IE6 SP1 Will Be Last Standalone Version

mokiejovis writes "Program manager Brian Countryman stated that "as part of the OS, IE will continue to evolve, but there will be no future standalone installations. IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation." See the Microsoft TechNet article." Several of the people submitting this story have come up with elaborate theories about why: killing competition, etc. etc. I think the truth is just that Microsoft intends to integrate DRM very tightly with their OS and browser, and they're aren't going to try to backport that to, say, Win98, so they just aren't going to release new versions of their browser for old, DRM-less operating systems. In the future server-side browser detection may be more about detecting whether the browser supports the DRM your "web service" uses than what version of Javascript or CSS the browser supports.

Comments

This is good.

[Jerk City Troll]

** Microsoft loads gun, aims at foot, and pulls trigger.

The net result of this is the reduced availability of Internet Explorer to end users and web developers.

As a web developer, if I cannot get access to a web browser, I am not going to develop for it. It's just that simple. Even now I only put minimal effort towards supporting IE when I author for the web.

Other people who actively try to support IE will probably be inhibited from getting IE7+ by high costs of whatever version of Windows will carry it in the future.

Thank you Microsoft, this is a big help. :-)