Slashdot Mirror
Google Tells Users To Drop IE6
Kelly writes "Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google's decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."
Makes sense, IE6 is just atrocious, most people need to upgrade! Although it does sound a bit anti-Microsoft on Google's part, telling users to switch to another browser, and not offering a direct link to IE7, which anyone on IE6 should really get anyway.
If you use IE6, the terrorists win. Use our browser instead!
For best results, avoid doing stupid things.
... browser is for Google to exploit it's virtual monopoly status.
.... a chair is breaking.
I shall soon follow suite with a little browser sniffing on future sites I design! I can finally stop supporting that shitty browser after all!
Please provide link to linux version. LOL!
...the word "urging" was redefined.
What I do for a living: Build a GPS mobile game
IE6 has been a curse on web developers for 8 years. Thats like 80 human years. It must die a swift death.
Everyone I know uses Firefox, but me (I use Chrome). IE is used by people who have little other choice, or don't really care to research their software. If you care, you've switched. I'd imagine IE is used mainly on computers where users have no options to install third party software (it's not their decision). Mind you, I'm not anti-Microsoft in the least.
There is one very big reason for Google to do this, and it's not what many Slashdotters think.
Anybody using Firefox or Chrome has Google as their default home. Anybody using IE has MSN as their default home.
This is a war over who gets to propagandize you with their ads and collect your personal information. There is no good/evil dichotomy here if that's what you're looking for.
Further, I'll end with a categorical statement in order to offend people: Anybody with strong feelings about which web browser is the best is probably spending too much time surfing the web, and is in fact suffering from an internet addiction. IE 7, Opera, and Firefox are all pretty similar from a normal end-user perspective.
Nobody should be using IE6 anyway, it is an out of date browser and Google is just highlighting that.
Although they don't promote it, IE7 is a supported browser.
Yesterday my father came to me saying he wanted to switch to "FoxFire". Anything that promotes awareness of how horrid IE is, such as this, can only be a good thing (unless, of course, you're forced to use IE6 for whatever silly reasons).
That is something that still bothers me about all of this - FF is cross-platform, yet Chrome, Google's new brainchild, is Win-only. "Upgrade! Upgrade!" they cry, but us Linux, Mac, and misc. *nix users are still left in the complete dust! I hope Google releases at least a binary pretty soon, else its going to turn into a FF vs. Chrome battle, the new epic flame war, no doubt with a Google-fund-less Mozilla Foundation struggling to compete!
Imagine that. A company is using some of their products to promote other products of theirs. Shocking, I know, that a company would do such a thing.
They have the same link and message for FF2.x users. Guess what? I'm still not going to downgrade to FF3 and its uselessbar.
At my previous job (fairly large company) they've standardized on Win2k on the clients. In fact they're still running it. Guess what browser is included? The client is heavily modified so rolling out a new one isn't an easy task.
From what I've heard they're little above 1 year in planning to switch to Vista, but since there are quite a lot of migration issues I don't see that coming soon. I'd say it's atleast 6 months away, probably more. The company uses some very specific programs written by people that might not be with the company anymore, and all those need to work for business to continue as usual.
So they will continue to surf the interweb with IE6 for quite a while. Other browsers can be installed but that is unsupported and might result in a call from the security department on why you use unauthorized software on your machine. You probably don't want that. And none of the internal applications work with anything but IE6 (IE7 is being tested with the vista change) anyway.
Large organizations are fun.
But you shouldn't read gmail from work anyway so that's not a big problem. As long as most other sites still work. Or perhaps they should use an "external browser" and one "internal" one. Hehe.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
its so antitrust that win2k doesnt support ie6. i suppose microsoft is reeking of 'antitrust' against itself too....
you were SO enthusiastic to drop a knee jerk comment, you havent even read the 2 people replied to the parent did you.
Read radical news here
if it was, google would drop 7 support and tell them to switch too.
the fact is that, IE6 is WAY outdated now, is not supported anymore, is a gift from heavens for anyone writing exploits, doesnt even support tabs.
excuse me pal, ie6 is early 2000s.
its like the tech world equivalent of saying "dont drop 1930 model cars, even if its 1980s".
Read radical news here
That's right Microsoft, you heard me well.
All the funding in the world can't fix the absolute train wreck Internet Explorer codebase.
After using the stinking pile of shit firsthand it became obvious why the Internet Explorer devs in forums like MSDN would flame anyone and everyone who dared complain about the massive security and other problems the basketcase of a browser suffers from. The codebase is such a mess that it will never be fixed without a completely from scratch rewrite. And why it took years to finally get just the major security problems somewhat under control.
When Firefox was a total memory leaker it was a good temporary alternative. Now that Firefox has finally gotten its memory problems up to a reasonable standard and better alternatives like Chrome out now, hopefully Internet Explorer will just go away and die.
As long as there are no addons like adblock possible i'll be sticking to firefox...
I work for a Very Large Company. Unfortunately, this particular company has built quite a bit of business process around Microsoft's tattered and broken products. For starters, the client engineering group requires that you use a build of IE6. Without several security patches. Why? Because a lot of the web portal applications do not run on anything but IE6. Upgrade to IE7? Unsupported. Chances are, the app won't work, or won't display correctly. For most of the apps that have forms, upgrading to IE7 means you'll never see the 'Submit' button, either because it's not there, or was rendered off of the page (and there's no horizontal scroll). Worse, most of these rely on stupid IE6 javascript tricks that don't quite work right in Firefox or Chrome or Safari. Firefox is semi-usable for most things, though you will eventually hit a page that just won't "Work". Unfortuantely, this corps makes up a not-insignificant chunk of the population. It's groups like that that would need to take care of in-house breakware before an adoption of Firefox or Chrome can be taken seriously.
Informatus Technologicus
You also missed in your list a last class: software developers writing reasonably modern code whose applications run like the aforementioned drying paint in IE6 and would like corporates to use FF3 or Chrome because then end users will be pleased by the improvement in the way their pages load and run.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's coming. Be patient.
http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/09/platforms-and-priorities.html
Someone really needs to figure out a way to get IE7/IE8 running under WINE. The only thing I still use IE6 for is for applications that are IE only when I'm on my Mac or Linux system.
It's the sound of nobody moving to Chrome.
I dunno, but nor Microsoft nor Google is likely to have the kind of marketshare in the email space to justify antitrust action. Microsoft is well above antitrust levels with regards to browsers and operating systems, however.
50%? IE needs to be relegated to windows update only.
1000 years of darkness coming to an end? could happen.
Maybe the web developer pie chart will shift.
I'm all for dropping IE6. It is now nothing more than a bane to web developers and the advancement of web pages in general. But to stop accommodating IE6 in your websites simply becomes someone else says to do so is naive. You should support whatever your site's visitors need.
For my wife's site, I can drop support for 800x600 since they comprise of less than 2% of my visitors, and falling (hurray!). Yes, I know fluid design can accommodate all, but sometimes needs necessitate static widths.
However, IE6 still accounts for ~20% of my visitors, so no matter what Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc. says, until that number drops well below 10%, I will still support it.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Google is becoming a company that we should all be worried about, but they are playing a predictable games. MS grew because it offered the cheapest product on the block that more or less worked. Google is doing the same thing. The problem is that MS is now that inefficient behemoth with a business model that assumes a cut of every PC sales and aftermarket revenue. This is an environment where all Google needs to survive is a fraction of penny from every hit.
Google now offers cheaper products than Microsoft, read free to the user, and few people seem to worry about the opportunity costs in terms of privacy and all that. This is in the same way that no one worry about the issue with MS in terms of being assumed a pirate rather than a paying customer.
Beyond all this, why would any sane person with a competing product want to have anything to do with MS. MS could come up with an update to IE tomorrow that would break google apps. We all know that MS has the motive, and the will to break other peoples software is well documented. This justifies asking people to move away from IE because the day that MS does break Google is the day that google will lose a lot of good will. People will blame Google and not MS.
Not supporting IE is a gutsy move. It shows that Google is willing to play hardball. It shows that google is no longer the feel good get along with everyone company, but a company that is willing to dominate and create monopolies. Good for those that want a competitor to MS. Bad for those of us that want a quality product delivered by a company that treats the end user as a customer, not just a proxy to earn third party money.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"and is in fact suffering from an internet addiction. "
Internet Addiction users probably also suffer from sex addiction, money addiction and food addiction.
I personally suffer from addictophobia, so let me assure everyone that internet addiction is real. So all of you stop snickering out there. In fact, if you're reading slashdot, you're probably an internet addict. Here are the symptoms:
1) Constantly have a browser window up in your computer
2) Check your email more than once a day
3) Know browser shortcut keys. You know what cntl-D does, alt (or apple) backspace does, how to quit your browser without using the mouse.
4) Understand the importance of metatags
5) Knows how to spell URL
6) Users Ad Block Plus
This is a serious addiction.
Next week, we'll be covering work addiction (a tragic state where most of your waking hours are spent at a business doing stuff that some person tells you), water addiction (heart breaking... you require water every time your mouth gets dry. You end up in a condition known as "thirsty").
Finally, we'll be covering sleep addiction. Some of those addicts are known to spend 1/3 of their day in a completely motionless catatonic state. Tears are staining my browser as I type.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Because I don't use Windows for anything serious, except personal online banking, and my bank doesn't support Chrome. So I use Firefox from work to access my bank, where I run Linux.
Chrome for Linux, if you're serious, Goog. This wanking around with Windows-only is making you look like another me-too outfit.
Edith Keeler Must Die
For me, this isn't about IE in general. IE 6 is a large and costly inconvenience for both web application and web site developers. IE 6 doesn't work in exactly the same way as IE7 & IE8. A person doing web development not only has to make sure that an application or site works in the Mozilla based browsers and IE, but that it works in multiple versions of IE. IE 6 is typically the browser that breaks when new code is developed when that code works in all of the other browsers. Even other versions of IE. Organizations and people are hanging onto IE 6. It is past time for those with muscle to begin nudging people away from IE 6
Obviously, market share has nothing to do with it. Any business that is serious is going to just use Linux and develop all its software for Linux, right?
Dream on. Windows has what, 90% market share? Followed by OS X with maybe 7%. Linux is last with perhaps 3%. And if you just count end-user machines and not servers it is probably more like 92%, 7% and 1% for Linux.
Sure, maybe it will change in the future. But for now the reality is that Linux commands such an incredibly small number of end-user machines that it isn't worth paying attention to for packaged software development.
Is Slashdot ever going to resume supporting IE7? Whenever I want to see moderation breakdowns on comments, the firehose rainbow threshold widget, or even just all the comments in a thread, I have to temporarily switch to Firefox. (No, I don't have any particular reason I'm using IE7 -- just habit, I guess.)
When did I say anything about Linux only? Firefox manages to put out versions of its product for all desktop OS, with far less resources that the Goog has. There's no apparent reason why Google is less capable than the Mozilla Foundation. What do you think is the stumbling block? I think it's because Chrome is based on some Windows-only 3rd-party libraries and Chrome is a quick hack. Care to offer another plausible explanation why the mighty Google can't sustain a product on as many platforms as a non-profit can?
Edith Keeler Must Die
I find it amusing that after Microsoft used their app (Windows) to edge out Netscape, Google is using their apps to edge out Microsoft.
Capitalism at it's finest! The best sword is a double-edged one, says I.
_____________________________________
http://techdojo.org/
So far, I think none of Google's actions contradicted my personal opinion on their intentions with Chrome. I still believe their main objective is to force the use of web standards by evenly distributing the browser marketing between Gecko, WebKit and... whatever IE's engine is called. From this point of view, it makes sense that they are still funding Mozilla and chose an engine supported by default on Macs.
And no, they don't want standardization because of some altruistic ideals. It's just easier to develop web applications that way. And getting rid of the anomaly called IE6, which behaves differently from 7 and 8 to the point of being considered a different engine, is a very logical next step.
I didn't think there were many people on Linux that are still using IE6. :P
Slavery's been abolished, supposedly.
I swear I hate those fascist apologist, your employer is NOT your owner.
Now if Google would just not support ANY version of Internet Exploder.....
It's your type of thinking that caused Netscape to fail.
True, it had a terrible codebase. This was from trying to add features at a rapid pace in order to compete with IE at the time of the browser wars.
However, at some point a genius like the parent AC came along and decided that the entire codebase had to be rewritten.
This left them in the dust, with IE claiming nearly 100% marketshare.
What they should have done was rewrite code a bit at a time. The code could slowly improve, and they would still remain competitive. This is the course that has been chosen for Firefox.
Chrome is Google's answer to IE6. Google's effort to tie down the content in their non-standard format. How does it makes them any different from Microsoft?
Eclipse PDE and Me
Chrome works under Wine..
The complete rewrite came after Netscape was open sourced and became Mozilla. It is this complete rewrite that has allowed Firefox to progress the way it has. If you're really curious, see http://commons.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Open_Sources_2.0/Open_Source:_Competition_and_Evolution/The_Mozilla_Project:_Past_and_Future.
It seems to suck living in gaza city, am i right?
Everything using that hellhole of I rendering engine called Trident should be shot, quartered, fed to dogs, burned, buried, dug up, defiled, burned again, and spread to all four quadrants of the galaxy wherever there are evil aliens to extinguish. In that order.
I wish, users would experience the horrors that Trident puts us trough themselves. But for this, every major site would have to code to the standard and ignore all quirks and bugs in it. I bet, if the top 10 sites on the net would put a message on their front page, to make it clear, that the bugs that the users see, come from their Browser being a load of crap, IE would be gone in hours.
But they seem to like more, to rant all day long, that their users don't switch. Idiots.
I, for one, have sworn, never to write Trident workarounds again. Ever! Even if I am shot, quartered, fed to dogs, burned, buried, dug up, defiled, burned again, and spread to all four quadrants of the galaxy while still being alive in some way.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Stop pulling numbers out of thin air, please.
In reality, it's estimated that Windows has almost an 89% share, OS X is almost 10%, and Linux is slightly under 1%. And I have a source, too.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
that "incredible small number" is in the millions. If any company can successfully address the needs of 20 millions (or so) then I would call that company successful. Google might not care about millions when they care about billions, but there will be other companies to fill in the void. Opera for example has about 2 million users I think, if they can capture 10% more of Linux market they would double their user base.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
Sorry, wrong link. Of course I meant driving a Ford Model T with that nickname. Not anyone of that band. ;)
Oh well... I'm still too hungover. At least there's an explanation of the source of the band name in the article about the band.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
They are targeting IE6 users, who by definition must be running windows...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
His figures were clearly stupidly inaccurate. Thank you for showing people how the reality is so vastly different from the fantasy world he lives in!
Not an absolute one but many many applications and websites work only with IE6. FF with an IBM add-on PLUS IETAB is an absolute requirement.
I have been telling people to drop Internet Exploder for years. There are a lot of better browsers out there. I got tired and gave up a few years ago. But finally now Google is telling people to drop Internet Exploder too. I think the overwhelming praise they once got when issuing new versions of their lackluster products is over. People are now looking hard at what is being offered and comparing feature for feature. There are some naive users who might cry out 'oh goody goody, my new computer kit', but most users are more savvy and more critical of what they have to offer. Legacy is the only thing left. When its gone, so are they.
You mean turnabout isn't fair play after 12 years of OEM installing only MS browsers and forcing people who want to be open minded to go hunt links?
If they enjoyed their MS experience and can visit Microsoft in a browser, they can get IE7. If their computer skills stop at clicking a link, then we need their Newbie Mass flocking to the new choice of default browsers.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Protect yourself from typos in MS Word! Use LaTex!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Make breakfast and surf the news at the same time! I love it!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So what's the percent of GoogleMail + Yahoo + Hotmail? Are we in Oligopoly territory yet?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
On the Mac side, there's a ton of software that's Leopard-only, dropping support for people who are using any OS more than 15 months old, and there's hardly anything wrong with Tiger.
Yes, but that is because third party vendors are using the new features in Leopard. Apple is still supporting 10.4 with security updates. (Though Apple's support of older OS revisions is a lot shorter, backward compatibility is something they're pretty good at.)
Another point of comparison could be Sun which gives a minimum of ten years of support on an OS release:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/lifecycle.xml
Solaris 8 will stop being supported in in 2012, which is just over twelve years of support. Solaris 9 was launched in May 2002, so if they give twelve years again, we're talking about 2014. Though S10 is a compelling upgrade, so I think more people are willing to jump to it than they were to S9.
No, it means you have to update your site info on 40 sites too. You could waste an entire weekend doing that.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As a webmaster dealing with clients and companies on a regular basis I have to applaud Google for this. There are so many reasons why IE6 is crap that I lost track. Why are people insisting on using that security hazard people call a browser? Lack of PNG support, lack of following standards, I never seen a product from Microsoft that I loath more than IE6. If Microsoft had made a decent browser or release an update for IE6's rendering engine for Win2k+ users then Firefox likely would have been as popular as it has been.
But remember if you switch to Google Chrome be sure to read the EULA =)
Can you say: adblock, customizegoogle (aka google ad/spam banisher), flashblock, noscript, splitlink ...
When Chrome provides users with the same ability as Firefox to block brain-dead, bandwidth-sucking, privacy-invading, online-tracking crap on webpages (let alone hundreds of feature-extensions that Firefox users find useful), THEN MAYBE it will be a browser that bears taking a look at. Until then, it's just another worthless ad-delivery tool.
as Windows Mobile is getting IE6...no google for them? (on that note I think WM is fine, but its hindered by all that old software a la font installer in Vista)
"What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."
I realize this was written with the intent of saying, "What a great victory for our hero, Mozilla!"
But let's look at the numbers...
Browser share for November 2008 per w3schools:
IE7: 26.6%
IE6: 20%
Chrome: 3.1%
Firefox: 44.2%
Mozilla: 0.4%
Safari: 2.7%
Opera: 2.3%
So, non Microsoft leaves us with 53.4% of the market... Meaning Firefox already commands 80%+ of the non Microsoft share.
Gaining two out of every three - 67% of users quitting Microsoft - when it already has 80%+ of the non Microsoft share - implies its popularity is dropping not gaining amongst non Microsoft users.
Safari's stayed pretty constant for the last few months - as has Firefox, crawling up at a very slow rate. Chrome jumped from 0 to 3% pretty much immediately but has then barely moved in three months. Opera has actually gained proportionally the quickest (2% to 2.3% is a 15% improvement for them in three months).
So, I realize it was intended as a "Yay Firefox" claim - but, if you look deeper at the numbers - less of the new Anti-MS crowd are adopting it than have in the past.
The Ford Model T (colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie and also the Flivver)...
Click. Click. Wait... wait... wait... Approve or Deny... Are you sure... WARNING... Validate, yes or no... Validate, YES or NO... WARNING... YOU MUST VALIDATE THIS VERSION OF MS... VALIDATE YES OR NO... validation failed... *MS snickering*... where did 2009 go... You must update this____... *MS snickering* click. wait. 2010... click. wait. 2011... click...
People, just to give Mr. Big something to bitch about, I uninstall/roll-back to the earliest version of IE I can, as soon as I successfully install whatever/whomever. If ANYTHING, IE7 support is necessary ONLY for shady business dealings, shadier survey sites and shadiest of all, porn codecs to make Hefner look like a gentleman.
Maybe if you grew up on something else your sensitivities would amount to more than those of a 14th-century door-to-door apple salesman and your Lady Love could be regarded as someone/something other than, "MS. PROXY."
The sky is the limit, Icarus.
I fire and forget.
There is nothing to FEAR but NOTHING itself; and I fear there is a whole lot of nothing going on. --scorpivs
Sam36 tells users to drop microsoft products and ...
Profit
Perhaps the grandparent was referring to versions after 2.0?
http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Opera for example has about 2 million users I think, if they can capture 10% more of Linux market they would double their user base.
Opera was first released for Linux with version 5.11 in 2001. If Opera hasn't been able to beat back the Netscape / Mozilla / Firefox juggernaut on Linux in all that time, then it isn't going to suddenly do so, especially since it still isn't open source AFAIK.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
My understanding of Google is that they are smart because they do NOT want a monopoly on almost anything (other than being the search engine of choice). Do not misread this as they don't WANT to be on top, all I'm saying is that they are willing to step down a rank or two if they can get a % of money from the companies who take those top postions... less work, and there is still pay while pushing competition. The public wins, and google keeps making more money. This is an interesting business concept and very smart. No one who is "on top" will ever stay on top, but the person who is friends with those on top will always be popular and in "good relations". This is what Google has done. It's made tons of alliances with open source groups, and if google creates competition between all those smaller groups, but has it's hand in all of them even taking only 1% or 2% profits, in the end, everyone is still paying google, and google never get the bad rep if one of those OTHER companies changes.
It's brilliant if you think about it!
By educating users that IE is broken (by breaking popular sites and putting but a big banner saying "Your browser is broken, try these: ...", That is something that even the most simple users of the internet (non-savvy types) can understand.
Chrome = webkit. Webkit = w3c compliant. By pushing firefox and chrome, they are in fact pushing Safari (webkit based), Konqueror (Webkit), and Opera (I forget what is running opera, but it's almost always 90%+ w3c compliant). In the end, the very few companies / people loose from this move. Microsoft being one of the few that does.
I hope it has an LCD photo gallery!
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
The problem with Open Source's initiative is that it expects people to care.
It's all about choice right? Well, most people don't care enough to make a choice. Hell, most people don't care enough to vote for who leads the United States, you expect them to give a crap about which browser they use?
Heck, I don't care. I have a wife and 2 kids to deal with. How can I expend brain cycles caring which browser I read a web page with?
Anyone have a good reason why I (or anyone) should care? I can see security, but Internet Exploder and $afari and Kram and Firefux are all the same in that regard at this point.
Browse the web without ads? Who cares, my eyes aren't so sensitive that a Ford ad on their new car is going to damage my rarified retinas.
See, that's the problem, it's all about choice, and the vast majority of the world doesn't care.
At least, that's how I see it.
This article has recently been linked from Slashdot. Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism.
I was not making an argument that it will, I was just making the case that there are companies that care about 10% of Linux market even though it's such an "incredible small number".
And for that matter if Chrome would gain 10% of Linux market it would double its market share -- that was the point, not the petty issue whether Opera will make it or not to the top.
By the way, I don't give a shit about "open source", I just use the best tool, it so happens that Linux is the best one for me. I would assume people choose their browser similarly, many use Firefox because it's the best tool at the moment not because it's open source (many people, not all, some are religious in what they use) if they would consider Opera better than Firefox they would use it even though it's not open source. Just a guess.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
You're just as comfortable with being the only man in the ladies' room, as you are being a door-to-door hardware salesman, more aptly, window-to-window apple dealer, aren't you.
Former Windows users or not, Mac users don't have the right to talk software.
Keep your apples on your side of the windows.
if you switch your layout to the new myspace 2.0 thing. you get a notice to update to your browser if you're trying to access it with IE6. but hey don't care what you use, they just don't want IE6.
MS supports and provides updates for Windows 2000 SP4 and IE6!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I can't believe they were willing to support it this long. IE6 is vintage 2001, which makes it over seven years old now. For a web browser, that's *ancient*.
...
I dropped primary support for IE6 back in 2005, when it was clearly far too old to consider current any more. This was right around the time that IE7 Beta became available, and I think I may have used that as an excuse, but honestly I almost certainly would have dropped primary IE6 support before very much longer whether there was an IE7 in the works or not. It was just too far out of date to continue supporting.
I mean, a similarly old Mozilla release would be 0.9.something. (I think 0.9.3 came out the same month as IE 6.0.) Everybody who's still regularly testing your site on pre-1.0 Mozilla releases, raise your hand. It's absurd. Frankly I'd be fairly surprised if anyone is still supporting Mozilla 1.5 at this point, and that's two years newer.
I do still support IE6 to the same extent I support any other obscure and/or ancient browser, i.e., I try to maintain a basic level navigability for all browsers, but I make no claims that it will look as good or work as well as it's designed to do on something more modern. The layout will probably be wrong in IE6, colors and other styles may be applied incorrectly, and features that rely on client-side scripting may not work properly; I don't test with it thoroughly or on a regular basis. This is the same level of support I give to things like Lynx, Navigator 4.08, NetPositive,
And yeah, I'm probably going to relegate IE7 to that same status sometime in 2009, or early 2010 at the latest.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Good.
As more and more people switch to newer browsers so do the hackers and virus writers. People who use Macs used to feel safe because they were so few in number that they were mostly ignored. So as virus writes switch to newer browsers and newer OS's wouldn't that automatically make older browsers safer? Who writes viruses for Windows 98 anymore? I haven't seen a decent Windows 3.1 virus in ages! ;)
For my wife's site, I can drop support for 800x600 since they comprise of less than 2% of my visitors
A growing number of users are on a device with a pivoting LCD that switches from 320x480 to 480x320.
They promised cross platform versions of Chrome. If it isn't coming out fast enough for you then use something else. I don't get this whole "me me me" entitlement thing I keep seeing. Google could skip the Linux and Mac versions entirely if they wanted to. They don't owe you a fucking thing. Get over it and wait till it comes out, or just shut the fuck up and use something else.
Make a registry file with this in it:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
RunOnceComplete=dword:00000001
RunOnceHasShown=dword:0000000
It's also available as a group policy option with the IE7 adm templates (download from the Microsoft site).
home
From the summary:
Cool. But the next article links to Google's Browser Security Handbook, which in the Introduction says this about browser usage:
So Firefox has ~ 20/27 = 74% of the browser usage.
Of course usage is not the same as marketshare, but the numbers do suggest that while the marketshare held by Firefox is increasing overall, compared to the rest of the alternative browsers (Safari, Opera, Chrome) its marketshare would actually be decreasing. Interesting indeed.
Ironically, the article's site doesn't display properly in Firefox (the article's body overlaps with the right-hand sidebar). It's sites like this that keep unsavvy people from switching.
I have FF 3.05 on XP and every 3-4 days Gmail stops working on this browser. I have to clear up all the temporary files, internet history etc to make it work.
Disclaimer: I am an AdWords engineer at Google.
When I read that Google replaced Firefox with Chrome in the Pack, I was all, woah. I went there myself, and to me it looks like they added Chrome to it. See for yourself.
It is interesting that you say so, besides of all the initial hype, chrome is already dying while firefox 3 is healthier than ever... With 3.1 coming soon with a fast javascript VM to make those morons who anally care about speed. Also, when you say "memory leak", you do know that it was fixed like years ago, right?
Hmnnn, sorry for feeding a troll, but dude, Chrome seems to use more memory than firefox 3 as of now, if your problem is memory usage, you are probably in the wrong bandwagon...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
IE is garbage altogether.... IE6 IE7 all junk. IE is just the browser you need to have, for the occasional site that just won't load or work without it...otherwise it's just a Malware downloader virus.
I can't, give that Google itself (the search engine) runs Linux. But even that doesn't really make sense as the libraries (webkit) are already available for Linux.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
wow. you're not uninformed!
pfft.
Aside from the fact Google itself runs on a custom Linux OS, and on linux servers, Google is linked to linux from android to most of their 'google time' projects being for linux.
the websites i maintain have more linux users (11%) than OS X (8%) and regardless of yyour likely inablity to understand and use linux, there is more scope and audience for linux applications - mainly because they can then be easily ported/adapted to run on windows or os x - a feat that isn't as eay the other way around.
Also, you need to think of percentages a bit more realistically. i read a story recently about a gaming house that although had only 5% of it's users using linux, when they ported a game to linux the games sales increased by 125%. If i was in the business of selling software that fact might make me think a bit more open mindedly re: linux.
84.6% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world use linux.
And what about people who have all 3? (And use/check 'em enough for each account to have equal wait) Do the people count for each mail provider, or a new category all together?
open source modern art: laser taggi
It's not only funny... It's funny it's tagged 'Informative'
What dream world do you live in. I did that, but stopped - because NOBODY CARES - it works in the majority browser, that that's it. Can't watch it - tough, get a "real" browser is the feedback you get 99.9999999% of the time.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
i should have provided citations from cicero's works instead. they would have understood that one as easily.
Read radical news here
Then why are there so many companies developing for it. Small ones, like Autodesk and what's that database company called ... Oracle or something. Yeah, you're a retard.
Firefox manages to run on Mac, Linux, Windows, and BSD.
Windows apps can be compiled against Wine for a decently easy port. The libraries are LGPL, so the license isn't an obstacle.
It's a bit odd to only support a vendor that wants you dead.
it looks like they added Chrome to it.
Always free - no trial versions or spyware
hah ha aha hahsha sh ah ah ah aha hahahahaha ahahahaha ahahahaha!!!!11!!!!7!
And people who specify font sizes in pixels (i.e. 6px) deserve their own special level of hell.
So what should I do if my web site is about a foreign language whose script isn't supported by common fonts? Because IE 6 and 7 don't display SVG or Canvas, the server would have to render it to bitmap images. In order for such graphics to fit in with point-sized text, the page would have to use CSS to specify the width and height of each graphic in ems. But IE uses a quick-and-dirty (emphasis on "dirty") method to resize bitmap images, making glyphs look positively ugly.
Google, could you please forward your concerns to my CIO? I'm sure he would be very interested, especially during an economic downturn, to upgrade 10,000 field PCs and 4500 home office PCs, complete with full regression testing of every application we produce. Oh, don't forget to mention renegotiating four or five dozen vendor maintenance contracts. Thanks. In the meantime, how about you just suck up supporting IE6, like every other web developer on the planet. You're not going to get a 20% market share of internet users to upgrade by asking.
Yes I hate Microsoft as much as the next tech that has to deal with its broken shit. Still no one says anything about the business practices of Apple and their forced obsolescence of software over minor version changes. If Tiger and Leopard are both Version 10 shouldn't an application be able to run on either of them? Especially something like a compression application like StuffIt.
Let's look under the hood. OSX is BSD. now if I can get a 10 year old application to run on the latest version of BSD but can't get a 15 month old Mac application to run on the latest Mac OS doesn't this show somebody is doing something to break the OS in order to make money off of upgrades? Its all the same base code.
I have no problem with people making money selling an operating system but to force someone to upgrade ALL! their software because of a minor OS version change that had no real effect on how the application and the OS worked together. Well that is stealing plain and simple. Worse you are stealing from someone over their lack of understanding of how the system works.
If Apple really cared about their customers and their "User Experience" why didn't they make a nice GUI for gunzip,tar,gz so their users would not need to spend $49.00 to buy StuffIt. Those free application are in there. You just have to use the CL to get to them.
The only big differance in Apple and Microsoft is it is "cool" to get ripped off my Apple.
Outfits like netflix which will *only* run on IE don't help the situation.
Apple's me.com is already telling IE 7 users to switch; they suggest Safari or Firefox of course.
Firefox manages to run on Mac, Linux, Windows, and BSD.
...and (from a quick google search) AIX, OS/2, Solaris, HP-UX, BeOS, and something called RISCOS that I haven't even heard of before now... and probably more!
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
'that kind people' should be 'that kind of people', obviously
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
Just a few short years ago, Linux users such as myself were becoming decidedly second-class citizens on the web, with many pages not working at all or not working right. Microsoft-specific extensions were polluting the web and making it hard to enjoy without paying Microsoft. I'm not talking about something that could have happened, that did happen.
In other words, MS's attempt to lock-in users to Windows via IE actually were successful! Until Firefox came, of course.