“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. In this case we are talking about those 25% ignored users – that’s a treasure business opportunity.

No wonder that other companies are taking steps. Like 5pm announced that they will still support IE6 and introduced an easy Basecamp-to-5pm data migration:
http://qgsoftware.com/blog/2008/08/15/migrating-from-basecamp-to-5pm/

As of IE8 these clueless internal shops can have all of the crappy platform support they need, if the devs will just take the time to read up on the triggering mechanism.

However, I think I’m being generous and optimistic by even hoping for that much.

I don’t believe it’s possible for my expectations of internal enterprise shops to sink any lower than they’ve been for the past year or so. I routinely wonder how in the hell any of these people manage to keep their jobs.

…And on the issue of “but I get these huge traffic numbers” please see my comment to the effect of “if it matters so much” above.

I still believe – in the same way I believed in the Tooth Fairy’s gifts if not her actual existence – that if enough people say “to hell with this” then the clueless will get the hint and start upgrading their browsing platforms.

Of course, I think it would take some serious come-to-Jesus talk from pretty much every well-known agency before that became a possibility.

The focus of my concern is on public-facing materials, and let’s not forget that I *did* mention the ossification of enterprise environments in my original comment (though not the reasons behind that phenomenon).

Let’s just say that in my private thoughts I will stay unsympathetic and ranty.

As for the issue itself – jeez, if it matters that much, then do it.

But I stick to my original case that as long as professional devs continue to march around with the word WELCOME stamped on their backs when it comes time to face the issue of first-tier support for legacy browsing platforms, we are continuing to work against our own best interest.

When you need to build Tool X and you can’t find anyone with actual talent to build it because all of the good people are working to practices that are actually current, what then?

…But nooo, there are always enough doormats to ensure that what the enterprises want, they get, at the expense of turning the medium into yet another vast wasteland.

That’s part of the reason why Microsoft is so behind with standards compliance as well – they can’t afford to p!ss off all these businesses whose intranets were designed around the flaws inherent in older versions of IE.

Convincing home users to upgrade is just a matter of education. But most of them probably do the majority of their web browsing at work where they are still stuck with whatever setup the company supplies.

I would love nothing more than to ditch IE6 altogether. But I simply can’t afford to lose that many customers.

Keep in mind that 37Signals (a) didn’t give a timeline for a total end of support and (b) attracts a web-savvy, developer-heavy audience. This could be a two-year process. And their audience is loaded with Firefox and Safari users.

Most other sites probably can’t make this move yet.

Let’s marshal arguments, hmm???

[1] IE7 is a more secure platform. I don’t have statistics, but I do know that the decrease in patches for IE7 (y/o/y per lifecycle) speaks for itself.
[2] IE7 had a few UI boogers when it shipped (menu bar, anyone?) but those’ve been attended to.
[3] Tabs.

IE7 has definitely earned its higher version number.

“…But my visitors won’t upgrade!” For those who have a clear choice, this argument is a case of confirmation bias. Just because Joe Schmoe Client is afraid that breathing on his computer (much less installing a critical software upgrade) will cause it to break, does not necessarily mean that all of his customers are the same way.

(And how is it that people will download Dancing Babies by the millions, but they won’t download a new browser? This logic, it confuses me.)

…To which I add that the kind of technophobes who aren’t keeping their systems up to date probably aren’t spending a hell of a lot money online anyway, so why are we worried about them?

Finally, this death-grip on legacy support creates a vicious cycle: the more sites still work in older versions, the less incentive people will have to commit system updates.

The one relevant issue that I can’t shoot down here is the love that the enterprise feels for the status quo… and that’s a discussion unto itself.

IE7 is 65%
IE6 is 35%
and IE5 is 0.1% (we don’t support IE5)

Bottom line: maybe 37signals can afford to drop support for IE6, I can’t. Too many business users don’t have their computers updated to the IE7, so dropping support there for IE6 would mean a loss of quite a number of users.

But hey, maybe 37signals’ stats are different and maybe they can afford to drop support.

Nozbe can’t.

They should wait until August 27 to drop support … on IE6’s 7th Birthday!