Why You Can't Pry IE6 Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands

Esther Schindler writes "It's easy for techies to enumerate the reasons that Internet Explorer 6 should die. Although the percentage of users who use IE6 has dropped to about 12%, many web developers are forced to make sure their websites work with the ancient browser (which presents additional problems, such as keeping their companies from upgrading to newer versions of Windows). But rather than indulge in an emotional rant, in 'Why You Can't Pry IE6 Out Of Their Cold Dead Hands,' I set about to find out why the companies that remain standardized on IE6 haven't upgraded (never mind to what). In short: user and business-owner ignorance and/or disinterest in new technology; being stuck with a critical business app that relies on IE6; finding a budget to update internal IE6 apps that will work the same as they used to; and keeping users away from newer Web 2.0 sites."

Comments

I Use IE6

[dcollins]

I still use IE6 on my personal desktop (Win2000) at home. I've tried others, and keep coming back to IE6 for a few reasons:

(1) It starts instantaneously, while any other browser takes a distractingly long time to start up.
(2) It's the only browser I can get to put all the toolbars I need (including address bar) on one single row under the title bar.
(3) Any other browser insists on throwing tabbed-browsing in my face at some point.

I've never had a virus as long as I've been running it. I understand that it's not standards-compliant, and I'm highly sympathetic to those who need to deal with that pain, but I personally don't. Sites that stop working with IE6 I just go "eh", and stop visiting. It's lightweight and snappy-responsive, and I can't bring myself to let go of that.

Just don't use IE6 on the internet

[Skapare]

If they want to use it internally, that's fine. Just don't use it for general net access. To accomplish that end, web sites should reject attempts to access using IE6 to make it so unworkable as an internet browser that people/companies will at least let their users that should be accessing the internet have an alternate better browser to do so with (never mind what that is). Redirect to a browser upgrade page or something.