How To Distract Clients From Using IE6

I'm currently in the process of building a new site for my company and I've been looking at http://code.google.com/p/ie6-upgrade-warning/.

Essentially it's a little javascript lib that checks to see if the user is running IE6 and if so it displays a nice little overlay on top of your site. The only problem I've got with it is that it completely blocks the user from using your site. I'd like to allow for them to use it anyways but I'd like them to know that their experience may not be as good as it could be. I'm sure it can be adapted though, you should never exclude people from using your site based on their user agent. That being said I think it's a good tradeoff that you try to get your users to upgrade and if they don't wan't to they can still use your site but they probably won't see all of the fancy pancy browser tricks that you can do with modern browsers.

_{(source: googlecode.com)}

It sure looks nice anyway

Other resources include http://ie6update.com/ (not a fan though, you shouldn't trick users)

Update: Seems like someone made a bit more customizable version of this written in jQuery. See jreject.turnwheel.com

"The customer is always right."

You can advise them otherwise, but if they want IE6 for whatever reason then it's up to them.

Provided they have the proper permissions to do install software on their machines, use Chrome Frame. The speed boost, if nothing else, should be incentive alone.

One of the reasons this problem exists is as follows.

Many IE6 user have no choice. They sit behind corporate firewalls with locked down machines and while on their home machines they will have the latest technology they are constrained by the workplace rules and policies.

So why do the corporates not upgrade from IE6 to 7 or 8? Well here is one reason. Workload.

As a sysop you need to upgrade 500 machines to the new browser.

In many cases these browsers run mission critical add-ins as ActiveX's etc so to do the upgrade you have to do all the testing and verification and then do a planned roll out upgrade, which will have problems, hiccups and glitches, a lot of work and late nights and unpaid overtime and a lot of flak from the users as you do this.

And what is the payback for this upgrade? Well the internal systems work on IE8 exactly as they worked on IE6, (well not always and you may need to rewrite that as well) but the users can now access the latest startup site that plugs into Facebook (but will be gone in 6 months) perfectly but it is not work related.

So unless there is a tangible business benefit many shops simply cannot se a reason, or justify the cost of a browser upgrade.

These locations will convert, when they go to Windows 7 perhaps or because the "application" they use internally is upgraded and needs the newer browser version. But at this point there is a justification for doing it.

N.B. I have recently worked in two jobs where IE6 compatibility was a must for this reason, large client bases, behind firewalls with lockdown, and i am not stating the above as a reason/excuse not to do it. The sooner the better.