Kill IE6 and feed the hungry

Internet Explorer 6, writes Brent Gustafson, senior new media designer at the Walker Art Center, “lacks support for so many things that it is simply a nightmare to work with. The amount of time and money wasted in supporting this browser across the web is staggering.” If you needed an excuse to upgrade to IE8, now you have one: if you download the new browser from this site, Microsoft will donate eight meals to Feeding America—16 meals if you’re upgrading from IE6.

Gustafson estimates that under 10% of the Walker’s Web traffic comes from users surfing on IE6, and that the proportion is (happily) quickly declining. Here at the Daily Planet, we had a moment of IE6 truth recently when we discovered that IE6 users opening Daily Planet pages with embedded videos would find their browsers abruptly shut down. That was unpleasant to learn, but we had to decide whether we’d deprive the other 90-plus percent of users the richness of video content just to accommodate the IE6ers. What did we decide? Click here to see—but (hint) you’d better not if you’re on IE6.

Jay Gabler (jay@tcdailyplanet.net) is associate editor of the Daily Planet.