six03

Do IE Users Really Care?

Feb 4

ToddArticle, Discussion, Web IE, IE6, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer 6 Comments

That’s a question I have been asking myself a lot lately. Do Internet Explorer users really care about the inner workings of what developers do for websites and the fights we have with getting IE to cooperate with designs, templates, styling, etc.

Do they really care about validity in code? How the structure of the code is and how clean our code is? Do they care about what version they are actually using? I say “no” to all of these questions. Why? Here’s my thought process behind this…

I figure a good chunk of IE users are just boxes just sitting there with Windows 2000 and IE6, just sitting there, running, running some sort of corporation software. I figure another huge chunk is older users that don’t know any better and are not educated. They just simply do not have an inkling that there are alternatives out there for not only browsers, but operating systems as well. A good example, would be my father. He ran Windows 98 for the longest time, then was “upgraded” to 2000 by a local computer dealer. His box was about 10 years behind the times, in my estimation.

Another big percentage of IE users are those users that “Well, it came with the computer”. Yes, that tells me they could care less that my code is following a certain standard. Along with this crowd, I lump in those that just don’t upgrade their browsers, period. Something I dealt with recently with a project. The owner of a company had IE6 I believe, then upgraded to 7, then got around to upgrading to 8… if he wasn’t told, I think he’d still be with IE6, the more deplorable browser still in existence.

Which leaves me to the 2 smallest percentages of IE users. Those that may care, but in my opinion, don’t. Those die hard IE users that would throw themselves under a bus for Steve Ballmer, those that would give their right ear for a job coding in Seattle in ASP/.NET (and some whom still revere IE6), and those that like me, that MUST check their sites in every major browser that gets a 5% share or more of the market. (Numbers are just thrown out for good measure, feel free to correct, if so.)

In all, I don’t think 95% of Internet Explorer users really care about valid, web standard code. Nor do they care about how the code looks when you view the source or what script runs a certain part of the site, they’ll just click the error message and carry on, because they don’t know, nor care what that functionality does.

So why are we coding for a browser that does not conform and why are we catering to users that could care less?

I’m still asking myself this question.