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MS — Dropping IE6 Support "Not an Option"
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft wants to see IE6 gone as much as anyone else, but the company isn't going to make the decision for its users anytime soon. The software giant has been pushing IE6 and IE7 users to move to IE8 ever since it arrived in March 2009, but it's still up to the user to make the final decision to upgrade: 'The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have. As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC.'" Of course some big Web sites aren't waiting for Microsoft. Reader Yamir writes, "Google's Orkut, a social networking service popular in Brazil and India, has started warning IE6 users that the browser will no longer be supported. Just last month, YouTube started showing a similar message."
I don't want to upgrade from IE6 for one very simple reason: I think the interfaces of the later IE versions suck donkey balls.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What is missed is that IE7 will never be offered for windows 2000- so IE 6 support is tied to Windows 2000 life cycle.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The first link is about MSFT's logo, not about IE6. What am I missing here?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Come on, Microsoft, if you're trying to end-of-life an operating system that's actively being deployed on Netbooks, what's the problem with turning off support for IE6?
Since we rarely upgrade software here until it's officially EoL'd, that MS isn't dropping this means no real chance for IE 7 or 8 for another year.
Which means I have to explain to the using class why their browser at work looks different from the one at home. Somehow, "It's a different version" only sinks in for about a week; after that, it's passed through the other end, and they have to be reminded again.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Of course not, what about Windows 95/Me/2000 users? One of those systems cannot run IE7 if I recall correctly.
o_O
I'm pretty sure that Microsoft are *happy* that these websites are dropping support and guiding their users in the right direction. That'll make things easier for Microsoft to move forward too. They put their focus behind Internet Explorer 8 now, and of course want to do that. But I can understand their stance -- their customers would raise hell if they just plain made an exception from their product lifecycle policy for the web browser, that just happens to be among the most used products in Windows there is.
So all in all, this feels like a non-story to me.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
A quick search shows that this is the article being quoted: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/microsoft-dropping-support-for-ie6-is-not-an-option.ars
I have to tell you, IE8 runs horribly on my desktop computer. When I installed XP over 2000, I upgraded right from 6 to 8 and hated it. The startup time was ridiculous, something like 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and opening a new tab took just as long as starting a new instance of IE8. Even after starting it once, starting it again wasn't must faster. That's my reason that I "downgraded" Internet Explorer to version 7, which really was an upgrade from version 8 in terms of performance, starting in about 3 seconds instead. I suppose that I can't be alone in this - there must be others for whom 7 or 6 runs better than 8 for whatever reason.
I know as far as I'm concerned IE7 fixed a lot of bad things with Internet Explorer that made it a big difference over 6, whereas 8 just seems to be an incremental improvement over 7 that really should not be pushed by Microsoft as a Critical Update. MS is probably coming out with frequent updates like this now just to try to stay competitive with Firefox and Safari and Chrome. I know that the Steam Overlay browser which embeds IE's Trident engine certainly got a speed boost from me going with 7 over 8, and that's the way it's going to stay unless and until Microsoft releases something newer for me to try on Windows XP. With Vista and soon Windows 7 out in retail, I don't think anything else is coming for XP users though.
Good thing I don't even use Internet Explorer as my primary browser then. Long live my mighty combo of Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror!
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
they would simply stop accepting the browser at ALL OF THEIR SITES. If they did that, nearly all of the rest of the world would follow suite. NOBODY in the development world wants this demoniacal abortion. BUT, while MS continues to accept, then everybody else is forced to accept it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't understand why dropping support would mean that IE 6 stops working. IE 6 will continue to work just as it always has unless Microsoft intentionally cripples it. Just because the Internet no longer supports IE 6 does not mean that IE 6 does not work.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
... so many /.ers don't RTFA, that the moderators have decided they don't even need to post a link to the FA!
My company works with several 3rd party vendors* who are locked into IE6. They haven't even ported their software to IE7, much less 8.
It's horrible. The good news is a couple of those 3rd party vendor programs do work in firefox.
*yeah, yeah. I know. It's a horrible business practice, but the good news for us and them is we're a rabbit's whisker away from dropping them for additional vendors.
Sent from your iPad.
I suspect that's the case for many people, at least in the US. It's on my company PC, which I have no control over. The scary part? I work for a gov't contractor. A big one. And the IT people have no interest whatsoever in trying something new.
Even my 11 year old laptop, which is still alive, runs FireFox on Win98. Not very quickly, mind you, but faster than it ran IE.
For reference, it's a Gateway (Gateway 2000 at the time) original Pentium 200 MHz "MMX" with 48 MB of RAM. And it only has a 10-base wired ethernet card anyway, so it's not like browser speed matters much.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Not exactly. IE6 is part of Windows XP. If XP is supported, so is IE6. That's basically what TFA says.
And yeah, i really wish XP will have dignified death, not like NT4 - which is still around :(
I find it sad that a decision by a single company can create small, flaming hoops for the Internet to jump through. I'm happy that the browser (r)evolution we're experiencing is helping this, though. With all this sudden competition, it's not only forcing the browsers to whip up into Interwebs standards but also get rid of the monopoly that Microsoft has over the browser market. Hopefully, we'll never be at this strange crossroads again. Gogo capitalism!
Hell, I'm amazed Microsoft doesn't just annoy the IE6'ers into submission. That doesn't seem out of their league.
I'm not a doctor, but I've seen one on TV.
Right, but any patches would not affect IE6 once IE6 drops off support. When MS drops support on a product, that means you don't get patches for even discovered and documented bugs.
Corporations would scream blue bloody murder.
The same corporations who cannot upgrade from IE6 because so many software vendors made web-enabled applications using then-current Microsoft tools that specifically took advantage of features in IE6 that are not carried forward to IE7 or IE8. Companies purchased these packages because they were Web-enabled, and therefore should be less sensitive to the version of the operating system that the client PCs ran on. Except that software created by Microsoft toolkits back in the early 2000s were NOT "Web Enabled", they were "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 Enabled".
So the companies now have to look forward to an upgrade to massively important and multi-user software packages like Siebel, because only the newer versions can run on a newer browser. But the newer version is not an in-place upgrade because packages like that tend to be integrated to other systems, not standalone apps. So you have companies running Windows 2000 desktops and IE6 because an upgrade to either XP or IE7+ will shatter compatibility.
Our company runs IE6 (but at least we are on XP SP2). If you try to use Firefox on the Intranet, a lot of bits don't work, and that is the primary reason we're told the company isn't going IE7 or better anytime soon. We have a massive Intranet that was all built using Microsoft tools, and upgrading it would be a monumental task.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
That's the point. IE 6 was designed to work with a specific set of web interfaces that Microsoft has limited control over. If websites stop using those interfaces, then all bets are off. IE 6 still works. It just doesn't work with modern standards that it was never designed to work with.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
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Quite to the contrary. Microsoft makes it very difficult for users to upgrade to the latest version. FireFox and Opera both still support the current versions of their browsers on Windows 2000. Yet Microsoft had dropped Windows 2000 from their list of OS's supported by their newer browsers long ago, even when Windows 2000 was supported by Microsoft.
Have you ever wondered why all the other browser developers can support Windows 2000 while Microsoft is completely unable to? I mean, if the Microsoft engineers say they want to make it easy for people to upgrade, then I'm sure there must be some fundamental technical issue with IE that stymies the engineers, and prevents them from doing what they say they want to do. What is the problem that prevents Microsoft from bringing newer versions of IE to Windows 2000?
As someone else mentioned, if you're still running Windows 2000 desktops, your support ends officially in 7/13/2010 if you are paying for extended support.
If your company is not already looking at what needs fixed to upgrade from IE6 and at least defining a plan of action complete with cost estimates, they are going to get screwed.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Not exactly. IE6 is part of Windows XP. If XP is supported, so is IE6. That's basically what TFA says.
And yeah, i really wish XP will have dignified death, not like NT4 - which is still around :(
What's wrong with NT4? By the time of SP6a, it was a mature, stable OS. The only reason my former company moved away from NT was due to lack of drivers for newer PCs. The OS was stable and the number of system crashes per month for 250 system was less than 5. We kept track to remind people of how bad the Macs were that we replaced, which was a MUCH higher number. This was back in the late 1990's.
And now, XP is a mature, stable OS worth keeping around. It will run on tiny video cards, relatively slow processors and enjoys a level of driver support that surpasses NT4 by a wide margin.
Vista is heralded as the next great OS, and turned out to be ME with an new interface.
Windows 7 is just a redress of the Vista kernal and with a few new tricks added.
I will stick with XP for another few years, thank you very much. I prefer stable and predictable over cutting-edge. Call it an economically-wise business decision...uptime = people working.
Bearded Dragon
Think about that...
Ubuntu LTS is to be supported for 5 years, but only with limited backported software, not even the most important software package like major upgrade of gnome, firefox, open office are always available in the backport repro.
while Every release of Windows is LTS, and as long as 10 years! Also, new core software upgrade are usually offered even after a long time. (IE8, Live Messenger 9, Office 2007 on XP, a 6 years old product!)
On Linux? Even if you get the source, the chance of compiling the latest software bits on a 6 years old box is unlikely...Either kernel updates are needed, or glibc, or missing libraries, or the dependent libraries needs new GCC...usually end up upgrading GCC+Glibc+Kernel+whatsoever to get some new software. Or to put it simply, either spend a few days to figure that out, compile and install the dependencies else where, or to upgrade the distro.
Hey but I just want that new software, but keeping all my old software and configure...they didn't break and I don't want to touch them.
Besides unstable hardware support, I have been using Linux for 10+ years and this is the single thing that I hate most...when will debian package support libraries of different version installed side by side...?
Think about it...I think Microsoft is really doing an excellent job here. Although DLL Hell induced problem sometimes do happen (but a lot less since XP...), but still when they are still adding new features for a 6 years old OS. What else can you expect?
Fortunately, at my current company, it's "only" the Intranet. Most of the important stuff happens on mainframe and midrange machines, and the greenscreen telnet apps really don't care what OS they run on. (grin)
But I did work for a large multinational when they were implementing Siebel, and the Siebel guys all had to get their brand-new laptops reloaded with Windows 2000 because Siebel "broke" in XP, even on XP running IE6. This was 4 years ago, in 2005.
I don't know if Siebel got their issues with XP and/or more current browsers worked out, but a lot of businesses probably don't want to pay for an upgrade on that scale even if it is an in-place upgrade.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!
Here goes: "I don't want to upgrade from IE6 for one very simple reason: I don't want to install IE6 in the first place."
Do I win?