For several years, Internet Explorer 6 has been the bane of web designers.
Its lack of standards compliance and the browser’s overall glitchiness with handling otherwise ordinary techniques and processes, have made IE6 a burden to tame. Designers have had to jump through hoops to get things past validation, including some not-so-effective workaround techniques and a mountain of IE6 commented CSS.
However, bright skies are on the horizon. A ceremonial “funeral” was held for the browser in March, and there’s even a site counting down until the end times for IE6 (which, is apparently going to be sometime in 2014) . Microsoft’s Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8 have made great strides towards abiding by the W3C compliance standards, and improvements are definitely being made.
Still, IE6 remains in widespread use in a wide variety of industries and government institutions, so the end is moving slowly. With any luck, web admins and designers across the board will quietly revolt, and we can move to a day when you won’t need a separate stylesheet just for Internet Explorer 6. And that day can’t come too soon for this designer.