Goodbye IE6

A key challenge for web developers has long been the business of making sites work consistently in different web browsers.

At Noisegate we've always considered it to be non-negotiable that all aspects of all of our websites intended for use by the public must work in all of the most popular browsers, and generally speaking, adherence to best practice takes care of that.

But all web browsers have their own quirks, and sometimes best practice isn't quite enough. Firefox rarely gives cause for head scratching, and Chrome and Safari are also unlikely to be in any way troublesome. The web browser most likely to upset programmers is, and has pretty much always been, the world's most popular browser: Internet Explorer.

So the "death" of a version of IE is always greeted with a wry smile within these walls, and that's what's happened today, with Microsoft announcing that it will no longer support Internet Explorer 6 and will make it even easier for users to upgrade.

In reality, we'll do our best to support IE6 until people acutally stop using it, and with up to 5% of visitors to our sites still browsing like it's 2001 we're not quite there yet! If you're one of those people you can upgrade to IE9 for free here, or better still, download Firefox here.