My IE6 revolt

I am a graphic designer, specifically focused on web design so my day to day job includes a combination of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and occasionally some php. I have been doing this sort of work now for almost a decade and while I am very thankful for my skills and abilities I can’t help but gripe about some of the hurdles that I have constantly had to battle, in particular IE6.

Back in the day I never could have imagined a better browser. I built all of my websites using <table >and <img> tags and life was pretty good. IE6 was my go to browser and why wouldn’t it be with 80%+ of the browser market it just made sense. As time went on and things began to improve the shift to CSS based design was very logical and with that came a whole new approach to designing websites. At first I didn’t really like the new shift but I adapted and as I learned about CSS and the standards that governed it’s implementation I quickly started to hate IE6. Every time I built a website I had to add an extra 100 lines of CSS to make sure that the padding, height and just plain obscurities of IE6 were fixed. Such an effort has been a constant in my life for the last 4 years and despite the fact that IE7 and IE8 are now available the selfish bastards at Microsoft still will not force users to update their browsers. As a result I have developed countless hundreds of fixes and work-arounds for a poorly developed product.  In an effort to fight back I’ve decided to change the way users view my blog. Granted I only have an all-time total of about 200 IE6 views I wanted to give a message to any future viewers who dare use that terrible excuse for a browser. Today I added a quick IE6 hack as follows:

* html body #top,* html body #wpcombar,* html body #bg {
display:none;
}
* html body {
background-color:#fff!important;
background-position:top center;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-image:url('http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3544/3313074004_21a8227120.jpg?v=0');
}


The CSS presented above hides all of the elements of my blog and sets the background of the body to the following image.

All in all I am quite happy with my decision and the message that I am giving to IE6 users.  If you feel the same way please feel free to use my image which is located at http://flickr.com/photos/damienhowley/3313074004/.

Thanks and have a great day,

Damien Howley
@DamienH

Follow Up – Developer Limerick Battle

After Guerric’s last response I had to do something tricky, I pulled out the limerick. Here it is:

I’ve got something to share bout Guerric
most of you would find his designs hysteric
he has no design skill
completed skins = nil
And his photoshop skills are barbaric

—limerick by Damien Howley