Our office has begun the process of redesigning the homepage, top level pages and base templates for the university. As part of that process we are updating many of the technologies and methodologies used on our main web site. Much of the current structure and layout has been based on the state of browsers in 2005 when that design was first launched. Times have changed.

Officially, we support the current major browsers and one version back. In reality, we strive to have our top level and high visibility pages degrade gracefully on older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6. However continuing to provide such support significantly increases the development time of a site as we work around the many bugs and limitations of Internet Explorer 6. During the past 4 weeks, Internet Explorer versions 6 and lower have accounted for less than 5% of our total traffic.

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.

Beginning on May 17, visitors using IE6 will receive a warning on the homepage and many of the other top-level pages. When we roll out the new site on August 9, 2010, we will officially end support for all Internet Explorer versions lower than 7.0. We have not yet finalized how we will notify users of this after August 9, but we may intercept visits to top level pages and present them with a warning page first.

There are bound to be a few issues that come up as part of this change, but the improvements we can offer to the rest of our users far outweighs these issues.