Should we bother about IE < 8?

Question

It might look like philosophical question, however it really bother me. We\'re expecting HTML 5, we\'re using JS, Ajax, Flex, all this stuff, but when older browsers were develo

Answer 1

How many people use IE6 now?

As of March 2010, about 18% of general web users, according to Net Applications, still use IE6. Another 13% are using IE7, so not worrying about "IE < 8" means not worrying (potentially) about nearly a third of general users out there. In theory, see below.

Should we bother about IE < 8?

That is a much more interesting question. You should worry about your user base. I've heard it said regularly that "most IE6 users are corporate users" (I haven't seen the data to back that up, but I'm not saying it's not true). So if your site is mostly going to be of interest to home users, maybe the numbers are different.

The best thing to do is find out what percentage of your user base uses IE6 or IE7. The best way is to examine your web server logs and see what user agents requests are coming from (user agent strings can be spoofed, but usually aren't).

If your user base is very much like that measured by Net Applications, I would say, no, you can't ignore IE6 and IE7. But if your user base is hardcore web developers, of course you can. :-) Measure first, then work from there.