IE6 is dead. At last.

Amidst mounting frustration when editing some CSS today I decided to check the latest stats for IE6. And, joy of joys, we are finally at the point where we can ditch support for this most ancient and incompatible of browsers.

Whilst it still contributed a significant proportion of visitors to the site (which we judged to be >5%) it was worth making sure that sites still displayed well (if not perfectly) in IE6. 5% might seem like a small number but we thought about it the other way around - we often go to great lengths to increase readership by 5-10% so why not take care of the same number of people that have already found your site?

Well, IE6 usage is now down well below 5%. Depending on the site we analyse it's somewhere between 2% and 4% and falling steadily. Also, in total, IE represents less than 50% of the site visits which is also new - and the trend is downwards so it looks like people are seeing the light and branching out to Firefox and others.

So, hooray (HOORAY!) the time has finally come where we can drop support for the grand-daddy of browsers and get on with our lives.

The only question that remains is... how long until we can put up a message to visitors using IE6 telling them that they are not allowed to access the site at all until they sort out their browser? :)