How important is IE6 support?

Todd, IE6 is a dieing dinosaur that is phasing out more rapidly than before.
Secondly, as you pointed out these new apps are made for more modern cases, machines and applications.
The time and energy can be invested much more wisely in new features. Also, who wants a bloated library with code that most will not use.

My vote, walk away from IE6.
..Ben

Please Todd, DON'T support IE6

It isn't.

Every line of css/js that exists to make IE6 functional is more bloat my clients/users need to download.

If developers need to support IE 6, they should either re-examine their requirements, or find an alternative library.

Let it Die :)  Please for the love of god don't support IE6...if you start now, it'll grandfather in support for 6

Abandon IE6 please, no need to support an obsolete technology. If someone needs UI to work with IE6, there is already jQuery UI.

Unfortunately, most of my client (big companies) still use IE6.
I think that one possibility would be to have 2 versions : one with IE6 support with less functiunality, and one without IE6 but with all features.
Hard to do maybe, but it will allow you to get most of the market (IE6 is still used by huge companies, and not only small one).

@benjamin Large companies not upgrading is why IE6 still exists, so they need to start understanding that in order to use the web in 2011, you need a modern browser.  I don't want to see development time taken supporting that steaming pile of a "browser" :)  1 hour on a feature might be 2+ more hours in IE6 support.

If we just keep accommodating them instead of saying "I don't support IE" we'll never move forward in Web

(Please, no offense intended to you directly)

@steve : i understand your point of view. And until recently i was agree with that. But actually i work in a little company that provide services to huge one. If we don't support IE6, we won't be able to do business with them. It takes time, but it allow us to eat...

(And no problem, i don't feel any offense in your response)

Please don't support IE6.  For those who need to support it, they can use browser detection and serve up alternative views that do no use Kendo.  There is no point to corrupt a whole new framework to support this technology.  It's much like if you have to support pages with javascript turned off.  You can have alternative views or have pages that degrade gracefully.

It's a tough one. On my home project I don't need IE6 support, it's UK product aimed at 16-35 year old males - they have modern pcs and smart phones. In my last job we only recently stopped supporting IE6 using the excuse that it's hit ten years old, we use the same approach with Windows and SQL; "10 years old, we don't support it any more, sorry", we give out customers plenty of warning and it worked for us. In my new job the web app has users in almost every country on the planet and I was surprised how many old and recycled pcs exist in some countries, add these up and it's a large chunk of business. They don't want to use these old pcs, but they're the most common and they have XP/IE6.

I personally would say drop IE6 support from the core product but maybe offer a non-supported (or less supported) plugin that will enable IE6 support for key features.

Ultimately it depends where the framework wants to be heading and if it wants to be the one-size-fits all type or the cutting edge.

Thanks, everyone, for your opinions and insights! This has helped tremendously as we continue to evolve Kendo UI in beta.

In case you missed the blog post, based on your feedback and a quick poll run on KendoUI.com, we have decided not to support IE6 in Kendo UI.

http://www.kendoui.com/blogs/teamblog/posts/11-08-30/ie7_is_the_new_ie6.aspx

All hacks in Beta 1 that support IE6 will be removed, and we'll launch Kendo UI with IE7 as the oldest supported version of IE. Thanks again for sharing and helping make Kendo UI the right toolset for the future of the web.

-Todd

Why stop at IE6? Get rid of IE7 now before developers expect the support, going forward its only going to keep costing more developer resources.

If someone really, really needs IE6/IE7 support there is always Chrome frame :) anyway your tag line wouldn't sound too great if it was "Setting the New Standard for HTML5 UI (but with legacy hacks)"

You have to make a hard but firm descision on this. I want to have a framework for the future, not for the past. If someone needs IE6/7 support then this is not the framework for them.

Make a decision based on facts not on user request. Make a manifest wherein you state that browsers with a market share of under 5% are not supported in future releases.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp

Even so, testing in multiple browsers will not be necessary anymore in the future (2013/2014), since all browsers will grow towards each other, supporting the same features.

Hi Todd,
If you do decide to implement ie6 support or anything prior to html5, Please supply it as a different product. Some thing like "Kendo UI for the slow to evolve version". My projects are expected to provide functionality for the next 5-10 years, and I am drawing strongly on html5/css3 to deliver.  I don't want the overhead of old browser support.
Kind Regards
Andrew   

in my opinion there is no need even for IE7 support. There however should be IE8 support for XP users who sticks with explorer

Hello Luka,

Thanks for sharing your opinion. While ignoring IE6 is certainly a matter of common sense now, doing so for IE7 is still a little bit of a political question. I certainly hope we will dump it in the foreseeable future.

By they way, most of the IE7-related CSS code in Kendo UI is located at the end of the kendo.common.css file. It can be easily removed, if needed.

Best wishes,
Dimo
the Telerik team

Please do not support IE6. Let it die with IE7 too.