YouTube Phasing Out Support For IE6

Oracle Goddess sends word that YouTube is presenting IE6 users with a banner exhorting them to upgrade to a modern browser, and TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube will be phasing out support for IE6 soon. This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net at the imminent demise of this most despised and non-standards-compliant browser. The market share for IE6 is now well down in the single digits.

Comments

About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Good. That's like phasing out of support for cancer.

Re:About time

[CorporateSuit]

Perhaps next, they can follow Slashdot's example and phase out support for web browsers.

Re:About time

[MacTO]

> Perhaps next, they can follow Slashdot's example and phase out support for web browsers.

This may actually be an advantage:

show_articles.sh YouTube-Phasing-Out-Support-For-IE6 | sed s/IE6/Windows/g | more

Re:About time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But most people prefer neither less nor more. Why settle for less?

Re:About time

[Cimexus]

Yeah what the hell is wrong with Slashdot these days. I'm using Firefox (not even an 'evil' browser like IE) and Slashdot renders all weird ... all this extra green space under the Slashdot logo at the top etc...

Re:About time

[yoyhed]

I hate whatever new it is that they did, but as soon as it appeared a year or two ago, I enabled "Classic Index" in options - I can't stand how /. looks when I'm not logged in.

Market share

[amicusNYCL]

The market share for IE6 is now well down in the single digits.

According to whom? Even on w3schools.com, which is visited almost exclusively by web developers, more than 14% of people are still using IE6.

Re:Market share

[cml4524]

Web developers are probably more likely to have IE6 around than your typical user since they need it for their job. I use Firefox exclusively at home, but when I'm having problems getting something to work on the job and need to look up a reference, I occasionally use IE either by mistake or just because I happen to be in it already.

Re:Market share

[amicusNYCL]

That doesn't justify that many people browsing the reference site using your test browser. People aren't mistakenly using IE6 to look up the HTML reference, they're using IE6 because that's what they always use. Look at the usage numbers, Firefox is almost at 50%, Chrome is already at 6%. That is indicative of web developers, not using a browser that is 9 years old. Web developers might be more likely to have IE6 installed, but they're not going to browse with it. Web developers are more likely to have a favorite browser to do all of their normal tasks in, and they'll use that one.

Also, I'm a web developer and don't have IE6 installed, on any of my machines. I have access to it, but not on any computer I use on a regular basis. The debugging tools in IE8 are much better for web developers than having IE6 available to test on.

Re:Market share

[wjousts]

I agree. That number must be completely made up. Lot's of corporations still have IE 6 as their "corporate IT approved" browser. I know we do because all our corporate web apps are such shit that they don't work in anything else.

Re:Market share

[amicusNYCL]

Testing what? Testing the w3schools site? Wouldn't you want to have your main browser open for references and things even though you might have another test browser open? Hell, I usually develop with 3 browsers open (Firefox, to use Firebug for debugging my Javascript stuff, Chrome to show the Javascript-heavy API docs, and Opera for everything else).

IE6 has lingered around like a bad fart, hopefully this signals the true beginning of the end.

Re:Market share

[Skylinux]

Might be SPAM bots, they fake user-agents all the time and try to either hide as a major search engine or as a user.

I am currently working on a question/answer based CAPTCHA system + bot trap and monitor the user agents triggering my bot trap.
So far,
59 falsely claimed to be Googlebot
The rest claim to be some version of IE

Don't rely on anything for user-agents, I am identifying myself as Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) right now to get around websites offering unlocked content to Google but require registrations from normal users.

Re:Market share

[JCSoRocks]

Lot's of corporations still have IE 6 as their "corporate IT approved" browser.

This. This. This. Our web apps are written exclusively for big companies and we're still stuck supporting IE6 because our customers absolutely require it. It's painful. *sigh* What I wouldn't do to go Office Space on something that represents IE6.

Re:Market share

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd be quite surprised if YouTube's move spurs too much moving away from IE6. IE7 and IE8 have both been declared critical updates by MS, so only home users who really hate IE7/8 and know enough to manually deselect that update, or users whose automatic updates are disabled or broken would still have IE6. This number probably isn't zero; but it isn't huge.

On ye olde business side, where IE6 is more likely to be lurking, IT controls the upgrade path with an iron fist and probably considers user inability to waste time and bandwidth on youtube to be a virtue.

Re:Market share

[whoever57]

IE7 and IE8 have both been declared critical updates by MS, so only home users who really hate IE7/8 and know enough to manually deselect that update, or users whose automatic updates are disabled or broken would still have IE6. This number probably isn't zero; but it isn't huge.

And Windows 2000 users.

Re:Market share

[Ben174]

I've had several times where I'm testing a site in IE6, find a bug or quirk, then press Ctrl-N to open a new IE6 window, and browse to W3C (or other web development related site) to find a reference to that particular element and determine its compatibility with the browser I'm currently in. I'd say that's pretty common.

Re:Market share

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they count! How could they dispense a set amount of money otherwise.

Re:Market share

[Skylinux]

I just used it today to get a research paper which required me to come from the universities network OR be Google. I think they use Google Custom Search on an Intranet site so need Google to index things. The major flaw here is that they accept by user-agent and don't check if the originating IP is owned by Google.
Now that I think about it, maybe they even use Referer: to validate internal network IPs .... I need to look into that :)

But mostly adult sites with images on Google image search and some smaller sites offering pdfs and other indexable content to Google.

Re:Market share

[DNS-and-BIND]

And pirated copies of Windows XP, which is what Asia uses exclusively. I remember showing one fellow Firefox, he was flabbergasted that something could replace IE. It had never entered his brain that anyone could use anything other than IE6 that came with the system.

Re:Market share

[Bourbonium]

This is the case in my office, where IE6 is the approved standard, and no one is allowed to use FireFox or Opera or Chrome unless they can submit a written justification to the IT standards committee and obtain their approval. That is rare.

This is mainly because we use several different web-based applications developed in-house for submitting travel claims and interfacing with our purchasing department's back-end databases, all built years ago on non-standards-compliant IE6 code. The team of contractors who developed these apps are long gone, and updating them would require finding a new contractor and paying them to re-build all the apps from scratch, a difficult sell to management in today's economy. It ain't broke, they say, so why fix it?

Re:Market share

[thetoadwarrior]

Some of it is probably users of pirated copies and quite frankly I don't care if they can use YouTube or not. As far as business users, unless you're paid to watch YouTube videos, do it on your own time.

Re:Market share

[LordLimecat]

Theres such a thing as IE tab, which would allow both the legacy code to work (it works with OWA!), as well as allowing folks to use a modern, secure browser. Or, they could pull their heads out of the sand and realize that installing firefox|chrome|opera doesnt uninstall ie6...

Re:Market share

[gravyface]

Or they could roll-out FireFox (with NoScript) as the default browser using Group Policy with FireMotion's FireFox MSI and create shortcuts on the desktop with a target of "iexplore http://your.wretched.old.internal.app.com/".
More security, same ol' craptastic IE6 "experience" for your internal apps.

Re:Market share

[eobanb]

You're complaining about a supposed need for multiple browsers and then your example is a site that YOU built that only works with IE7? Seriously?

Re:Market share

[amicusNYCL]

If nothing else, it's going to make the VPs and PHBs running the company aware that their IE6-only software is relying on technology that is, at the very least, out of date. The people signing the checks (stereotypically) don't understand the technology involved and don't see a compelling reason to fund an upgrade to their software. This will help point out to those people that IE6 is obsolete technology and should be migrated away from. They can have IT create reports about it until they're blue in the face, but for some people it doesn't sink in until they're no longer able to log on and watch videos online in between meetings and telling other people to get to work.

Moreover, if IT wants to stop people from going to Youtube, the solution there is to block access to youtube.com, not enforce usage of an obsolete browser that Youtube doesn't support.

Even better, a more significant impact of Youtube dropping IE6 support is that other websites will feel more confident to also drop IE6 support. Youtube might not affect a lot of people, but if your boss can't log into his bank because his browser is obsolete, he's going to have IT on the phone pretty quick.

Re:Market share

[Firehed]

IE8 allows you to disable standards-compliance mode for just this reason - in fact, I believe it even defaults to IE6's rendering engine for any intranet address.

Unless you're on Win2k or older, there's absolutely no reason to still be using IE6.

Re:Market share

[whoever57]

Most of them won't install just because the installer checks for 2k and denies what would be otherwise posible.

Your solution is here. I even have Windows Defender running on Win2K after using this tool.

Re:Market share

[amicusNYCL]

Sorry, was there a poorly-stated joke in there? Replying with "whoosh" is no excuse for not being able to craft a joke that's actually funny.

Re:Market share

[sexyrexy]

Do you even know what '.aspx' means? If you are trying to refer to sites built on ASP.NET, you are quite mistaken - ASP.NET is 100% cross-browser compatible. If a site you visit only works in IE7, that is the developer's incompetence; whether they used Joomla! or Ruby on Rails to suck has nothing to do with the platform.

Re:Market share

[pizzach]

A Joomla! site I built, for example, all open source as it is, takes forever to render in Chrome, and shows CSS overlap errors in Firefox. IE 7 renders it perfectly.

It is 100% your fault if you chose a template that is crap. Joomla is what you make it. It is no different than if you got a contractor to design a website and they didn't w3c validate it and only checked it in IE7.

Re:Market share

[gid]

Of course you realize the majority of websites that require IE6 only require IE6 because of a check against the user-agent string. If you change IE8's user-agent to IE6, I'd be willing to be you could get most sites to work.

Maybe everyone should change their user-agent to this:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0))

IE8 masquerading as IE6 masquerading as Netscape (pronounced Mozilla)

I wish retarded web programmers would stop checking user-agent strings already and just the test the damn javascript function you need instead.

I don't know...

[Darkness404]

I don't know about anyone else, but I really felt that IE6 was a much better (although flawed) browser than IE7. Sure, IE7/8 has new features, but its UI is terrible and seems to be slower responding. IE6 was a decent browser, aside from the fact it was a pain to code for and insecure.

Re:I don't know...

[TheRealMindChild]

IE6 was a decent browser, aside from the fact it was a pain to code for and insecure.

This hamburger is decent, aside from the fact that it's growing mold and smells like urine.

Re:I don't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're saying it was a decent browser in all ways except what truly makes a decent browser decent?

Re:I don't know...

[Hyppy]

I can think of a few things that make IE6 (not exclusively, but still) a horrible browser:

ActiveX
Non-standard HTML rendering
Lack of tabs
ActiveX
Lack of support for many standard files (PNG, anyone?)
Crashing when fed simple code
Oh, and ActiveX.

Re:I don't know...

[vux984]

IE6 was a decent browser, aside from the fact it was a pain to code for and insecure.

Car analogy:

IE8 is your your new car. It runs smooth, and there are no real complaints about the reliability. The seats are little on the hard side, and you'd like more leg room.

IE6 is your old car. It broke down every other week, belched poisonous black smoke into the cars around it, and the doors didn't close properly. But the seats were soft and you had more leg room.

Your old car was 'decent' the same way IE6 was decent.

And lets face it, IE8's UI isn't terrible. You might not be used to it, or like it as much, but its objectively not all that bad. They've moved things around, and hid a lot of stuff almost nobody used. But the tab support and integrated search alone make the UI superior. I don't find it slow (but I have lots of RAM). I still prefer Firefox, but I no longer loathe using (or developing for) Internet Explorer.

Re:I don't know...

[Tubal-Cain]

He never claimed that IEs 7 & 8 weren't horrible.

Re:I don't know...

[FlyingBishop]

Quite true. But I will not be satisfied until IE7 support is phased out. The UI is fine, but the engine is still crap. IE8 at least brings Microsoft up to about Firefox 1.5, if not 2.0.

Re:I don't know...

[n30na]

But the seats were soft and you had more leg room.

You mean seat. IE6 could only hold one at a time.

Re:I don't know...

[AKAImBatman]

No offense, but that's exactly the type of bullshit Microsoft wants you to believe. They've implemented some of the CSS stuff, but they're a LONG way from meeting a standard even as simple as FF1.5.

Call me when IE's DOM support leaves the DOM1 standard and moves on to the DECADE OLD DOM2 support. Then we'll talk.

Re:I don't know...

[Phroggy]

Quite true. But I will not be satisfied until IE7 support is phased out. The UI is fine, but the engine is still crap. IE8 at least brings Microsoft up to about Firefox 1.5, if not 2.0.

Fortunately, it will be easy to gradually phase out IE7. Nobody is stuck relying on IE7 the way they're stuck relying on IE6. Anything that works in IE7 but not in other browsers should be very easy to make work in IE8's compatibility mode, if indeed any changes are required at all, although hopefully that won't be a common situation. When IE7 came out, I think most people with IE6-only web sites realized that rebuilding them to support standards-compliant browsers wouldn't really be any harder than rebuilding them to support just IE7, and with Firefox's significant market share, it made sense to do so.

Basically, anyone who's running IE7 can switch to another browser if they want to. That wasn't true of IE6 at all.

Praise Jeebus!

[chill]

What is needed is a good exorcism. IE6 needs to be cast out from the net and its bloated carcass nailed to a tree as a lesson to others.

Re:Praise Jeebus!

[Brian Gordon]

At work I have to use IE on Windows 2000. Don't phase me out please!

Re:Praise Jeebus!

[martas]

quit. now.

Re:Praise Jeebus!

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Should that be "Don't phase me, bro!"?

I *WISH* it was down in the single digits

[BlueBoxSW.com]

My experiences with large corp and gov't clients tells me otherwise.

Hello? IT Department?

[Enuratique]

I, uh, want to upgrade to IE8. Why? Uhhh, I hear it's safer to use. What do you mean the time sheet tool and headcount apps won't work in IE8?! I don't give a damn, how hard can it be to make them work? I need it NOOOOOOOOOW!

Re:Hello? IT Department?

[CorporateSuit]

This is why smart web developers use tables.

cool

[ocularDeathRay]

now if they would just make it so I can watch a few youtube videos in a row, without b0rking my firefox running in linux I will be happy.. seriously, can we get this done? Its gotten better over the last couple years, but I still have to kill -9 firefox after watching 10 or so videos. My favorite is when the audio freaks out and plays a 1 second loop at max volume until I kill it. Or I have seen no video, but audio is fine. I am not saying this is youtubes fault, but then again, maybe it is their fault for not using open technology for their videos, which would be available to everyone.

Re: cool

[Darkness404]

Try using a different Flash plugin. I've had some flash plugins eating 100% CPU all the time, and after upgrading or downgrading they are usable.

Re: cool

[rho]

Try using a different Flash plugin. I've had some flash plugins eating 100% CPU all the time, and after upgrading or downgrading they are usable.

The future is nao!

Sometimes I truly wonder what the fuck we think we're doing with computers.

Re: cool

[MaskedSlacker]

Watching porn.

Was it really that hard to figure out?

Still mandatory where I work

[ArhcAngel]

I know quite a few LARGE corporate environments that won't be upgrading any time soon since IE7/8 "breaks" their intranet web apps and they aren't about to budget for updating apps that work on the existing browser.

Re:Still mandatory where I work

[mehrotra.akash]

cant firefox be installed on a system with IE6 and IEtab used for the intranet apps, while firefox used for internet??

Re:Still mandatory where I work

[afidel]

We're a midsized business and until we upgrade our ERP system next year we can't migrate off IE6 so I can only imagine how bad it is for shops with tons of custom code. The version of our ECM system that we are currently testing supports IE7 and Firefox with only partial functionality, no IE8. That means we can upgrade to IE7 once we upgrade our ERP system but we will be on IE7 until mid 2012 at least since our systems are on a 3 year rotation.

Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade

[shawnmchorse]

IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000.

Re:Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade

[Lendrick]

Firefox does.

Re:Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade

[dltaylor]

No #!%$ DRM, no activation, and at least through SP2 (SP4 was changed, but I never looked at SP3) no license agreement that explicitly allows Microsoft access to your hard drive.

Every Microsoft OS since Windows 2000 has been a downgrade.

FF works fine, thank you, and, since Microsoft no longer supports it, I don't have to deal with their illegal "you have to run Windows to get patches".

Re:Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade

[Grishnakh]

It doesn't matter that it's 2009. Lots of companies are still running W2K because they're cheap and lazy. There's one or two guys in my workgroup here who are running W2K, and they can't upgrade 1) because IT won't pay for the XP licenses, and 2) because their computers are so old and slow (and have no free HD space) they wouldn't run XP anyway.

Yes, a new computer capable of running XP quite well probably only costs about $500-600 from Dell (not including monitor), but apparently that's too much for our IT department to support programmers who are currently wasting lots of man-hours watching their computers s-l-o-w-l-y compile code.

However, we don't have too much trouble spending lots of money on engineering tools. But that comes out of a different department's budget, so it's OK. Since our computers come out of the IT department's budget, they refuse to upgrade us, ever, as it makes their spending look bad.

Re:Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade

[binary paladin]

Firefox does though, so I fail to see the problem.

Re:Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for long...

http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/06/06/08/1240239.shtml

no need of restrictions then

[mehrotra.akash]

if IE6 is not supported by youtube, and many other popular, non work related sites follow suit, wouldnt enterprises prefer to keep IE6 as it would automatically prevent employees from accessing video/social networking sites from work, and additional money would not have to be spent on proxies and other content restriction system??

since their own apps are in house they can keep IE6 forever w/o any problems

Re:no need of restrictions then

[SydShamino]

Yeah, the IT team can just rename the IE6 icon as "ERP Interface" or something, and install Firefox, naming its icon "Web Browser".

Voila, internal apps keep working but employees are no longer at risk due to IE6 use on the wild wild internet.

Even better if as a company they block IE6 access to external sites, so people who try to use their ERP software to browse the web would be cut off and told to launch Firefox.

That's a bit sensationalist

[east coast]

This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net

Yeah, there's a virtual kegger going on over at Twitter about this. Is that going to be our new gauge of how things are going on in the computing world? Has netcraft confirmed it?

Slight problem...

[Schnapple]

On the one hand if Joe Average User can't get to YouTube.com anymore then yes they'll either upgrade to IE7/8, or maybe use that crazy Firefox browser.

However, we still run across many many clients who still mandate IE6 in their workplace. No upgrading to IE7/8, no other browsers than IE6, etc.

So they'll upgrade finally now too, right?

Nope - those are also the same companies that probably block access to YouTube for bandwidth/time wasting reasons.

Flash

[R.Mo_Robert]

Now, if YouTube would only phase out support for Flash...

I know, I know, wishful thinking. But I do secretly think that YouTube could single-handedly decide which video format(s) become supported (or, if not in the specification, at least popular) for HTML 5. Chrome supports both Theora and H.264, but their HTML 5 test page uses H.264. Not my personal first choice, but certainly a lot better than Flash.

In any case, I can't wait for this imaginary day when YouTube goes Flash-less. :)

Re:Flash

[AndrewNeo]

There is an option for the uploader to disable their video from being played off the Youtube website itself, that's more than likely what you're running into. Also, that is kind of incorrect, all HQ/HD videos -are- h264 content (find a Youtube downloader, you'll get an .mp4 file, but the non HQ/HD are .flv) but the problem you're referring to is it's being played through Flash instead of directly through the browser.

WAIT A SECOND!!!

[yurtinus]

Twitter search? Really? I mean.... Really?!?

BRAVO. Earns my respect double on this...

[CFD339]

First, actions like this from massively broad based sites are critical to finally wiping the scourge of IE6 development off the planet. So initial Kudos to YouTube for taking the step.

Of course, YouTube == Google; so no shock that they're willing to disparage IE6, right?

But here's the difference between Google and Microsoft --

The banner shown here, on YouTube (owned by Google) doesn't JUST list Chrome as the upgrade path. It clearly gives equal exposure to Chrome, Firefox, and IE8 -- the biggest competing product to its own browser.

That's the right way to do be competitive in a social networking context. I think we know that if this was say, Bing! or Hotmail, it would show a link to IE8 but that's it. Well, ok, we don't KNOW that, but most of us assume it. I certainly do.

Actually - IE6 has over 15% market share

[caffeinejolt]

This graph shows market share trends for relevant browser versions. Of course, I REALLY wish it was "in the single digits".

Okay I'll do it!

[nilbog]

I saw this message today an decided to upgrade my browser. That's the internet, right? I called AOL and told them to upgrade my internet please. They happily obliged. It seems like the same internet to me and I still get the message on youtube.

Re:Support? What do you mean, support?

[Hatta]

Exactly what I was going to say. Provide a simple link to a video file and even lynx could view Youtube.

In other news - cubicle productivity soars

[Zantetsuken]

In other news, office cubicle productivity has coincidentally soared to heights not seen since before the launch of Youtube... Next up...

Doesn't bother me.

[Cro Magnon]

AFAIK, the only people who use IE6 (including me) do so because their job uses it. Very few jobs (including mine) allow Youtubing at work anyway, so why SHOULD they continue to support it?

Twitter

[Pulse_Instance]

This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net

All that twitter search shows is that people who use twitter are commenting on it. It does not show jubilation breaking out all over the Net.

Re:If you get rid of IE6, you will rid also Win2K

[Miladinoski]

If you get rid of IE6 like this, you are forcing people to upgrade also to Win7!!! Remember, there is no Internet Explorer 7 for Win2k, All of us who have stayed away from Win XP and and Vista due to its dumb activation code will have to upgrade to Win7, because Mozilla is not always the answer.

Nobody is forcing you to upgrade to Windows 7, Opera runs mighty fine not only on Win2k but on win9x versions too without a huge memory leak...

You should consider using that instead of some crappy 8 years old browser that doesn't support something essential as PNG transparency.

Re:browser types for my sites:

[n30na]

what's the rest? that doesnt nearly add up to 100%.

Re:If you get rid of IE6, you will rid also Win2K

[jimjamjoh]

Mozilla IS always the answer when the question is "What actively-developed Web 2.0-capable browser can I use on my Win2k box?"

Re:If you get rid of IE6, you will rid also Win2K

[RichM]

Doesn't Opera 9 work on Windows 2000?
Yes, yes it does.
Even Windows 95.

Re:If you get rid of IE6, you will rid also Win2K

[mike260]

You refuse to use XP, Vista, Linux, Opera and Firefox, but IE6 is peachy-keen?
Lol.

Mod Informative, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree.

I prefer to use a web browser, not an add-on, extension fluffed "application display system." HTML. No CSS, no mime-types, no scripting.

I can't say when, but /. changed something to make using this site painful 6-12 months ago.

Legacy systems

[sjbe]

And who cares about corporations who refuse to move on from a tool that even the creator has killed off?

You do. Forget Windows and IE - do you have ANY idea how many POS (Point Of Sale) systems there are out there that still rely on DOS? The answer will scare you. "Upgrading" software is an expense and a potential business risk. Sometimes the rewards are not worth the expense. I have clients that have computer systems that are 10, 15 and even 25 years old and not about the be replaced anytime soon. You can make a very profitable living maintaining and integrating legacy systems and there are lots out there.

Survival of the fittest always wins, always.

And what, pray tell, is your definition of fittest? Unfortunately I can think of many definitions of fittest that don't equal best, modern, up-to-date, robust or (sadly) secure.

Why the hell don't some companies allow the use of another browser?

Cost mostly. Typically they have some old code that will cost money to update and they can't make a business case to do it yet. Usually they'll upgrade in due time but it might take years or even decades.

Nice banner. What about other browsers?

[j741]

So I had a look at the banner mentioned, and I find it odd that it states "Please upgrade to one of these modern browsers" followed by only IE8, FF3.5, and Google Chrome. Why not mention (or even hint at) the fact that other "modern browsers" also exist. You know, browsers like Opera or Safari (the OS default for MAC users), or any others. Simply re-wording the banner to something like "Please upgrade to a modern browser such as the following" would be much more polite.

Re:Nice banner. What about other browsers?

[wardred]

If you're running IE6 is it likely that you're using a modern Mac with Safari on it? Wouldn't it already have this installed? I'm guessing Opera isn't on the list because it isn't free...but that's just a guess. Yes, rewording things would've been more polite.

Re:Nice banner. What about other browsers?

[A Friendly Troll]

If you're running IE6 is it likely that you're using a modern Mac with Safari on it? Wouldn't it already have this installed? I'm guessing Opera isn't on the list because it isn't free...but that's just a guess. Yes, rewording things would've been more polite.

There's Safari for Windows, and Opera has been free for many years now.

Market Share.

[CFD339]

Opera just doesn't have that much market share. Neither does Chrome, but well, that is the home field favorite on YouTube/Google. As far as Safari, how many non-mac people even know what it is, let alone that there's a PC version? I have it, I like it and think it's excellent, but it's pretty unusual to find on a PC.

Re:Except IE is the only one that works with YouTu

[Ilgaz]

Funny is they don't figure what actually made youtube succsessful.

Youtube would work in any browser which manages to run Flash in it. That is the trick. Nothing else needed. If Flash runs, Youtube is there even including mobile browsers (e.g. Nokia).

Can't IE really display comments and Google ads? That is all needed for youtube. Flash works in its own way, glory days of "live script" is over really. Sad but true.

IE 6 is still used on large corporations and there is no chance you will be able to "upgrade to chrome" unless you want a visit from BOFH with your manager asking what the hell you are trying to achieve. Yes, a managed client these days won't just stop you, it will also alert admin via security solution, "attempt to install unauthorised software" in recession would be a nice excuse for them.

Oh BTW, unless some miracle happens and a open source/standard commitee invents something which will be a 1.1 MB download, without any dictation of software, completely supported in number 1 pro design suite and various pro video authoring/serving solutions, Flash is there to stay.

HTML5 video would have a huge chance if they were wise to adopt H264 as standard and Dirac as optional codec. Also publicly bitching/whining/attacking both Apple and Adobe which are called "mecca of multimedia" won't really help.