No, I don’t mean to say existing Internet Explorer 6 users shouldn’t upgrade to one of the countless newer, faster and safer browsers out there. What I’m talking about is a little gimmick which surfaced a week or so ago called IE6 Update.
The authors came up with the brilliant idea of mimicking the standard Internet Explorer information bar, urging users to update to a newer version of Internet Explorer. You can include the bar on your site or web application using a small code snippet available on the project’s website. It automatically checks if your users are running IE6, only showing the bar to those who are. So why is this such a bad idea?
Stop tricking your users
The way I see it, usage of this script is as close as can be to phishing. According to Wikipedia:
In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
By masquerading itself as a genuine Microsoft update, the script (and, by extension, the people who deploy it on their websites) is effectively breaking any kind of trust users might have in the service. Once users realize they’ve been misled, feelings of mistrust and anger arise and you can bet they probably won’t be visiting your site any time soon.
One other issue is that, by employing this script, you are negating your users the power of choice. The same power of choice you’re so proud of when you talk about Open Source Software, bash Microsoft for bundling IE with Windows, etc. If your users can’t or don’t want to upgrade, for whatever reasons, don’t hassle them, just deal with it. I still don’t know which is the correct answer to educating users about IE6, but I do know that IE6 Update is not it.
Ok, I have to disagree with your comment regarding phishing. According to your own definintion:
“…process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details..”
By sending them to Microsoft to update, you are not in anyway creating a phishing scenario.
Really, they need to upgrade, and we are doing them a disfavor by letting them continue to use an obsolete browser.
I’m sorry if I didn’t say it clearly, but what I meant to say was that this practice was dangerously close to phishing. You’re absolutely right, it’s not phishing per se, since the goal is not to extract information from the user, but still the fact that the script impersonates Microsoft is pretty evil.
I fully agree that users need to update, and that we should actively get them to upgrade, but this is just not the way to do it. I myself believe in Progressive Enhancement.
Great post Bruno, I wholeheartedly agree and we need more articles like this to educate developers that hijacking the IE information bar is just not a good practice to get into. Any site that uses this technique is treading on very dangerous ground and really should be discouraged.
There’s been an interesting discussion with some of the creators of IE6 update about this on the comments for a blog post I wrote the other, you might like to check it out:
http://www.friskdesign.com/2009/04/21/why-ie6update-is-wrong/
As a developer if your choices are to not support IE6 or to install this script, which would you do?
@Allan Well, if those were my only two choices, using the script would definitely be an improvement to serving a broken (or semi-broken) page to my users. Of course in this scenario I would try to use Progressive Enhancement techniques to develop a page that basically worked well in IE6, and avoid doing IE6-specific development in the first place.
Agreed, there is always at least one more choice than the two presented by Allan — progressive enhancement for modern browsers is the preferred way to tackle that scenario.
@bruno, I think dumbing down a webapp for IE6 users is a silly idea. Should teachers teach the whole class at the speed of the slowest person in the room?
@Matt, those are the two choices. We don’t support IE6 users and have thought about using that script. So we can continue to NOT support IE6 and have that script install or not have the script installed.
Thoughts?
I’ve discussed my views on this in detail on the blog post I wrote a couple of weeks back, and in the comments. The link is in my earliest comment above.
Why does a webapp (or site) have to be considered as “dumbed down” if you make it work for IE6? Surely it’s better to be as inclusive as possible and offer core functionality for IE6 users, even if some of the nice stuff is missing?
Why don’t you support IE6 users? Because it’s too hard? Because they are “stupid” for using an outdated browser? Or some other reason? Those are some the arguments put forward by other developers which personally I think are unacceptable. And I’m happy to have a minority view on this issue.
Thanks for good post
@allan Try not to think of Progressive Enhancement as “dumbing down”, but rather “dressing it up” for browsers which support it. Using your class analogy, teachers would teach in a way that all students could keep up with but would give smarter kids other books or tools so they could learn more while the rest of the class finishes the regular tasks.
Anyway, I still don’t think it comes down to the choice of supporting IE6 or not. If you write responsible code, IE6 issues should either be small enough to ignore or non-existent at all.
Hi there, not sure that this is true, but thanks