I just found out about the Bring Down IE6 campaign by .net magazine. In their article Calling time on IE6, they take a look at how IE6 is currently hindering the development of the web, and what we can do about it. I discovered that both Facebook and Google provide stripped down experiences for IE6 users! Wow, I had no idea.

Facebook shocked everyone by providing a decidedly inferior experience for IE6 users, bluntly telling them why and also offering browser upgrade links. More recently, Google followed suit – not entirely for altruistic reasons, no doubt. Google Mail users running IE6 now see a ‘Get faster Gmail’ link, leading to a page promoting Firefox and Google’s own Chrome browser. Like Apple and Facebook, Google considers IE6 ‘unsupported’, warning that it fails to run some features of Google products.

Craig Grannell in Calling time on IE6

I agree with their notion that not every site can afford to end support for IE6, or even convince users to upgrade their browsers, but we can, in small ways, start following the examples set by these larger organizations. It’s pretty clear that the end of IE6 is just around the corner. That’s what I’m hoping for at least.