How to (kindly) ask your users to upgrade from IE6?
- by nickf
It's no secret at all that IE6 has been a major roadblock to the advancement of the web over the last few years. I couldn't count the number of hours I've spent bashing my head against a wall trying to fix or debug IE6 issues.
The way I see it, there are two types of IE6 user. a) the poor corporate schmoe whose IT department doesn't want to upgrade in case something breaks, and b) the mums and dads of the world who think the internet is the blue E on their desktop (and I don't mean that in a nasty way).
There's probably a couple of people who know about all the other browsers, but still choose to run IE6. They get what they deserve, IMO.
Anyway, getting to the point, I'd say that 90% of my IE6-using visitors are in the the mums and dads category - they're not stupid, they just don't know WHY they should upgrade to IE7 or Firefox or whatever. How do I educate these people without pissing them off?
Is there a nice and friendly website I can direct these people to, which explains the reasons for upgrading in plain language? Any mention of "security" or "web standards" I think would just come across as scary.
I've just seen http://www.whatbrowser.org which seems to fit the bill nicely. It explains in very basic terms:
what a web browser is
why you'd want to upgrade it
how old your current browser is (subtle hint to those with a 9 year old browser)
..aaaand it's in 22 languages. It's from Google but displays no bias (it links to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer displayed in a random order).
