They Say IE 6 is Dead but What Do They Know?

I was trolling thru my logs today, like I do on a regular basis and noticed something strange.  It would seem that 242 people (so far) have visited this website using the following browser.

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Yep you are reading that correctly. IE6.0, the ugly monger that came with Windows XP.  This browser with its tiny throbber quickly became one of the most popular browsers in the world.  That is until crafty malware programmers found security holes in the code that could infect your system with viruses and rootkits by simply viewing a banner ad.

For years Microsoft has been trying to force users to upgrade and in the western world those efforts have paid off.  Maybe not how they wanted, given the popularity of Firefox and Chrome, but at least users aren't using outdated technology.  Sadly there is one region in this world that hasn't gotten the memo, China.  China may have one of the largest economies in the world and is responsible for 60% of all manufactured goods but they can't seem to kick the piracy habit and pay for the software they use.   Heck they often pirate the stuff they make for others and sell it locally.

As a web developer I know that if I want people to view my websites I need to code for the target browser demographic.  Sometimes that means writing extra code to deal with old browser quirks or simply to ignore the problem and allow the page to fail gracefully.  Either way it comes down to what I believe in and my level of commitment to my readers.  Of course I could be part of the solution and tell my readers to upgrade or stop visiting but somehow that doesn't seem right, even after upgrading the site to HTML5.