That isn't the case, because his site isn't broken in IE. All he said was that he doesn't care to check any more. I used to access it when I was at school and IE was the only option, and the only thing that didn't work was the unicode character he uses to return from a footnote to where it is referenced. The reason that IE's share is so low is the nature of the web site and the type of people who read it.

To the people who downmodded this, is it just that you hate IE a lot, or do you have an actual reason why I'm wrong?

I wasn't being sarcastic -- don't you think he's turning away his IE visitors by presenting a site that doesn't look right, and then turning around and claiming that IE is 4%?

Even for sites with a highly technical audience, that number is hard to believe.

Really?

more than 1 in 25 people on a site like HN using IE6 would seem odd to me.. I'm not sure of anyone that would like this site and is still running ie6.

(on an assumption here that we're talking organic traffic - not SE results)

PG - want to give us the browser stats?

I'm on IE6 right now because I'm at work, but I use Safari and Firefox at home.

The claim was 4% IE, not IE6. Big difference.

I downmodded you because what you said was asinine. That I hate IE a lot and have an actual reason why you're wrong is mere coincidence.

It's probable that the decision to stop caring about IE was made in light of similar stats. Note that he said he no longer concerns himself with IE, and that his stylesheet still contains IE-specific hacks. He's done nothing to intentionally dissuade any hypothetical IE users that might come along, and if IE's rendering gets worse over time, that only further justifies his decision to stop caring. On the other hand, if IE's rendering gets better over time, then not caring about IE won't be a problem because IE will render more like modern browsers.

It's also important to be clear that the site does look right. If simply not catering to one particular browser causes your site to be completely unusable in that browser, that's a strong indication that the browser vendor is incompetent.

Given that his site focuses almost exclusively on news for the early-adopter Apple enthusiast, I would guess that he would naturally have a much lower proportion of IE users in his audience than other sites, even if his site worked flawlessly in IE.

Note, for example, that he tests his site against both Safari and Firefox, so we can assume he is not turning away those users. If his site attracted the "average" web surfer, one would expect roughly three times as many Firefox users as Safari users. But he actually attracting twice as many Safari users as Firefox. Since his non-IE traffic is so heavily skewed to Safari, it's not unimaginable that his IE traffic would be similarly skewed, regardless of any IE rendering problems.

Most technically savvy Windows users use Firefox. IE6/7 have terrible stigmas for being insecure and also are demonstrably and noticeably slower.

As time goes on, IE market share continues to slip. This process is vastly accelerated in technical discussion and news sites.