How many people still use IE6?

I'm putting together a website, and I've been using png files with transparency for the buttons, only to find out that IE6 doesn't recognise their transparency and just shows it as block white. How annoying. I've tried replacing them with gifs, but they are much uglier, and the alpha is either 0 or 1, nothing inbetween - making the outline unacceptable. IE7 reads the pngs fine.

How many normal folk do you suppose are still on IE6? Won't most of the general surfers have updated to IE7 or be using Firefox?

OR - and this would be better - is there something I'm missing in either Photoshop or Dreamweaver which could enable IE6 to read the pngs correctly?

Some stats from my site; 45.7% use Firefox, 43.1% use IE (all versions), 6.9% use Opera.

I would say that the IE issue is not to be ignored, and I'd make an educated guess that a hell of a lot of people still use IE6 and even IE5.

If you want your site to be consistent across all browsers then I wouldn't use transparency.

IE6 does NOT read transparency on pngs and there's nothing you can do to change it.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

More people are using IE6 than IE7.

mrtricks, create your website in Flash, then you don't have to worry about those browser and platform incompatibilities. It's unfortunate that Flash is mostly misused for animated ad banners, when it can do so much more.

Incorrect, you just need to manually set the filters using CSS.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/index.htm (btw, this works in IE5.5 also)

Also if you want to test your site on all versions of IE then use this : http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

Flash is no longer bundled with the Windows operating system.

Still it's spread like no other plugin due to almost every dynamic content on the web uses flash, may it be games, movies, advertisement,...

They make millions of installs each month. You even get it through most firm firewalls as it's so much spread and well known.

for PNG alpha in IE6 use bgsleight: http://allinthehead.com/retro/69/

my modified version: http://www.soccercircus.com/resources/js/bgsleight.js

(I used it on the football on the front page http://www.soccercircus.com/)

2 PCs using IE6 and the primary uses IE7. At work everything is IE6, since 7 is not yet approved with our applications.

the internet isn't designed to be smooth and pretty.. If you find you NEED alpha PNGs... then you likely have over-designed your site.

[quote]2 PCs using IE6 and the primary uses IE7. At work everything is IE6, since 7 is not yet approved with our applications. [quote]
lol, same here!

About 37%.

Whats "FX" FirefoX ?

Flash creates more accessibility and usability issues than transparent PNGs.

If you really want transparent PNGs (I, for one, would be very happy!), there are a few Javascript hacks to get them in IE6. Just use Google and they shouldn't be too hard to spot...

whats with the "Grasshopper Web Plugin System -Web Site - Worklog" i get 404 and errors. You stopped it?

p.s.: but people that do not support flash or ahve a broke PC or schools and business where they protect such things, will not be able to visist the site. For that reason i still code everything.
I could have used falsh on my website for navigation, but that an issue if it doesnt work for someone.

Yes, Fx is the official abbreviation for it, albeit most of the people I know just use FF.


I use alpha'd PNGs myself, can't stand the hard-edge cut-off in IE thanks to it's crappy handling of them.
(and I like to keep my sites dynamic, so having the background colour of the area the button encompasses is out of the Q)

Ahh darn, I forgot about all of that. Thanks for the reminder, LeeMing!
I'll fix that soon...

No no no no no no noooooooo!!!! Why do people insist on abusing flash by creating sites that are 100% flash? Here are the disadvantages:

* More difficult to maintain - with HTML and CSS, you will always be able to maintain the site - regardless of what applications you have available.

* Search engines can't read Flash - you can have the best website in the world, but there's no point if people don't visit.

* People can't bookmark specific pages because the entire site is just one page with a flash element on it.

* Special software for those with visual impairments don't work with 100% Flash websites.

* The entire site has to be downloaded for each visitor; this increases both bandwidth and loading time for the user - possibly turning them away, especially if they have a slow connection or are in a rush.


Flash is good for using as components of a website, like for animations and games, but not for the entire site.

yeah I dislike flash sites too. Flash is good for games but makes sites just annoying.

I still use IE6. I used a gif with transparency and it worked fine.

My business partner keeps insisting we should do websites in pure Flash; I just keep telling her no. There has to be a compromise between flashy design and effecitive maintenance and usability. Anyway, combining Javascript, CSS, HTML and SVG, you can make a lot of things look like they're done in Flash.

... and for those of you who doubt the power of Javascript, check this:

http://games.funnygames.nl/lemmings/index.html

... yes, you read that right - it's lemmings written in Javascript.... yes - Javascript. No need to have specialist software to write the game - you can use Notepad or whatever else you want :-D

impressive thanks for the link.

My coming portfolio site uses them a LOT... yes, it was a design choice to make it look interesting and because it has a "complex" background image I need transparency. Gif isn't really suitable for "photographic" stuff with it's limited color palette...

Now that IE7 and FF2 both support it properly (sans printing) I thought why not. MS will force update older version of IE - and my site is meant for people interested in GFX and I trust they keep their OS and software updated too. Couldn't care less if some soccer mom in Ireland can't see my site properly with her P3@733Mhz / Windows95 / IE5.5.

You can easily make transparent .PNGs to work with IE6 so that v6isn't a problem really.

And yes, Flash sucks bigtime... tota waste of everybodys time.

Also, to keep in mind: Many companies are still holding off on IE7 since it breaks a bunch of existing applications, so IE6 is still dominant there.

I generaly hate flash and groan at the first indication that its being used. Especialy when overused, like in about 85% of commercial game and publisher sites. I typicaly just don't bother with sites that have more than a 3 second wait to start looking around.

CSS and HTMl are much nicer, and usualy scale better for a variety of desktops. Nothing worse than a 1600x1200 monitor and a postcard size window to view content in.

I'd use javascript to get the browser, use PNGs if it supports it, and don't if it doesn't.

Thanks for all the tips/links - when I get a chance I'll try and implement that javascript that forces png transparency.

That sounds like doubling the work to me! If I can make the site look good without pngs I'll just make it without them...

One thing though - doesn't adding javascript mean that IE6 will block the script and bring up the top bar that you have to click on to allow interactive content? I know it always blocked rollover images when I did them in Dreamweaver. (Or is that just because I ticked the 'pre-load images' box?)

It will only block scripts working from your local machine; web pages on the web will be fine.

As for using the Javascript for transparency, I'm pretty sure that the techniques use Javascript in CSS which only IE will interpret, hence you will need to use a transparent .PNG to get it working in the other browsers.

You can also use CSS styles to alphachannel images, but that is for the entire image, not a part of it (e.g. the ball only)

@Game Boy, that is some awesome javascript game man! did you make that? you must be good with Java too, right? can i contact you? i have something.

What's the purpose of your website? Who is your audience?

If you're aiming for business users, you definitely need to support outdated browsers like IE6.

If you're aiming for tech-savvy individuals, you can probably ignore IE6.

If you're aiming for Mac users, then you can definitely ignore IE6.

Besides, it's not like it won't run on IE6 - it'll just be a little uglier.

@LeeMing - I didn't write the Lemmings game, but I do write web applications using PHP, XHTML, Javascript and CSS, plus can write applications in Java too. Give me a shout at [-- leon at nextpoint.co.uk ==].