I hadn’t seen the announcement when I wrote about my suggestion for helping IE6 out of the door, but it seems that 37 Signals have decided the same thing.

Their announcement made in July, was clarified yesterday to state:

We will not intentionally break IE 6 compatibility, but we will also not invest significant time or resources into making sure we are backward compatible with IE 6 after October 1, 2008.

The IE6 millstone is going to weight much heavier for web application developers than it does for designers in that there are more than just aesthetic issues at stake as explained here:

IE 6 is a last-generation browser. This means that IE 6 can’t provide the same web experience that modern browsers can. Continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back.

It’s this sort of decisive action which will help to push browser usage forwards. The more effort put into supporting older browsers – the longer they will take to fall out of common usage.