By mutual agreement of the major web developers on campus, effective May 1, 2010, UNI no longer accommodates Internet Explorer 6 when designing web sites.  Increasingly, we are finding as we attempt to develop sites that meet current web standards and current browsers, we also have to spend an inordinate amount of time building special style sheets to make them work in IE 6. Internet Explorer 6 is  over 11 years old, and very out-of-date with current web standards.

In sites developed in Drupal, we will be including a module that displays a pop-up notifying people using IE 6 that their browser is no supported, giving them valid reasons why, and directing them to standards-compliant browsers. Other departments doing web development in Drupal are also planning on using the same approach. Many other universities and colleges have dropped support for IE 6, some with a notice like we are doing, others just dropping support with no notice. In addition, major web sites, such as Google and YouTube, have also dropped support for IE6.

Who does this affect? In April, 2010 there were 12,843 visits to the UNI web site with Internet Explorer 6.  3,085 came from people on Mediacom or CFU, 1,302 from UNI, and the rest from a variety of other service providers.  From April, 2009 to April 2010, the percentage of users coming to the UNI home page in IE 6 has dropped from 6% to 1.5%.

Current sites with IE 6 style sheets will still have them, allowing IE 6 to work on those site. As new sites are developed and we make major updates, the IE 6 style sheet will no longer be included. The notice will pop up only on those sites without any accommodation for IE 6.