Project Big Fish is a creative agency.

At the end of January Google announced the phase out of support for some older Web browsers by March 1st of this year. The one that caught my eye was that they are not going to support MS Internet Explorer 6 past that date. MS Internet Explorer (IE) is thorn in any web developer or designer's side because it simply does not play by the rules (industry standards). In fact for most projects we must write separate CSS files (files that define how the site will be displayed in the browser) and adapt our code to to accommodate the different versions of IE. Google can do this easily by stating advancements in their applications simply cannot be handled by the older browser. However for us browser compatibility is a tough issue. We too want to develop the most modern applications we can and streamline our development process as much as we can. The fewer browsers we have to support the easier our job is. However unlike Google, which can post a blog entry and be done with it, we have to tread much lighter when making the decision to not support a particular browser. Our clients, and understandably so, don't care so much about the reasons why a browser cannot be supported, but instead care that the maximum number of people who want to view their content can do so. When a potential member, voter, donor or current member, supporter, client or customer visit a site the obstacles to taking an action should be minimal... even if they happen to be running an ancient piece of software. We get that, but boy does it make our jobs hard at times!

As far as Internet Explorer 6 goes, we typically accommodate this from a style perspective (provide a CSS file). Though, like Google, there have been times when we have had to tell clients that due to the complexity of their applications, some elements simply might not work on older browsers.

Read the Google Post @ Official Google Enterprise Blog