Quixotic IE6 Workarounds

Microsoft has renewed support for IE6 until 2014.

If this bothers you, be sure to remember this the next time you are preparing to give Microsoft money!

To celebrate this spineless irresponsibility, here are some coping strategies:

• DENG, perhaps the first such major attempt to work around IE6, is a Flash-based standards-capable browser. Sadly, it appears to have been abandoned years ago.
• Dean Edwards' IE7 is a JavaScript library to fix CSS rendering in IE6.
• IE6 CSS Fixer is an online tool that uses a list of known tricks to update CSS with IE6 hacks and workarounds.
• Push Up the Web has a subtle upgrade link script for users of outdated browsers, including IE6.
• IE6 Update is a warning to encourage IE6 users to upgrade that looks like the IE infobar.
• IE6 No More is a bigger warning to encourage IE6 users to upgrade.
• sevenup and ie6-upgrade-warning are large, attractive warning messages to encourage IE6 users to upgrade or install another browser.
• There are several WordPress plugins and techniques to discourage IE6: Shockingly Big IE6 Warning, Serve IE6 Visitors the Default WordPress Theme, IE6 No More, Block IE6, Anti IE6, Kill IE6.
• Google Chrome Frame hosts Google's Chrome browser within IE6 as a plugin that installs with a minimum of effort.
• Edskes Software Silent Setup for Mozilla Firefox is a minimal-friction installer for Firefox.

It must be said, however, that if IE6 is a small (single digit percentage) of your web traffic, you probably needn't to spend as much extra time on it as you have in the past. Most things will still work well enough if you build for progressive enhancement/graceful degredation anyway, even though sites may not look quite as beautiful in IE6 without massively increasing your development time to implement various workarounds.