Thread: Catering for IE6 and Lower?

Hi All,

my site is working fine in IE7 and Higher, Firefox etc but Its not IE6 or Lower friendly i've tried solving this but have had no luck what so ever and have been told not to worry about it due to the minimum amount of users for these browsers

shold i have a browser check on each of my pages to check that the user is not using IE6 etc and display an error page with links to the latest browsers if they are? looks very messy in IE6 and didnt want to give a bad impression to anyone who is using that browser

what are yur thoughts?

thanks
p.s here is my site

Kernow Connect - Online Shopping and Price Comparison (Entertainment Items)

sorry this probably should be in browser issues???

my bad

Moved to Browser Issues.

Thanks Jack

To be honest ljackson, I would try and find out why your site isn't working in IE6, and act accordingly - rather than trying to find ways around it. For a site such as yours, I expect you may have a few IE6 people. If this were something for web-savvy customers, you could block IE6 users out (IE6 users claiming to be web-savvy? C'mon.) Lower than IE6, forget about them. It's ridiculous they've even managed to hold on to such software for so long.

First of all I'd check out this link to IE6 transparency.
And then the rest of the problems, we could all help you fiddle with your code, it'll be a bit of work - but.

If you're content on blocking out a percentage (don't know a statistic off the top of my head) of people, then we can go in that direction too.

Which do you fancy more?

Your site is an e-commerce, so I would suggest to get it fixed up for IE6, otherwise you will have less visitors.

However, number of IE6 users are decreasing, which is a great news for us. But, I still would get it fixed up.

Why dont you use IE6 hack? Google IE Hacks.

I would think you need to look at getting your site fixed up to support IE6 as I would imagine you will have some visitors that are still using it. (God Bless Them!!)

Do your web stats give you any idea as to the breakdown of browsers that people are using to view your site? This might give you a good idea of whether or not it is worth supporting IE6.

I know you didn't ask for a site review but the font that you are using is very difficult to read. What is it? Bit of a turnoff for me.

Look at your site statistics and see what your users are actually using to access your site first before making a decision.

You can also look at my article here about transparent images: Transparent Images Without the Hacks

Hi Guys, thank you for all your replys, i personally would like to fix the site so that it works for IE6 but everything i have tried doesnt work

i have tried 2 PNG Transparency hacks and neither of them wants to work , the font is Hobo Std, and yeah it is hard to read and im thinking of changing this but i wanted to keep the same font as i have used in the logo(maybe for headings only?)

my stats for IE6 are
hits | % |visits
355 9.45 48
so around 10% of my users which isnt huge but thats 48 times someone has seen a **** page :D

i'd really apreciate any help to solve this

many thanks
Luke

the PNG Transparency fixes i've tried are

Code:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<script type="text/javascript">
function correctPNG() // correctly handle PNG transparency in Win IE 5.5 & 6.
{
   var arVersion = navigator.appVersion.split("MSIE")
   var version = parseFloat(arVersion[1])
   if ((version >= 5.5) && (document.body.filters)) 
   {
      for(var i=0; i<document.images.length; i++)
      {
         var img = document.images[i]
         var imgName = img.src.toUpperCase()
         if (imgName.substring(imgName.length-3, imgName.length) == "PNG")
         {
            var imgID = (img.id) ? "id='" + img.id + "' " : ""
            var imgClass = (img.className) ? "class='" + img.className + "' " : ""
            var imgTitle = (img.title) ? "title='" + img.title + "' " : "title='" + img.alt + "' "
            var imgStyle = "display:inline-block;" + img.style.cssText 
            if (img.align == "left") imgStyle = "float:left;" + imgStyle
            if (img.align == "right") imgStyle = "float:right;" + imgStyle
            if (img.parentElement.href) imgStyle = "cursor:hand;" + imgStyle
            var strNewHTML = "<span " + imgID + imgClass + imgTitle
            + " style=\"" + "width:" + img.width + "px; height:" + img.height + "px;" + imgStyle + ";"
            + "filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader"
            + "(src=\'" + img.src + "\', sizingMethod='scale');\"></span>" 
            img.outerHTML = strNewHTML
            i = i-1
         }
      }
   }    
}
window.attachEvent("onload", correctPNG);
</script>
<![endif]-->

and

Code:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>
        <script type="text/javascript" src="unitpngfix.js"></script>
<![endif]-->

unitpngfix.js

Code:

var clear="images/clear.gif" //path to clear.gif

pngfix=function(){var els=document.getElementsByTagName('*');var ip=/\.png/i;var i=els.length;while(i-- >0){var el=els[i];var es=el.style;if(el.src&&el.src.match(ip)&&!es.filter){es.height=el.height;es.width=el.width;es.filter="progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='"+el.src+"',sizingMethod='crop')";el.src=clear;}else{var elb=el.currentStyle.backgroundImage;if(elb.match(ip)){var path=elb.split('"');var rep=(el.currentStyle.backgroundRepeat=='no-repeat')?'crop':'scale';es.filter="progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='"+path[1]+"',sizingMethod='"+rep+"')";es.height=el.clientHeight+'px';es.backgroundImage='none';var elkids=el.getElementsByTagName('*');if (elkids){var j=elkids.length;if(el.currentStyle.position!="absolute")es.position='static';while (j-- >0)if(!elkids[j].style.position)elkids[j].style.position="relative";}}}}}
window.attachEvent('onload',pngfix);

thanks
Luke