Last month about half of my visitors used some version of Internet Explorer (IE) while the other half used a version of Firefox. Looking more closely about half of my IE users are using version 6. Stop it! Because of you people I have to constantly make sure that any little change I make works in IE6. And if it doesn't, which is 90 percent of the time, then I have to find a way to fix it or hack it to get it to work. It's a pain in the ass. My admin panel that I use to run this site uses lots of CSS and javascript to make it pretty and do cool things. I always used either Firefox or IE7 to view my admin panel. Well, the other day I made the mistake of opening it with IE6. Virtually nothing worked or looked right. I seriously laughed at how lame it looked in IE6.

Then I came to the conclusion that I am not making my admin panel compliant with IE6. It would take way too much time and effort to do so, and doing so will probably cause my site to break in other, more modern browsers. As a part-time web developer I've grown a great hatred to IE6. It slowly started happening sometime last year, prior to IE7. The more I learn about CSS and javascript and all the cool things I can do with them, the more I find out how horribly IE6 renders them. I've also made another decision to stop supporting IE6 with my next site re-design which should be live in the next few months. That means all you IE6 users will probably get a dumbed down version of the site.

And don't blame me. Blame yourself. Internet Explorer 6 is old and outdated. Anyone still using it is also old and outdated, and this new Web 2.0 / content driven Internet has no need for your browser. And if you use a school or work computer that only has IE6 running, then download and install Firefox. You don't need admin rights to install it on your computer. And if you still can't install a better browser, then hax the computer and install it, or write a letter of despair to your local congressman.

In the end, I also blame Microsoft for not making IE7 a super-important-you-must-download-this browser. That way anyone who runs Windows Update with automatically get IE7 with no "are you sure" crap like that. Finally, I don't want to hear any excuses as to why you're using Internet Explorer 6. Excuses are for sheep, and you're not sheep are you? You're a shark, and sharks have no excuses....or necks. </exaggerated anger> So please, if you're using IE6, then upgrade to IE7, Firefox, Opera, or even Safari (as a last resort). There are all much, much better.