, even if it looks a little different.

Answer 2

I received a specific IE6 exception for my last project, noting that supporting it is likely to increase the cost.

I support ignoring IE6 if possible.

The sooner he stops working for a critical mass of sites, the sooner he will leave.

Answer 3

This is a market issue. You need to investigate not the general use of IE6, but use in your target audience. Odds - this will not be 6%, but significantly higher or lower.

A recursive proposal to look at costs is indeed the right way. If you can provide more functionality with the same cost or the same functionality for less cost using CSS3, then the correct answer is not IE6 support. You need legal numbers. If you have a live service, you need to use these numbers. Do not forget about the often significant cost of moving to a new technology.

Of course, all this is due to the fact that CSS3 support is implemented correctly and enough in browsers that claim to be compliance.

Answer 4

For public sites: do not use CSS3

Most browsers do not support it well enough, since most things just check on all browsers and look at what the results are.

But a safe bet just doesn't use it yet and doesn't care too much about it until most browsers actually support things well enough.

Then hack browsers that don't. And remember that even 1% of browsers is still stupid to alienate in most cases.

Answer 5

CSS 3.0 is not yet a recommendation. He still mainly works in the "Last Call", "Work Draft" mode or in other statuses that indicate that he will change. I suggest sticking to CSS 1.0 or CSS 2.1 with specific exceptions that explicitly work on all browsers.

In addition, IE 7 and 8 do not have much support for CSS 3.0. And they have a share of more than 15% of the market.

Answer 6

IMHO, it really depends on the project and its purpose. For example, if you are building a consumer application, most PC users have deviated from IE6 as part of upgrading Windows / Mac to at least IE7 (if not IE8) and Safari 3 (now 4). Of course, FF has a huge market share, as well as growing, etc. Chrome

The problem is that if the application is widespread - for example, a news site, most corporate legacy applications still run on IE6 and require this - the conclusion is that the corporate / corporate IT audience will still work with IE6.

It’s best to structure your site (if you really want to use CSS3) - it's idealistic to build it completely in CSS 3 - and have a separate stylesheet for IE6 elements if you get a lot of traffic from IE6 (use JS to detect the browser). Then you can always drop IE6 when it is no longer needed, without having to transcode the entire site.

Alternatively, stick with CCS 2 if you think your traffic will include IE6. I personally don’t see the point of limiting your application - it’s quite difficult to promote a web application, so I don’t understand why you want to make it more rigid by reducing the (still large)% of the browser market.

PS - In any case, you click "best view in Chrome, etc." on your site - always helps: D

Answer 7

Treat this as if you had a Flash-only website or a rich Javascript website, or any type of website that would make life easier for a select group of users and would be annoying or outright unsuitable for relaxation. Using CSS3 by all means, but if you can provide an alternative, usable, accessible version for any browsers (not just IE6) that don't support CSS3, that would be ideal. Particularly worried about IE6, you, fortunately, have conditional IE comments that you could use to include a specific CSS2 stylesheet for users of IE6 and older. Then you can use the awesomeness of the latest technology, but do not exclude users just because they are not updated.

eg.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="css3.css" /> <!--[if lte IE 6]> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="css2.css" /> <![endif]--> 

Answer 8

It is important to know your audience. Canadian government websites should be accessible to everyone except Stackoverflow, or something designed for web developers or techno enthusiasts can be used using the latest technology.

It can always detect IE6 and serve a page asking for an update.

Answer 9

If you really feel that it is important to support IE6 users, you can always have a loader page that will load one of two different CSS files depending on the browser you are using.

However, I tend to agree with the recursive one that the more people stop supporting IE6, the sooner they will leave, and we no longer have to worry about such problems.