[mendable]

This article is great, but it works on the premise that IE6 support is a purely rational discussion by two knowledgeable parties before a contract is signed.

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In reality, you may develop a website, then the client is visiting their uncle bob one weekend who has an old computer with IE6 lying around, client + uncle bob open up the website to have a look, and it is "broken".

Client then sends you a hate mail about broken contracts.

You reply saying that you discussed IE6 lameness before you started the work.

Client says you were talking jargon, client didn't understand, and you need to fix their website so it loads on their uncle bob's computer otherwise they are suing you for not delivering a working website.

Good luck with that :)

[digamber_kamat]

As long as the contract clearly mentions that you are not supporting IE6 I wont mind client suing me.

[gte910h]

Make sure you have the prevailing party's legal costs as part of the bargain in the eventuality of suit as well: Otherwise wining the lawsuit can be Pyrrhic

[jiggy2011]

Yes , this is a strange phenomenon. People are often more interested in what works on their computers or those of friends,family than they are than looking at it in terms of supporting % of potential customers.

You can bet your ass that if your client suddenly decided to start using lynx exclusively for his browsing that he would suddenly become very stressed that his flash intro doesn't work :)

Reminds me of doing tech support for a web hosting company a few years ago.

Customer: "Our Website is down!" Me: "Ok let me check.... Seems like it is up too me.." Customer: "No it's definately down!"

It then transpires that their internet connection is not working at all and that they already knew this to be the case.

They were still concerned about how embarassing for them it was that their website was down because they had just handed out new business cards with the new URL on them.

And people think that us techies are the borderline autistic ones..

[rmc]

That sounds like an asshole client. Just make sure you have it specified in writing before you start a job the browser that are and aren't provided. Then if they want to talk to a lawyer, they can try.

Best not to take any further work from that client again.

[learc83]

Take that to it's logical conclusion, and you should still be supporting IE5 for mac.

[flomo]

Except it usually isn't "uncle bob", it's their biggest customer who still uses IE6, they're losing business, emergency, etc.

[5hoom]

If "IE6 Lameness" was indeed discussed prior to starting work, well that's just bad planning on the clients part. You just want to be sure IE6 support wasn't implied in the contract...