When will IE6 no longer be supported? [closed]

Question

As we all know supporting IE6 with its many well documented quirks is painful but a necessary part of development and supporting with web based technologies. My question is “does anyone know when IE6 is scheduled for end of official Microsoft support (or retirement) or if Microsoft will force an update to IE7 or IE8”?

Answer 1

See Microsoft's chart:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps/#Internet_Explorer

Answer 2

Personally I don't support IE6 anymore on websites that I built. Not completely anyway. If you build a website in a sensible way (i.e. use a CSS reset stylesheet, don't futz with margings and paddings on floated containers) then things mostly work on IE6. The content is presentable and usable and otherwise degrades in a reasonable way. I'm done with spending hours on minor style fixes, using AlphaImageLoader hacks on PNG's and other dirty tricks.

The only trick I will employ for IE6 when things really break down is to include an override to simply remove most styles.

In short, I treat IE6 like any other legacy browser. You can access the contents and it's usable. Doing anything more isn't feasible anymore. It takes an extraordinary amount of work for only a little bit of market share (15% and plummeting).