Ask about the 20% or so of users who still use IE6 in a development environment and there’ll be a lot of rolling of eyes and general muttering.
The point is, until usage figures drop low enough to justify ignoring them, your dev team will still need to code, and you will still need to test, web sites in IE6. We’d all like them to upgrade but wishing it won’t make it true. Unless you’re in the privileged position where a client comes to you and states “make my site work only in IE7 and above”, you can’t afford to lose a fifth of your audience. But that’s exactly why no-one will ever come to you with those requirements!
It’s here for another couple of years yet. Grin and bear it.
[Edit: 02/02/10]
Pressure mounts to phase out Internet Explorer 6 (BBC News)
[Edit: 15/09/10]
If you are still using IE6, why? (It’s Broken)
[Edit: 07/12/10]
Want An International Audience? Remember IE6 (QA Hates You)
[Edit: 05/08/11]
Dev says: Stop banging on about IE6 (.net Magazine)
Really, it depends on what sort of software you’re delivering. The glut of IE6 users that will pay you the big bucks are going to be corporate environments such as banks, which for obvious reasons are notoriously slow at upgrading anything. However, it does mean in that scenario you might be able to get away with testing in IE6 only.
Moving up a level, a typical non technical user who uses the web to order some CDs for their nephew’s birthday will probably use whatever flavour of IE came installed or got forced on them by Windows Update (where they read “Yada yada yada” and then clicked the “Whatever, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about” button). So you can regression test in IE6 – IE8, but if it doesn’t quite work in Firefox, it’s not the end of the world.
And if your web app is for Mac fanboys, you’d be an idiot to test it on anything outside of Safari.
Horses for courses.
I work in QA for education software (where I wish they’d catch up to the 20% point!) and this is so true.
IETester has its place, but I keep an Microsoft IE Compatibility VM handy for any full passes.
Loved the comment by the head of the IE team last year, that “Friends don’t let friends use IE6”