Note: Internet Explorer version 6 or lower has been detected.

This morning, I bit the bullet and finally took a look at my site in IE6. A few minutes later, after fruitlessly experimenting with compatibility scripts, I decided to formally drop IE6 support for this site. I’ve long felt that it’s a waste of effort to cater to browsers that don’t meet developers halfway, so I’ve typically put minimal effort into designing my pages around them. I’ve also felt that the best way to finally stab the stake into IE6’s heart is to simply let pages look bad and out of date in it. I’m pleased to see that this practice is finally gaining critical mass.

Thus, I set out to find some JavaScript glue to formally explain my intentions to visitors. After surveying the options, some of which were a bit too preachy, and others a bit too mild, I decided to write my own little IE6 handler script.

My script, IE6unstyled.js, adds the header seen at the top of this post. The page is then displayed unstyled (based on David Dorward’s bookmarklet), which works well if your page degrades gracefully. Rather than allow IE6 to mangle the page layout, I choose to simply give it the raw content. This frees me from worrying about the presentation in IE6 and restores the layout to a basic, usable state. I feel that this projects the right message: to experience the current web to its fullest, you’d best switch from using IE6.

Here’s the script.

window.onload = function() {
	for(i=0;i<document .styleSheets.length;i++) {
		document.styleSheets.item(i).disabled=true;
	}
	el = document.getElementsByTagName('*');
	for ( i=0; i<el.length; i++) {
		el[i].style.cssText = '';
	}
 
	div = document.createElement('div');
	div.innerHTML = '<h1 style="font-size:18pt;">Note: a version of Internet Explorer of 6 or lower has been detected.<p>Your browser cannot display this page properly. For compatibility, this page has been reduced to a low-graphics mode. To view this site the way it was intended, please upgrade Internet Explorer or <a href="http://browsehappy.com/browsers/">switch to another browser</a>.</p>';
	div.style.cssText = 'color:black; background-color:yellow; border:5px solid black; padding:15px;';
	document.body.insertBefore(div, document.body.firstChild);
};

To use it, stash the file somewhere on your server. Then, add the following HTML to your header (edited to reflect the file location).

<!--[if lte IE 6]>
	<script src="path/to/IE6unstyled.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<![endif]-->

Please feel free use this and make any modifications as you see fit.