DIE IE6 DIE!

[blogslut]

Five years too late if you ask me but Microsoft has finally begun to cynically market actively promote the fact that this ancient browser has got to go:

http://www.theie6countdown.com/

Companies don't typically cheer the demise of their products, but in an effort to get Internet Explorer users to upgrade to more current versions of the browser, Microsoft has launched a death watch of sorts for IE6.

The software giant on Friday unveiled ie6countdown.com, a site that will keep tabs on the dwindling use of the now decade-old IE6. "It's time to say goodbye," reads a message on the site.

"Now that it's 2011, IE6 is officially a ten-year old browser. According to Net Applications, IE6 still has 12 percent share worldwide. Our goal is to get this share under 1 percent worldwide," Roger Capriotti, director of IE product marketing, wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft selected 1 percent because that number "will allow more sites and IT pros worldwide to make IE6 a low-priority browser – meaning you don't have to invest as much time in updates or fixes," Capriotti said...

link to story: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381462,00.asp

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. The usual theory has been including the endless IE fixes in web design

I think it's time for tough love. Enough with the IE6 fixes. Just code the damn thing for modern browsers. It's like trying to produce a fucking 8-track player out of an MP3 because some dickheads still have their 8-track player. Enough already. Newer browsers are fucking free. Download them and enough. Any tech products that still require IE6 to run need to be updated. Jeez.

Tough love, designers! Kill IE6!

[ieoeja]

9. Programming standards was the biggest problem with COBOL.

Given the slower development when computers were new, mainframe DOS was around a long time. So COBOL programmers inserted code that would cause their programs to page in and out of memory. Plus that large investment in coding was carried forward when virtual OS showed up.

Flash forward several decades and new programmers were *still* inserting memory pagination into their codes. It would be like all windows programs today still being written for DOS compatibilty!

When I started out a COBOL programmer, I would always strip memory pagination out of any program I worked on. I would routinely change two run times into twenty minute runtimes. But I was never, ever able to convince any of my coworkers to do the same. Probably because I was violating programming standards when I did it.

COBOL was such an easy language to code. And I blame its death more on stupid programming standards than PC geeky "but we have to do it another way" thinking. The PC geeks had no problem embracing mainframe BASIC as a PC programming language after all. Heck, when BASIC went Visual, advanced screen handling was a whole new concept. While it was already built into COBOL. SO Visual Cobol would have made more sense.

[valerief]

11. I'm still using COBOL. Well, until my COBOL job gets shipped to China. nt

[hunter]

20. That would be so cool. An mp3 player in an 8 track cartridge.

Bet someone has already built on for their old muscle car.

[meegbear]

2. There are still that many people using it?

I can understand using that as a "low-ball" minimum for browser support, but yeah, it's gotta go.

[arcane1]

3. We still use it at work

and I work for a bank! :silly:

[Shandris]

5. I think a better question is "People still use IE? Are they daft?" (n/t)

[meegbear]

7. I use both IE and Firefox ...

Firefox mainly, and IE8.

[Renew Deal]

19. There are people that NEVER upgrade

If it works, don't fix it...

[Warpy]

4. My use dwindled to zero when I started to use Firefox

and I've never installed IE8.

[upi402]

6. Work Offline Work Offline Work Offline Work Offline

IE is always doing that. I got it cured when I ran Vista though... Firefox!:evilgrin:

[AlabamaLibrul]

8. 12 percent of Internet users worldwide are either clueless or have bosses/admins that are n/t

[HopeHoops]

10. IE6 was DOA anyway. They put little if any effort into making it CSS compliant.

IE is only good for one thing - acquiring malware.

[Shagbark Hickory]

12. I can picture Jim Cramer yelling "SELL SELL SELL" over this.

[Initech]

13. We quit IE after a coworker's PC caught a virus from an ad. Firefox all the way!

[Gold Metal Flake]

14. YOUR BROWSER SUXXXX!1 MY BROWSER ROOOOOLZ!!1

And now, the OS version of the game...

[AlabamaLibrul]

15. IE6 sucked when it came out - this really shouldn't be a point of contention n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

22. This isn't browser wars

I don't care if people use IE9, IE8, or even IE7. These are all modern browsers that support basic CSS functionality. IE6 requires massive extra work in order to make pages do things that they do on all other browsers.

[Renew Deal]

16. There's something wrong if you're still on IE6.

And it's not Microsoft's fault. IE6 is waaaaayyyyyy out of date.

[Rabblevox]

17. Opera 11. Best damned browser the world has ever seen. /nt

[thotzRthingz]

18. You mean to say that there are people who still use Microsoft Internet Explorer?

...any version thereof?!

Try some real web browsers (Opera, Safari, Firefox, for example), and never again use MSIE (any version) for "surfing willy-nilly" across the Internet). Yes, you'll need to use MSIE to get windows security update, but the hell with using it for anything beyond that!

[Crabby Appleton]

21. micro$oft has got to go. nt

[backscatter712]

23. I've been surfing with Chromium for a while now.

Fast, does HTML5 and other modern standards well, open-source. Why would anyone still be using IE6 voluntarily?

The vast majority of remaining installations of IE6 are big buisness and government systems where the IT department won't allow a migration to a newer browser, possibly due to an intranet site being engineered with bug-for-bug compatibility with IE6 that gets mangulated when a modern, correctly-rendering browser tries to display it.

[DainBramaged]

24. What Microsoft refuses to tell you is uses of WIN 98 and 2000 HAVE to use IE6

if they haven't sideswiped to Foxfire. Unfortunately, most of those people with those operating systems are folks who refuse to acknowledge the advances in technology, or are simply too poor to upgrade.

[ikri]

25. There are loads of people stuck on IE6

Not because they don't want to upgrade or don't want to use a different browser but because they use some bodged-together custom-written web application in their jobs that will not work with a more modern browser.

The companies who paid a lot of cash for that customer web application that uses some badly written active-x control either have the option of sticking with IE6 or paying to have their application rewritten. In an ideal world they would rewrite the application but too many companies will just try to make do instead.

There are work-arounds, like using Citrix or Terminal Services to run IE6 from a different PC to minimize the gaping security holes in IE6 but that costs money to implement and it's often hard to persuade the people holding the purse strings that the upgrade is required, they just see that it works so why can't they keep using it.