While the overall craft of building websites has remained rooted in roughly the same technologies over the past decade and a half, it would be far, far from the truth to say that the craft is the same as it was. The tools that we use have, since the beginning, been ever-changing. Stand still for long enough, and the job will change right out from under you.
But, these days, the craft seems to be changing at an ever-increasing rate, and all of these changes seem to be rushing toward a common end-point: Web Standards. Now, this is a goal that's been sought-after for more than a decade, but only now are we truly coming to a point where the browser manufacturers and the standards-making organizations are operating on the same page (heh…roughly). It's a pretty exciting time to be a web developer, and I'm proud to use the word "craft" to describe what we do.
Bearing all of that in mind, the past year has seen an enormous push to "apply some muscle" in the fight to weed out the oldest browsers that are still in use. Whether you're in the business of Web, or you're just an everyday Joe who surfs the web on company time, you are undoubtedly aware of IE6: The scourge of web developers. What you probably didn't know is that Internet Explorer version 6 is fast approaching eight years old.
Now, to be fair, at the time of its introduction, IE6 was an extremely modern browser. It had greater capability for delivering standards-based web pages than any previous browser, from any company. Many people, consider it the world's first truly “modern” web browser. The problem is, these days, six months is enough time for things to change drastically. August 27th, 2001 (when IE6 was first made public) is kind of a long time in the past. The dude who was president then has since served two terms, and is now out of office. THE IPOD DID NOT EXIST.
The thing that's hard to explain is this: getting people to upgrade their browsers is not just beneficial to web users. It's also very important for anyone who pays someone to build a website for them, and for people who build their own websites. Because, while building a website may only take X number of hours, making that same website function/behave/look reasonably nice in outdated browsers like IE6 can take almost as much time as the whole project did. It's an enormous waste of time, money and talent.
Of course, all of those older browsers are never going to disappear. But it's important to watch the stats, and to watch the market share drop. Moreover, we can certainly do more than just sit around and wait. We can take an active role in encouraging the denizens of the anonymous web to take the simple (and rewarding!) step of upgrading their browser.
In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing a few of the forward-thinking techniques we use at HyperArts to try to keep the web moving forward, without leaving the stragglers behind.
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