We're looking at (finally) retiring IE6 support.
I've always been a big fan of graceful degradation but we're really pushing ahead and trying to embrace features that we're simply not going to want to put effort into getting working for IE6 anymore.
We need to decide how to inform the user of this. There seems to be two options:
1) Block them from using the site. Maybe refer them to a phone #.
2) Warn them that their browser is not a supported browser and therefor parts of the site may not work.
Any research or strong opinions on which route to go with? I'm leaning towards #1 as it seems to me that a site I can enter, but breaks in many places due to my browser is a lesser user experience and brand impression than if I was simply denied entry in the first place. #2 also seems to bring with it increased offline support costs.
That said, I'm also careful to single out IE6 by itself. Denying access any other browser these days would be silly. So IE6 is definitely being treated as the outlier.
Thoughts?
UPDATE: In addition to the great Facebook example below, anyone have any good examples of how other sites are handling informing users that they need to go with a newer browser? YouTube has a fairly abrupt warning. I noticed that Microsoft.com let's you use IE6 but it degrades fairly severely (try clicking on the top menu bar).