I found a quote recently that really embodies my sentiments about Microsoft's Internet Explorer:

"If IE6 were a person, I'd punch that person in the face."

Whose famous words are these? Mine. That's right, this is something that I--the World's Best SEO--actually said to a client last week, in response to an email he sent me. Here's the backstory...

This particular client is someone I have worked with for awhile now. I did basic SEO stuff for his main website, and now he's asked me to build a completely new site for him (presumably because his main site is kicking so much ass now) that is going to sell espresso machines. (The site isn't operational yet, but you can still check out the current source code if you're curious.) Building an entire website (that's SEO-friendly) is not an easy thing to do. It's one thing to optimize someone else's design, but designing and coding your own page elements from scratch is an entirely different beast--but a beast I was willing to take a stab at.

After countless hours of XHTML editing and Photoshopping, I finally had a presentable test page to show my client. I checked it in each of the browsers I currently have on my PC (Firefox 3, Chrome, IE7, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3), and it rendered correctly in all 5 browsers. I emailed my client the page and asked for his feedback. He emailed me back the following *subtle* criticism:

"None of what you are doing works in Internet Explorer!"

He also provided me with this graph from his main site's analytics to emphasize how nontrivial his Internet Explorer user base is:

So I responded with this:

"Are you talking about IE6? I'll have to uninstall IE7 and download IE6 to see what you're talking about. I'll get back to you on this."

And this:

"If IE6 were a person, I'd punch that person in the face."

Now obviously that second part was never going to happen, so I focused my energy on the first part--downgrading IE7 to IE6 and figuring out what my client was talking about. However, I soon found out that punching a humanoid incarnation of IE6 in the face just might have been the easier task.

1st attempt

The first thing I (naively) tried was to install IE6 in addition to IE7. In other words, I tried to have both versions on the same computer. I found the official download page and downloaded the IE6 SP1 installer. My dreams of running dual IE browsers were quickly squashed, since apparently IE6 isn't even supported by my super-kick-ass operating system--Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

2nd Attempt

I've had a 64-bit OS on my PC for over a year now, and compatibility issues are nothing new, so I already had a back-up plan ready to go--the laptop. My laptop is running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, so I tried the IE6 installation on it...but again, I was unable to proceed. This is what it said:

3rd Attempt

Naturally, my next brilliant idea was to uninstall IE7 completely, and *then* install IE6. I opened up the Control Panel --> Programs --> Programs and Features and searched the list for Internet Explorer, but it wasn't listed. Fine...I'll just have to uninstall it the old-fashioned way--by deleting it. I went to Computer --> Local Disk (C:) --> Program Files --> Internet Explorer and attempted to delete the entire folder, but I was met with this:

I then spent about 17 years trying to change the file permissions to something that would allow me to delete everything. Apparently, that's not possible, despite the fact that I'm the sole owner and administrator of the computer's registered, licensed installation of Windows Vista. So I finally broke down and "googled it."

After I had typed [how to uninstall], Google's handy suggestion feature kindly offered me the following popular choices:

I chose the third option and sorted through the search results. After several years of reading blogs and Microsoft articles, I was convinced that:

1. You cannot delete Internet Explorer from Windows Vista.
2. You cannot install IE6 on Windows Vista.
3. You CAN uninstall IE7 from Windows XP, and it will automatically revert to IE6.
4. Microsoft's solution for testing things in IE6 on Vista is to download their virtual PC software and then download the IE6 Virtual PC Image to run on it. Together, these two downloads were 453.5 MB, which takes about 8 minutes to download over my high-speed cable modem.

4th Attempt

I really didn't feel like going through the hassle of downloading the Virtual PC stuff, so instead I went across the house to "the old computer" and dusted it off. It's still running good ol' Windows XP, and I was able to locate IE7 in the Add or Remove Programs list and uninstall it. As expected, it reverted to IE6. Then I walked about 5 miles in my own house, as I went back and forth from the old computer to the new computer. I would edit the website from my new computer (where the local copy of my client's website was stored) and then walk across the house to refresh the webpage and note the changes. 73 marathons later, the site was finally rendering in IE6 the way I wanted it to.

How Can I NOT Hate Microsoft and Internet Explorer?

I really don't want to hate Microsoft, I swear. I have met/talked to a couple of Microsoft employees, and they all seemed like nice people. In fact, about a month or two ago, Jeremiah Andrick wrote a YOUmoz post that asked the members of SEOmoz to share their Microsoft stack pains. I really appreciate when companies take the time to personally reach out to the community like that. But how can I NOT hate Microsoft? They built an internet browser that doesn't comply with W3C standards, then they forced me to accept IE7 as part of Vista, and then they wouldn't let me have IE6! So the reality I face now is... about 20 percent of my client's visitors are using an internet browser that doesn't work properly, and I have to go out of my way to make sure my W3C-compliant XHTML code is actually going to work in it.

There's got to be a better solution than this Virtual PC thing. I'm sure Microsoft has their reasons, and maybe it just boils down to money, but at this point, I'm about ready to start browser sniffing with JavaScript and redirecting all IE6 users to the Google Chrome download page.

Microsoft... if you're listening... please do something about this. Force IE6 browsers to automatically update or something. Or add a feature to IE8 that allows Vista users to "View in IE6 Mode" for any given page. I don't know... do *something*. Please.