Is this immoral?

[knopix]

I'm a web developer. One of my domains is a popular Apple product.

Would it be immoral of me to block the website from IE6 users?

It's not that I want to, but IE has done such a horrible job rendering the page that it's become completely unusable.
Unfortunately none of the IE hacks I have applied are working (positioning + png problems)

So, is it wrong of me to put up a "Download Firefox" message instead?

edit: The site in question is Apple MacBook.com

 

[Blue Velvet]

It's not immoral; just short-sighted.

Why drive traffic away? Because most people will leave rather than download and install a new piece of software, especially those in corporate environments where the installing of apps is locked down by admins.

 

[mkrishnan]

Immoral? Probably not. Webpages do this all the time to users of Firefox, Safari, Opera, and other browsers. But can you live with the fact that you'll be excluding a large fraction of users, including users who support whatever you're interested in but, perhaps, happen to be next to a Windows PC without Firefox at the time?

 

[smythey]

Its maybe a pain in the ass, but you'd be better off spending the time getting it to work in IE. You very rarely come across sites which specify which browser to use, and Ive never seen one that doesnt support IE, only the other way round.

As a firefox user meself, I feel your pain - IE sucks many, many asses!

 

[peiffman1]

Skimming over your code, it looks like the problem is probably your JS. I didn't actually go in and look at the JS code, but I just think it's unlikely that the html is causing problems from the look of it. In any JS you write there are a ton of special cases you have to do for IE browsers(use browser detection and if/else statements)... supporting all IE implementations is a bear, but supporting at least IE 6 and 7 is probably necessary, especially if you practice Unobtrusive JS. Get a good JS book or surf the web to find the alternative code for IE, especially if you use anything from DOM 2.0.

 

[GoCubsGo]

I'm a web developer. One of my domains is a popular Apple product.

Would it be immoral of me to block the website from IE6 users?

It's not that I want to, but IE has done such a horrible job rendering the page that it's become completely unusable.
Unfortunately none of the IE hacks I have applied are working (positioning + png problems)

So, is it wrong of me to put up a "Download Firefox" message instead?

It is not immoral. However, if you were any kind of web developer then you would know that it was very closed-minded of you to think that the world should use a specific browser. If you were also any kind of web developer then you would make a site usable with nearly any browser or at least pay homage to IE, Firefox and Safari.

All that is a matter of opinion but you wanting to block IE users from whatever Apple-related site you have is like me, as a photographer, will photograph a wedding but my camera will never catch the face of an ugly person.

I'd probably starve if I thought that way and I probably wouldn't be much of a photographer.

 

[clevin]

it not a moral issue, just simply $$$, if you don't really care about traffic, you can do whatever you feel like.

 

[CanadaRAM]

I am a Mac user (and a major purchaser of Mac products). But I do most of my web browsing on a Windows machine. Nothing turns me off faster than a site that tells me that I cannot see/use what I came there to get -- whether it is a Windows site that won't run without ActiveX or a site that doesn't render properly in Firefox or Safari, or in your mooted case, in IE.

Simply -- I would go away and never come back. And... that's about what I would tell all of my customers as well.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

your site looks fine in IE6 on XP... so not really sure what you're talking about.

I really don't see it making any difference.

 

[knopix]

Thank you for all the feedback.
I will alter the layout to work in IE, but it will undoubtedly look much poorer than it does in other browsers.
Again, this is not my preference. There is simply no way to make some of the elements work in IE.

For the record, the site I was referencing is not the one in my signature.

The actual site in question is Apple MacBook.com

 

[ghall]

I test my website in IE sometimes, and some parts don't render correctly. I don't bother to fix it though, waste of time trying to adhere to a non-standard web browser. If this website was your business than I could see why you'd be going through the effort, but otherwise there's really no point (unless your a Windows fanboi)