YouTube To Kill IE6 Support On March 13

Joel writes "Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website: 'Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers.'"

Comments

Finally

[Dyinobal]

And everyone lets out a collective exhale "Finally".

Re:Finally

[Tigersmind]

And everyone lets out a collective exhale "Finally".

FINALLY

Re:Finally

[Yvan256]

FINALLY

Re:Finally

[shentino]

__try_finally

Re:Finally

[iloveterminals]

about time support for this browser stops

Re:Finally

[smooth123]

Isn't youtube a little late to the celebration, does it warrant special news...

Re:Finally

[piripiri]

Well I'll say "Finally" only when no one is using IE6 anymore.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes it does... because "everybody" uses Youtube to some extent.

Smaller websites can re-direct IE6 users away, but it doesn't make a big dent unless a large website starts prohibiting IE6 users.

Reading the article however, it looks like IE6 users will still be able to view videos.

Pish.

Re:Finally

[Gruff1002]

RIP IE6

Re:Finally

[delinear]

Yeah, it looks like any impact will be extremely minimal, at least in the very short term. The only way we'll ever be rid of this thrice cursed browser is when enough company execs can't get their daily fill of kitten jumping into box videos and start asking their IT guys why.

Re:Finally

[pedestrian crossing]

RIP IE6

Burn in HELL, IE6!!

Re:Finally

[nagnamer]

Yeah, it looks like any impact will be extremely minimal, at least in the very short term. The only way we'll ever be rid of this thrice cursed browser is when enough company execs can't get their daily fill of kitten jumping into box videos and start asking their IT guys why.

IIRC, support for IE6 will be phased from most (if not all) Google services including Google Apps, Gmail, etc. So there's still a good chance. Also, this now gives an excuse for a lot of people, preferably including other big players, to do the same, which will hopefully happen sooner than later.

Re:Finally

[tsa]

FINALLY!

Re:Finally

[jellomizer]

For most companies if Google does it then it is good enough for your company too.

I have wanted to do AJAX based apps for a Long time, however I got a lot of push back. When Google Maps came out I could say that Google is using it. And it gave me a green light to improve my Web Applications.

That same with IE 6 now that Google isn't supporting it, you can make a case that you shouldn't need to do so as well, And your Boss should be happy to upgrade, Either to Firefox if he is still on Windows 2000 or lower. Or finally push to IE 8. That is unless you work for GE

Re:Finally

[BrokenHalo]

When I'm firing up a new system that has only just been connected to the internet, often to download graphics drivers, my first choice of browser is always lynx or links. IE of any version has never been an option.

Re:Finally

[Hadlock]

Finally, but in replacement, Youtube is likely upgrading to their new "beta" interface they've been testing for quite some time, which has (IMO) really poor functionality, and looks like the Hulu.com's interface designer's scrappy younger brother designed (which is totally unusable, btw). No wonder they're dropping IE6 support; the new interface is such shit IE6 probably can't handle it.

Re:Finally

[drej]

EXACTLY ...d'oh!

Re:Finally

[robinstar1574]

Eat my Burning turds, IE6

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the shitty-ness of the interface has nothing to do with IE6 working on it or not. Expecting anything "standard" to work out as specified in the "standards" is what breaks IE6 compatibility.

Re:Finally

[kenj0418]

I'm sticking with IE6 as long as my favorite site still supports it: http://www.saveie6.com/

Re:Finally

[KlomDark]

You are a real man indeed! You should be so proud of yourself!

Re:Finally

[commodore64_love]

My laptop stopped booting last week, so I reached for my old XP Restore CD to bring it back to life. Then I clicked on the default browser on my freshly-revived computer - the little blue "e" - and waited for it to open up.

"INTERNET EXPLORER 6"

Hello old friend. This machine also has Netscape on it - remember Netscape? Ironically my Netscape ISP doesn't work with the Netscape browser. How weird is that. It keeps telling me that it only "web accelerator only works with" IE.

Re:Finally

[commodore64_love]

"These days we are inundated with bloated web browsers that overcomplicate our lives."

Well they do have a point. I have to close and reopen my browser at least two times a day in order to clear-out the RAM, due to modern browsers ridiculous bloat. I thought this was funny though: "You have been mislead by a vocal minority and are using opera, which is clearly an inferior web browser to IE6."

Opera 10.10 is actually very friendly to machines with limited memory.
Or limited dialup/cellphone speeds (Opera Turbo).

Re:Finally

[commodore64_love]

Netscape was always better than IE6. Or IE 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1. In fact it was so good, they ripped-out the core code and renamed it Firefox. :-)

Re:Finally

[RealGrouchy]

RIP IE6

Burn in HELL, IE6!!

Okay, I ripped iexplore.exe and burned it to a CD. Now what?

- RG>

Re:Finally

[ross.w]

Those same IT guys that have blocked YouTube to preserve bandwidth and impose IE6 so they don't have to update the Company Intranet?

IE6 is here to stay :(

Re:Finally

[bertoelcon]

Okay, I ripped iexplore.exe and burned it to a CD. Now what?

- RG>

Either take a blowtorch to the cd or place it in a bonfire, and try not to breathe the fumes.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally is right.
Even my grandmother, who needs Post Its stuck to her monitor to remember how to do things on her computer, has the most recent IE.

Re:Finally

[raphael75]

Who cares? If they want to continue using a Model T, they can . The rest of the Internet will advance and they'll be left hopelessly behind.

Re:Finally

[Virtual_Raider]

What I find hilarious is that on the next day, people are going to try to get to youtube and they are simply not going to believe the explanation because it will be bloody FIRST OF APRIL. Yeah, that was well thought-out.

w00t!

[somersault]

With Youtube comes great power :)

Re:w00t!

[Mashdar]

And industry driven HTML5 standards :(

Re:w00t!

[nagnamer]

And industry driven HTML5 standards :(

Oh yeah. I'm not particularly fond of that one. Although some of the things they are talking about will be great, like offline data storage.

Re:w00t!

[Elektroschock]

As long as html5 is patent-free, ok. Otherwise it is clearly unacceptable.

Re:w00t!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're... against... HTML5 standards? My first reaction is to scream DIAF, but I'll ask nicely first: what you could you possibly not be "particularly fond of" with respect to the Internet finally working as it fucking should?

Re:w00t!

[KiltedKnight]

Simply put, the H.264 Codec

Re:w00t!

[nagnamer]

Simply put, the H.264 Codec

Hardware support for H.264 comes to mind...

Re:w00t!

[Nadaka]

personally, I am not fond of html5 either. The competing standard XHTML 2 is better (for instance is specifies the DOM structure, effectively eliminating most cross browser javascript issues), but it breaks backwards compatibility. With HTML 5 we will still need to use cross browser compatibility libraries or custom javascript for every nit picking issue with each browsers DOM model.

Re:w00t!

[TheRaven64]

Something of a non-sequiteur, as the H.264 CODEC is not part of, nor mandated by, the HTML5 spec.

Re:w00t!

[compro01]

That is why the the "industry driven" bit is there. It's an incompletely specified spec, which leaves it to be filled in with industry "standards".

Re:w00t!

[TheRaven64]

Like HTML 1-4 then. They don't specify formats for images, for example. PNG, GIF, and JPEG are all outside of the HTML spec.

There is such a thing as scope, when it comes to specs. Some things do not belong in a spec.

Re:w00t!

[compro01]

Yes, and some of us remember the patent debacle with GIF. H.264 would be substantially worse (the incorrect popular impression of website owners being charged for GIF licensing would be correct for H.264) and there is a lot more time left on those patents (which won't expire until 2028) than Unisys had with LZW.

Re:w00t!

[commodore64_love]

>>>Yes, and some of us remember the patent debacle with GIF. H.264 would be substantially worse

Then don't use it.
Simple as that.

Re:w00t!

[petermgreen]

Like HTML 1-4 then. They don't specify formats for images, for example. PNG, GIF, and JPEG are all outside of the HTML spec.
Indeed it didn't, lukilly image formats were a more settled issue than video formats and had less patent issues (yes there was a patent on gif but it was widely belived not to apply to decoders and unisys never pressed that issue, there were also some somewhat dubious jpeg patents that came to light just before they expired but thats nothing compared to H.264 which has shitloads of patents surrounding it) so gif jpeg and png were all widely implemented in both open and closed source browsers and there was no problem.

There is such a thing as scope, when it comes to specs.
There is, and when you define a spec it's up to you how you define it's scope. But if you define it too narrowly and don't tell people what to use to fill in the gaps then they will fill them in in the way that suits them and you can end up with multiple incompatible systems.

Which is what is happening with the html 5 video stuff. On the one hand you have mozilla who refuse to enter into a patent license agreement that they belive violates the principles of opensource. On the other hand you have nokia and apple and youtube refusing to implement threora (nokia claim it's a submarine patent risk) .

The HTML 5 guys were* stuck between a rock and a hard place. IF they mandate a format** they alienate one of the camps. If they don't then they produce an incomplete standard and websites who want to support all the clients will have to double encode thier content and potentially pay h.264 licensing fees in future.

*Note: afaict HTML5 isn't actually out yet so this could still change. I'm pretty sure there was at one point a draft HTML 5 spec that mandatated theora support.

**To avoid any ambiguity I consider a format to be the combination of everything that goes into defining the file. For a video format that would be the video codec, the audio codec and the container format.

Re:w00t!

[DaVince21]

You're... against... HTML5 standards? My first reaction is to scream DIAF, but I'll ask nicely first: what you could you possibly not be "particularly fond of" with respect to the Internet finally working as it fucking should?

The "industry driven" part.

It's about goddamned time

[Anonymous Coward]

Why'd they wait this long? Stupid niggardly corporations can't even update a free browser and the rest of the world is supposed to accomodate them? Yeah right.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid mods, read first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_"niggardly"

Re:It's about goddamned time

[ArsenneLupin]

You sir are a spineless coward who cares only about what the crowd is doing

I know I shouldn't be feeding the trolls... but apparently, you too care about what the crowd is thinking. Or why else did you chose not to log in?

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Gr8Apes]

I'm guessing there's a reason they posted AC....

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Parent UP!

If you want to say stingy, say stingy. Quite frankly, if you expect to use a word like niggardly, regardless of its etymology, and not be downmodded, then you're the one who's stupid.

This sentiment is ignorant, and promotes the 'ignorant is cool' wave that is sweeping our nation.

Anon because I will get modded down. See above.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Stormwatch]

People modded this down? What a bunch of naggers.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like God was niggardly when He gave you your IQ points.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Anonymous Coward]

If you mod down the word because you don't know what it means and because it "sounds like" a politically incorrect word, then maybe you're a product of public education and you should do something to improve your literacy level.

That you gradeeated the sixth grade doesn't make you a genius, Jethro.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[couchslug]

"Stupid mods, read first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_"niggardly"

To quote a famous African-American actor:

"ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO-YOU-SPEAK-IT?"

Re:It's about goddamned time

[amicusNYCL]

Someone who thinks "niggardly" is a racist or racially-motivated term is wrong, that's just a fact

That's correct, it's a fact.

You sir are a spineless coward who cares only about what the crowd is doing, not about what's right or correct. People like you are responsible for most of the injustice in the world.

That's a nice projection, but you're missing the point. You (I assume I'm still talking to the same person who posted originally, but I can't tell because, ironically enough, you are an Anonymous Coward) meant to describe Microsoft as stingy or cheap. You could have used either of those words, but instead you chose a word that, at the very least, you should have known that some people would confuse with a racial slur. You should have known that, but you chose to use that word anyway. You could have gotten your point across better if you had used "cheap" or "stingy", but look what happened: instead of talking about Microsoft or IE, now we're focused on the word you chose to use. Instead of effectively communicating your message, you caused confusion. That was the point I was making, not defending anyone, nothing to do with injustice or all of the problems in the world being my fault, just pointing out that if you were trying to achieve effective communication, you failed miserably.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[amicusNYCL]

There's nothing ignorant about promoting effective communication. The quality of one's writing improves as you are able to remove words or syllables and not lose any meaning. This:

Microsoft is niggardly

is less effective than this:

Microsoft is stingy

which is less effective than this:

Microsoft is cheap

All three of those mean the exact same thing, but the last one will be the most effective at communicating the message to the most people without causing confusion.

I guess you can see that as "ignorant is cool", but it's a basic tenet of effective technical writing.

Posted logged in, because I'm not scared of being modded down and I'm not going to hide.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not enough of a sheep to choose my words based on whether some ignorant twit is going to confuse them with other unrelated words. This is what you seem to have a problem with. You'd prefer that what I do be dictated by the most ignorant among us. That's absolutely backwards. The most ignorant should be following those wiser than them, as evidenced by adherence to factual reality and not "it sounds sorta like that", if in fact anyone is going to follow anyone else.

And you want to blame me for this instead of the ignorant people. Your real beef with me is that I'll call out their ignorance instead of trying to bow down to it. That's what makes you a spineless coward, and yes, not you personally but this mentality, your style of thinking, is why there's such injustice in the world. You are just one subscriber to that mentality, one of millions. You're a people pleaser.

Telling people who have done nothing wrong to alter their behavior in order to make ignorance more legitimate is the very root of most of society's injustice. Look at Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. A great deal of ignorance was institutionalized and sanctioned and defended by society, but we recognized that this didn't make it right. Good thing King wasn't a people pleaser, instead he actually had balls.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Z34107]

I'm not the Anonymous Coward(s) above. But, it seems the good Lord sure was niggardly in handing out English comprehension.

You make a good point about effective communication, that whatever message the original poster had was lost in confusion over his choice of words. You assume, however, that his target audience included the chronically ignorant.

Time we all learn to speak the King's English. And by the King's English, I mean Noah Webster's.

If anyone reading my post finds the word "niggardly" offensive, know that I'm sniggering at you.

Now dammit, mod me and this entire thread off-topic.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[amicusNYCL]

I'm not enough of a sheep to choose my words based on whether some ignorant twit is going to confuse them with other unrelated words. This is what you seem to have a problem with.

I'm just going for clarification in communication. Whenever you use a word that is simply not in common use, regardless of what the word is, you're a less effective communicator than you would have been had you used a word that more people are familiar with. Like I said, that's a basic tenet of good technical writing. Again, this has nothing to do with injustice in the world, this is about communicating clearly. You can insult me all you want, you can imagine I think however you want, but at the end of the day the only thing I'm arguing in favor of is clear communication.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[amicusNYCL]

You assume, however, that his target audience included the chronically ignorant.

Are you assuming it didn't? His comment did get modded down, after all, and it was a perfectly cromulent comment. Not only on-topic, but also in line with the common group think, and even accurate. Yet, even now, it's currently marked as flamebait.

So yes, I would say his audience certainly includes the chronically ignorant.

Re:It's about goddamned time

[Anonymous Coward]

What pray tell is so niggardly (stingy, miserly, whatever) about offering a free service in a half-assed manner? Is the vast majority of open source also niggardly? I do acknowledge that not keeping IE6 updated was problematic. So I would understand if say a government body ordered Microsoft to release the code to third parties so it's holes could be patched, or if third party browsers got funding to oust IE6, or heck if IE6 was outright banned legally, but forcing anybody (even Microsoft) to augment a freely offered service for the good of the community doesn't strike me as a good thing.

One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

What if Microsoft was to phase out support on Bing for an old version of Firefox. Would that be MS abusing it's monopoly?

Re:One has to wonder

[Tigersmind]

I doubt it. Mozilla may be the first to tell you to upgrade to a current version.

Re:One has to wonder

[Elektroschock]

Microsoft does not support Opera.

Nevertheless, I wonder if there is some cut and paste code to automatically ban ie6 users from your website and redirect them to a browser choice website.

Re:One has to wonder

[SlothDead]

bing does not have a monopoly

Re:One has to wonder

[whisper_jeff]

I doubt anyone would be able to form a convincing argument that Google dropping support for a decade-old browser is any form of abuse of monopoly. They aren't forcing people to upgrade to _their_ browser - just a newer browser. IE7 or IE8 is fine with them.

Seriously, IE6 is a decade old. In internet years, that's about four or five generations old. It's time to drag corporations* into the modern age, even if they're kicking and screaming the entire way.

*After all, we know it's only corporations that still use IE6 because nobody in their right mind _chooses_ to remain with IE6 on their personal computers.

Re:One has to wonder

[morari]

No. If it's an old version, chances are that the creators themselves aren't actively supporting or updating it anymore. If that's the case, why should everyone else continue to support it at their expense?

Besides, no one would actually miss Bing. :P

Re:One has to wonder

[fatherjoecode]

That would depend on the circumstances, but generally I'd say no. It would not be an abuse of its monopoly power. IE6 has been around since 2001 and the first version of FF was released in 2004. If Bing decided to drop support for FF v1.0 I don't see how that would be a problem.

Re:One has to wonder

[Yvan256]

• IE6 No More
• Stop Internet Explorer 6
• IE6 Update
• Bring Down IE6

etc.

Re:One has to wonder

[datapharmer]

well, yes you could do that but it is kind of mean. I prefer to give them a straight forward message with choices, such as this one: http://haystacksofgainesville.com/ (you will need to set your user agent to IE6 or use IE6 to see the message of course)

Re:One has to wonder

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that, with the version of Outlook Web Access that shipped with Exchange 2007, all browsers other than IE6+(including most recent versions of Firefox and Safari) are forced to use "Outlook Web Access Light", while IE has access to "Outlook Web Access Premium", I'm going to assume that MS is willing to risk it.

From a market perspective, they would be morons to lock out any potential customers; but you'd probably have to prove pretty deliberate malfeasance in order to get anything legally actionable, particularly if it involves support for browsers that aren't supported by their own producers anymore...

Re:One has to wonder

[sakdoctor]

Of which these sites are also registered:

• http://www.stopie7.com
• http://www.bringdownie7.com

If I was a proactive sort of person, I would register *ie8*.com from your list, because the day will come where history will repeat itself. Maybe register *ie9*.com too, if you want to be really forward planning.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether any whackjob would call it abuse or not, it raises the question: would anyone notice?

Bing has relatively few users. Likewise, old FF versions have relatively few users. And there's further selection bias against the intersection of those two small groups.

Nobody has made the horrifically stupid and fiduciarily irresponsible decision to pay extra in order to create intranet web apps that require users to use an old version of Firefox. The situation for IE6 is fundamentally different than every other browser in the history and breadth of the web. IE is one of Microsoft's lock-'em-into-a-legacy solutions, and a lot of incompetent planners happened to fall for that one.

We can only hope that someone learned the painfully obvious lesson. Of course, not everyone did. My own state government is spending tax dollars to develop NEW systems that are dependent on proprietary Microsoft locks, and it's pretty sad that no one is able to stop them.

Re:One has to wonder

[gmuslera]

If IE6 weren't from Microsoft, but still had the same endemic big security problems, being actively exploited from everywhere, not interest in fixes from the making company and being used still by 10-20% of internet, specially in the corporate world, probably Google would phase out the support anyway.

Regarding Microsoft/Bing, Firefox never had so big holes, and so actively exploited, like IE6. And anyway old versions have very low usage, and odds are high that that users dont visit bing (most of its niceties are based on silverlight, they are excluding browsers/OS already)

Also matter how much used is an old, insecure version, compared with another "players" of internet, like other browsers versions, or even old flash player versions. Only in IE the old, insecure and unmaintained version is widely used, in the others the most used versions are the latest or close enough, and without very big vulnerabilities anyway (ok, maybe with the exception of flash)

Re:One has to wonder

[delinear]

Even Microsoft want people to move away from IE6. Of course, they want them to move to IE7/8 which often means a Windows OS upgrade, but in either case I don't think they'll be too concerned by this (as far as I know they plan to drop security patch updates in three years anyway, so even if all the existing IE6 users switch to FF/Opera/Chrome/Safari, etc it will still be a good move in MS' view since they won't be hit with the negative publicity when they do stop patching exploits.

Re:One has to wonder

[datapharmer]

let me correct myself... You actually have to use IE6. I wasn't thinking when I was writing, I must need more coffee! To clarify how this works it just pulls in IE6 specific CSS which will render a big red message for IE6 users and leaves everyone else alone. I worked to maintain IE6 compatibility, but when I added the calendar, the javascript events cause the onhover workaround (an htc file) to stop working, meaning if you click on a calendar date it breaks navigation. I don't think it is fair for me to have to recode things for one 10-year-old browser when it works fine for everyone else.

Re:One has to wonder

[nagnamer]

Why not just register *ie*.(com|info|org|net)

Re:One has to wonder

[delinear]

It's not like they're even going to be preventing users with IE6 using the site (at least in the short to mid term), just not supporting them with additional features. I'm sure at the most basic level it will still allow users to go to the site and view videos.

Re:One has to wonder

[rmadmin]

No one in their right mind, except all the clueless users out there that haven't been forced into upgrades. I find customers running ie6 all the time, and I promptly run updates.

Re:One has to wonder

[nagnamer]

It's time to drag corporations* into the modern age, even if they're kicking and screaming the entire way.

It's just that the users will be the one that will be kicking and screaming. One of my colleagues was unable to play videos from YouTube, was frustrated, but assumed that there's no way of doing that. She didn't notice the (a) continue to video link, (b) upgrade to one of these comment. Someone should upgrade the users first. :D

Re:One has to wonder

[danbert8]

Oh yes, because Youtube working properly is a high priority at corporations. At my company we are forced to use IE6 (actually I use firefox portable with IEtab) because most of the internal websites don't render or work properly on any other browser. And they hate us using youtube anyway.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I do IT support for a state govt. We have tons of people still on IE6 and can't get permission to force everyone to 7 because of antiquated internal web apps that break. And no, we can't force them to fix it.

I'd like to see IE6 break in a major way just so we'd have a bigger stick to use in trying to get them to upgrade.

Re:One has to wonder

[Archangel Michael]

It's time to drag corporations* into the modern age, even if they're kicking and screaming the entire way.

Actually, this will most likely not have ANY affect on Corporate use of IE6, as most Corporation Masters hate things like YouTube as Time wasters. So it is with great glee that they will continue to demand using IE 6 for as long as they can.

Re:One has to wonder

[tepples]

What if Microsoft was to phase out support on Bing for an old version of Firefox.

That wouldn't be monopoly abuse. Firefox 3 is distributed for free as free software, and it runs even on Windows 2000 that can't run IE 7 or 8.

Re:One has to wonder

[nedlohs]

No, there would be no outcry if Microsoft Bing does not support Netscape 6. In fact, does it now?

Re:One has to wonder

[ElSupreme]

Uh ... it is really easy to install IE8 on XP.

This message is brought to you by both.

Re:One has to wonder

[jafiwam]

You should post that code all over the place. I'd love to have something like that, but don't have enough CSS knowledge to actually produce it.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymusing]

I work with a number of international nonprofits. Tracking data from their sites indicates that IE6 is still in use for 20-25% of their traffic. Admittedly, some of these sites get traffic from poorer countries where the technology is not at par with the U.S., but still... on those sites, we need to continue IE6 compatability.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

IE7, IE8. Yep 4-5 generations old.

Re:One has to wonder

[BrokenHalo]

Mozilla may be the first to tell you to upgrade to a current version.

Nobody would even notice. Does ANYBODY actually use Bing?

Re:One has to wonder

[jafiwam]

Except, that the time wasters themselves are the PHBs.

As a web guy forced to deal with this corporate bullshit, the excuse is always "we have critical apps" but nobody can ever name them.

The REAL reason is they have unpatched windows2000 servers with huge security holes in them, unpatched windows2000 workstations with huge security holes in them and they are either too stupid, lazy, or cheap to do anything about it.

So they continually foist "we need this" shit on everybody else.

The "need" for IE6 by most of them is a big fat lie.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel you, dude. Not in a creepy way. If we could get IE6 out of classrooms in my state, my dev job would be a Hell of a lot less annoying.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, I just got a threatening lawsuit letter about one of my registrations, bringdownscIEntology.com :(

Re:One has to wonder

[newdsfornerds]

Lots of people are lazy enough (and hate their computers enough) to ignore and reject all the updates offered. I see it all the time.

Re:One has to wonder

[clarkn0va]

Uh ... it is really easy to install IE8 on XP.

He didn't say otherwise, but merely that upgrading from IE6 "often means a Windows OS upgrade", which is true for anybody using Windows 2000.

Re:One has to wonder

[Crudely_Indecent]

Those kicking and screaming will be the employees at the corporations who're surfing YouTube instead of doing their work.

When the uproar finally reaches a volume that upper management can hear it, the first question will be "Why are you watching YouTube videos on our time?" That might be enough for the decision to be made that IE6 stays in order to make the employees more productive.

Seriously, if you're a corporate exec making the technology decisions and you're faced with the choice:
Upgrade the browsers and pay for development updates on an app that was designed for IE6.
or
Keep IE6, increase productivity and leave the technology in its current state.

I don't see this as being a good thing unless Microsoft does it. When the vendor says "we won't support it anymore, and you cannot buy a contract to extend support" more companies will upgrade.

Re:One has to wonder

[Archangel Michael]

You're right, but for the wrong reasons.

PHB are avert to change, and that is why you still have all those legacy systems in place. Those systems do exactly the same thing they did 10 years ago, and therefore "don't need to be changed".

At some level, they are right, but who wants to go back to DOS just because it did exactly what it was supposed to do?

The hardest thing an organization can do is "manage change", yet it is this "change" that drives innovation.

When I run into a PHB that is like that, I simply ask them if they are THAT opposed to innovation in all other areas of the enterprise, and mumble my answer ... "that explains a lot".

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Vampires

Re:One has to wonder

[cbhacking]

For the next version of Exchange supports the full OWA on all modern browsers (and IE6 for good measure). Pretty sure it doesn't actually work with Firefox 1.0, although I haven't tried.

Re:One has to wonder

[Killer Orca]

I do, but only for the sweet cashback, http://www.bing.com/shopping/pages/howtouse.aspx?FORM=R5FD2 ,actually I am just testing that out.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Redirecting me to a browser choice website for choosing IE 8 will simply result in me not using your website.

Re:One has to wonder

[asdf7890]

You might find http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/11/25/does-bing-offer-negative-cashback/?icid=sphere_newsaol_inpage_walletpop interesting with regard to Bing related "offers".

Re:One has to wonder

[marsu_k]

Didn't look at the site, but an easy way to trigger IE specific stuff (by version) is conditional comments.

Re:One has to wonder

[DarKnyht]

Windows 2000 reached end of life in 2005, so an upgrade probably would be a good thing since security issues are no longer being addressed for it.

Re:One has to wonder

[Elektroschock]

Who says that I want to support users of IE6? Just detect and redirect them. They can install IE8, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera whatever, and come back. IE6 users are invited to stay out.

Re:One has to wonder

[Richy_T]

Even patched 2k servers (or workstations) are still limited to IE6.

The only reason anyone on an NT based kernel isn't running IE7 or IE8 is Microsoft trying to strongarm people into OS upgrades. Too bad for them that Firefox has been working just fine for me for the past several years

Re:One has to wonder

[PetoskeyGuy]

When the uproar finally reaches a volume that upper management can hear it, the first question will be "Why are you watching YouTube videos on our time?"

It's the only way I can manage 80 hours a week with overtime. Not worried though, funnyordie still loves my old ass.

Re:One has to wonder

[Richy_T]

Yes, because running the latest cutting edge web browser (and the time and effort and risk and downtime involved in the accompanying OS upgrade) is essential to support running server applications whose codebase hasn't changed drastically in over a decade.

Re:One has to wonder

[Richy_T]

If it's anything like here, it's the upper management who are the first to scream when IT implements any content restrictions (Facebook, Youtube, ESPN) that IT implements (usually initiated by the request of, yes, upper management)

Re:One has to wonder

[Richy_T]

I use IE tab in Firefox for owa. I'm sure I used to get the full version of owa but recently it has only been offering me the light version. It's definitely an IE tab though. This is with IE6 on Win2k.

Re:One has to wonder

[Snover]

OWA Premium for Exchange 2010 only runs on IE7+, Fx3+, and Safari 3+. No IE6. [source]

Re:One has to wonder

[PetoskeyGuy]

Obviously I meant without overtime. And I'm on lunch at the moment

Re:One has to wonder

[TavisJohn]

You sir have not been paying attention. There are MANY people who have stuck with IE6. It is sad, but true.

Re:One has to wonder

[mister_playboy]

Firefox and Opera both support Windows 2000 with their latest versions.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

"What if Microsoft was to phase out support on Bing for an old version of Firefox."

What is Bing? Is that a website?

Re:One has to wonder

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

If that old version of Firefox happened to have particularly bad support for web standards which caused developers problems to no end, then such a decision would sound OK to me.

Re:One has to wonder

[mini me]

I say just let IE6 users use the website in whatever way IE6 decides to render the page. If it looks funny and half the features don't work, who cares? Someone still using IE6 at this point in time certainly won't.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

You should post that code all over the place. I'd love to have something like that, but don't have enough CSS knowledge to actually produce it.

You can use CSS to set the opacity of background message alerts to zero. All of the other browsers will honour that message accordingly:

.ie_only_msg {
-moz-opacity:0;
-khtml-opacity: 0;
opacity: 0;
}

Job done.

Re:One has to wonder

[mini me]

we need to continue IE6 compatability.

Why? The cool thing about the web is that it naturally degrades for older software. Sure, someone using IE6 may not be able to see every whiz-bang feature you offer on your site, but they will still be able to access what is important: The content.

There is no need to explicitly support IE6, but don't block it either. Let users use the site as IE6 gives it to them.

Re:One has to wonder

[thetoadwarrior]

You can still use Firefox and aren't tied to a MS browser so no. It's just sensible to force the tight ward companies and jerk too afraid of changing their computer to move forward and stop holding us back.

Re:One has to wonder

[thetoadwarrior]

Actually it is. The browser will be more secure which will be better for the network. Your decade old server app should be coded in such a way that the browser doesn't matter. If not, you're fucked eventually.

Re:One has to wonder

[thetoadwarrior]

Poor people can't afford free browsers?

Re:One has to wonder

[Jedi Alec]

Yes, because god forbid people that use another browser but have their userstring set to IE6 to appease *insert legacy app here* could visit your website...

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymusing]

Poor people may be still be running Windows 98. They could download Firefox 2, or some version of Opera, but they may also be running on a dirt-slow 56K connection.

Re:One has to wonder

[Anonymusing]

There is no need to explicitly support IE6, but don't block it either. Let users use the site as IE6 gives it to them.

I count that in my phrase "continue IE6 compatability." Adding new features might actively break that compatibility; we have to make sure it doesn't, and that the site is still reasonably usable with IE6.

Re:One has to wonder

[mdwh2]

IE7 was released in October 2006, same time as Firefox 2. It would be equivalent to requiring Firefox 2 or above.

Re:One has to wonder

[petermgreen]

No it didn't, that was just when it moved from mainstream support to extended support (which XP is also in now BTW). Win2K is still in extended support (though not for much longer).

Re:One has to wonder

[indi0144]

I find IE6 UPdate the best option, pretty simple and straigtforward. And with good wording you can pass the blame on Microsoft (because we all know dumb visitors will blame your page and the guy who made it) Lucky me I just have 5% visitors using that shit but I also have a weblog where I post video tutorials teaching the people how to upgrade or change browsers. Been fine, people thank me on the youtube and blog comments.

Don't just tell the people they are retarded and to GTFO. Explain without zealotry and provide a guide, they will follow the advice.

Or you can be a dick: Google Images "Joe Lifrieri + IE6 splashpages" He deleted them from his blog but they were, humm NSFW.

Re:One has to wonder

[indi0144]

Seconded, useragent does not work in that page, actually crashed svchost.dll on my win2k machine (looking for an infection now just because I'm too paranoid).. red background and all, less effective than ie6update. Why I use win2k? You want a more realistic test machine for a website? the only good browser in 2k it's Opera it can tame slashdot full javascrapt on a P3.

Re:One has to wonder

[indi0144]

Then why I am being nagged by the Windows Update to restart this toaster? I mean, I received the Aurora exploit patch like 4 hours before that it was available for XP.

Re:One has to wonder

[Richy_T]

Exactly. If the browser doesn't matter, there's no business case to upgrade.

Re:One has to wonder

[thetoadwarrior]

That is only true if your company doesn't care about security. A company shouldn't take on bleeding edge technology but it shouldn't be using outdated technology either. I think this absolutely true for something that connects to the internet and is targeted by so many attacks.

Re:One has to wonder

[thetoadwarrior]

Unfortunately where I lived in the US I was forced to have 56k and I still managed to keep my browser updated even if my connection wasn't full a full 56k connection which could be often during certain times of the year thanks to the line being poorly patched by Verizon and susceptible to interference during rainy periods.

It's very easy to leave the computer downloading at night or something while you do something much more fun than stare at a download bar.

Yes there are still a few people left on Windows 98 but you can't expect the rest of the world to stand still for you. Especially when you can get Linux for free to replace it.

Dead at last!

[Mantis8]

IE6 does not even deserve a funeral, so why mention it's death? Let this browser die and be forgotten forever.

Re:Dead at last!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

To gloat is human...

Re:Dead at last!

[Anonymous Coward]

As with Shakespeare you must experience it in the original Klingon to fully appreciate it.

Good Riddance!

[whisper_jeff]

As a designer who has been leaping through hoops the past couple weeks getting a website IE6 compliant because the client insists on still using the browser, I say GOOD RIDDANCE!! The sooner we can drive IE6 from the corporate landscape and force people to upgrade to a browser that isn't a decade old and out of date, all the better.

Re:Good Riddance!

[sakdoctor]

The problem is merely one of semantics.

IE6 == web browser // Major problem
IE6 != web browser AND IE6 == Corporate network app viewer // No problem

Re:Good Riddance!

[rvw]

IE6 == web browser // Major problem
IE6 != web browser AND IE6 == Corporate network app viewer // No problem

Just use Firefox or Chrome + IETab. I don't get it why those big corporations don't understand this.

Re:Good Riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a designer who has been leaping through hoops the past couple weeks getting a website IE6 compliant because the client insists on still using the browser, I say GOOD RIDDANCE!! The sooner we can drive IE6 from the corporate landscape and force people to upgrade to a browser that isn't a decade old and out of date, all the better.

Then you will be jumping through hoops for another 4 or 5 years while accretion kills brand new XP machines. Nothing else big enough is stating that your browser must be upgraded; most of the internet fails silently (if your browser is Netscape 4, you actually see text that is supposed to be commented scripts.) and if it doesn't, it certainly won't tell Joe User where to download newer browsers. I believe bank sites and webmail (including even MS Outlook webmail) is guilty of not putting links at all.

Now, in the user world, PC purchases, accretion and old PC deaths requiring replacements will drive down XP installs, with IE6 dragging right along. Once corporations spend more and more time seeing Windows 7 and adopting it as an OS, due to the above or to the need to support new corporate hardware (a la USB support for Windows 98) then the need to dump that rusty XP image will increase exponentially.

Youtube doesn't mean crap; it is nothing to the American corporate world because it's one of the first things proxies block. You can't miss what you never "met" and corporate drones will keep working on their rusty IE6 apps till Windows 7 or 8 pulls the plug on allowing an outdated browser to be installed. Hell, Vista has IE7 by default, but it was never adopted. My long estimate above is because it will take long before corporations and users start realizing that Flash 2015 or some other year coming soon will follow suit and phase out support for IE6, which came out in 2001 anyway. Mind you, we'll have IE10 by then, and corporations will have started to move on to .NET or some similar app reconfiguration since the economic crisis will be a thing of the past.

Re:Good Riddance!

[Jugalator]

Good riddance? Sounds like you assume this means more than it does. Google won't stop IE6 users on YouTube. It's about future features that may not work.

Re:Good Riddance!

[spartacus_prime]

Because if they implemented that, they would have to train every user on how to properly use the alternative browser. Granted, the younger employees might not have such a tough time using it, but for people who have used IE since the beginning, the transition would be problematic and take up more time (and money) than any sensible corporation would want to use when they could just stick with IE6.

Next up, IE7

[sakdoctor]

IE7 is almost as much of an albatross as IE6 was.
CSS support is such, that if you want pixel perfect layout, you are looking at a seperate style sheet; and if you just serve the standards compliant sheet, your page will look like ass.

Update all "ie6 must die" campaigns, to "ie7 must die".

Re:Next up, IE7

[delinear]

The benefit of IE7 is that at least the upgrade path is simpler, since it can be pushed through the windows update process, so when MS finally gets on board with CSS3/HTML5 (hopefully IE9, but we've been burned before), maybe it'll decide to flick the switch and bring everyone up to date.

Re:Next up, IE7

[bigblackcar]

Try using a reset stylesheet, it helps a lot with IE7. I've recently crosstested a site created with a reset stylesheet and the customizations for IE7 were negligible...

Re:Next up, IE7

[rvw]

IE7 is almost as much of an albatross as IE6 was.

The benefit of IE7 is that it doesn't support IE6 apps, and there are no IE7-specific apps like with IE6. So upgrading to IE8 or IE9 etc won't be such a problem.

Re:Next up, IE7

[sakdoctor]

Don't get your hopes up for IE9.

All IE versions including IE8 have a subtle knife to hold back web progress. IE doesn't style unknown elements without the hideous HTML5 shiv hack.

Re:Next up, IE7

[newdsfornerds]

How about, "IE must die?" I know I'm being silly but still. All I ever use IE for is updating my WinXP virtual machine, which I keep around just in case my next gig requires it.

Re:Next up, IE7

[Hurricane78]

Exactly my thought. Just that I include every IE ever with the Trident engine.

I will only let MS off the hook, if they do a complete rewrite of that mess.

The reason? Because Trident is a MS-typical upside-down pyramid. You know, like Windows ME. Or MS Office.
It desperately needs a redesign of the core architecture.

But I’m fair. If MS really does that, they will get my respect. As that new engine would most likely blow even Firefox out of the water. (Gecko still is way too close to Netscape Navigator 4, for my taste.)

(Disclaimer: I use Firefox, Opera, and sometimes have to use IE for testing.)

Re:Next up, IE7

[mxh83]

IE9 will NOT be standards compliant. Haven't you figured it out yet? That is their business model.

Re:Next up, IE7

[Just Some Guy]

IE7 is almost as much of an albatross as IE6 was.

Yeah, but it's chained much more lightly. Upgrading from IE7 to IE8+ or Firefox or Chrome or Safari is much easier than upgrading from IE6 to IE7. Once you've gotten over breaking backward compatibility, the options are a lot better.

Re:Next up, IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

Might amuse you to know dean edwards has an updated version of IE8.js - IE9.js

Fixes things still missing in IE8 like, for example, :last-child and :nth-child

Re:Next up, IE7

[BenoitRen]

Gecko still is way too close to Netscape Navigator 4, for my taste.

What are you talking about? Netscape 4 barely knew any CSS, for one.

Re:Next up, IE7

[BenoitRen]

pixel perfect layout

If you want to be standards compliant, you'll throw away the outdated notion of a pixel-perfect lay-out. It's all about flexible lay-outs.

Re:Next up, IE7

[TavisJohn]

Wanting to kill IE6 makes sense.. However wanting to kill IE7 is just short sighted. There are several apps that are not compatable with IE8. Pro Tools for example will not function if IE8 is installed. But works fine when the system has IE7.

Re:Next up, IE7

[KlomDark]

Amen brother! Now if we could just get rid of all the sucky "web designers" with their pre-historic web concepts.

"Here's a cool picture of a web page I made with Dreamweaver, now you have to make it work for real, and don't take to long and it has to look exactly like my picture." - I got so sick of that crap. Little newb idiots that don't get the concept of liquid layout and insist on "pixel perfect".

Re:Next up, IE7

[KlomDark]

Weird, all my Steinberg software works just fine with IE8 on my machine. Sounds like a Pro Tools problem or I just got trolled.

Re:Next up, IE7

[Randle_Revar]

But IE7 started shrinking fast almost as soon as IE8 came out.Those people who where willing and able to move to IE7 are apparently are willing and able to move to IE8.

Re:Next up, IE7

[nine-times]

Is IE8 much better? I haven't done any meaningful web design in the past several years, so I really don't know.

Re:Next up, IE7

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Those two concepts are far from mutually exclusive. Pixel perfect means you can have flexible layouts that don't do unpredictable things because the rendering engine's calculations were off.

Re:Next up, IE7

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I'm afraid you're a bit behind the times. Any decent web dev these days can create flexible and scalable layouts, but that doesn't mean they don't care about doing it right and getting things to line up properly too.

Re:Next up, IE7

[BenoitRen]

A pixel perfect lay-out usually means that the position of everything is specified in pixels, so it's not scalable to different screen resolutions. It's not about having consistent rendering results.

Re:Next up, IE7

[Ltap]

Yes. You can tell someone who is bad at web design because of the way he formats ebooks - a lot of people try to overload the formatting and use absolute hr tags (providing a specific length). Someone who can format an (ePub, especially, since it's in XHTML 1.1 Strict) ebook properly is usually a good web designer, since they can make something look good on a smartphone, a PDA, a PC, an ebook reader... they have to be some of the most versatile things around.

Re:Next up, IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

**applause**

Re:Next up, IE7

[joost]

Psst, I will tell you a little secret. Pixel-perfect PSD to HTML does exist, in fact once you've seen how it works it really is quite easy to accomplish. Use a good css reset, use an IE stylesheet with a few basic tweaks like zoom, and you're golden. Accessible markup, nothing table-based, liquid layout with all the graceful degradation you can handle. And still literally exactly pixel perfect. Companies like xhtmlized do this for a living, and for a price you cannot beat. (I am not affiliated, just a happy customer)

Re:Next up, IE7

[shutdown -p now]

The problem with pixel-perfect is that it doesn't scale, literally - what if I'm viewing it on a device with 300dpi (say, N900)? I don't want to read your 9px text with a microscope - which is why you should use pt (or em, or whatever - any unit which can adapt to the physical resolution of client's screen).

Re:Next up, IE7

[Anonymous Coward]

That's easy to say until you work for a salty old hag who goes ballistic because the layout fluidly stretches across the page, and DEMANDS it look exactly like the pdf source file regardless of resolution.

Re:Next up, IE7

[whovian]

If you want to be standards compliant, you'll throw away the outdated notion of a pixel-perfect lay-out. It's all about flexible lay-outs.

Unfortunately some web authors base their layout on the full screen width rather than on the browser's usable window width, thereby causing us to widen the browser window.

 

Re:Next up, IE7

[TavisJohn]

It is a ProTools issue, they are not as fast at updating as they should be. ProTools does not work well on Vista, and does not work on Windows 7.

However that does not make my comment any less valid.

Re:Next up, IE7

[toddestan]

I kind of doubt Microsoft will release IE9 for Windows XP, kind of like how Windows 2000 got cut off after IE6 SP1. So I'm going to guess we'll be stuck with IE8 for a good long time.

IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[wintercolby]

IE 6 will still be alive (and unfortunately not so well) in the corporate workplace all over the nation. In fact many companies are also breathing a sigh of relief along with us techies, but for different reasons. They don't want their users watching videos while they should be working. They are very likely happy that YouTube won't be supporting a browser that many of their critical one off, undersupported, buggy, POS (both versions of the acronym apply) IE 6 only apps do.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, lots of IT managers are waiting for this kind of announcement to make the switch. They have to respond to it, because it becomes a political issue. Users are always looking to get the latest and greatest, and IT is constantly putting the brake on new ideas in their perception. Upgrading the browsers is a relatively cheap way to put something fresh on the desktop.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[Yvanhoe]

Then they should mandate Lynx

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[chill]

Not really. I've recently worked for/with a couple of large companies (100,000+ employees) that still included IE6 on XP SP 3 to support some legacy apps. They *ALSO* included Firefox -- or a link to download it internally -- for everything else.

I've seen very few places in the last couple of years that mandated IE6 and IE6 ONLY.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[farlukar]

In fact many companies are also breathing a sigh of relief along with us techies, but for different reasons. They don't want their users watching videos while they should be working.

Um, no. What part of

“On March 13, we are dropping support for your browser. You’ll still be able to watch videos after that date, but new features may not work properly.”

don't you understand?

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

So corporate environments could encourage using IE6 since it's becoming more and more "work safe"! Imagine a sudden rise of IE6 browsers! Don't you dare!

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[Hurricane78]

Seriously, what workplace do you work in, that hasn’t done any Windows Updates for a couple of years, putting the company as a whole at huge risks?

Even without talking about Firefox... WTF?
I mean all I would need to wreck your whole company to bankrupcy, would be someone from your company surfing on my prepared site...
The holes are well-known. And IE6 won’t be fixed anymore.
That’s all it would take for you to lose your job!!

Now of course I wouldn’d do that to you, as I’m not a dick. But... aaahhhh!

I can only say: Get outta there as fast as you can!

Damn, if I could, I’d hire you, just to get you out of there!

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[bluegrassbeer]

I agree. We just redesigned our website and categorizing users/browsers (with analog) I found 70% of our IE users running IE6 (John Deere, Walgreens, Walmarts of the world surf our site). Given a choice many IT managers might have the users run Mosaic.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

On a technical and personal usage basis I agree with the decision.
Working on a helldesk of a large government organisation in Australia, this is going to cause pain.

'Unsupported' Firefox recommendations are probably going to be the main 'workaround', since it plays nicer with internal 'IE6' apps than IE8.
I have chrome and opera installed on my work PC, but from personal experience FF plays nicer with dregs of web design than the others.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[businessnerd]

They don't want their users watching videos while they should be working

Except part of your work may be using YouTube or other sites "non-productive" sites. More and more companies are starting realize that they need to have a presence on YouTube, Facebook, etc. In fact, many companies have their own channels on YouTube. So how about all of those people responsible for maintaining their company's YouTube channel? If the company is still standardized on IE6 and doesn't have a plan to upgrade any time soon, then this is also unlikely to speed up the upgrade. What will likely happen, and I think this is what Google secretly wants, is that people will install alternative browsers in order to use the IE6 incompatible sites. You know, like the alternative browser made by Google, or that other alternative browser that defaults the home page and search bar to Google. People are going to still use IE6 for all of the work stuff that needs it and for everything else, Firefox or Chrome.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[wintercolby]

It's not the company I'm currently working for, thankfully. It is, however, a number of companies that I have worked for in the past. I was never part of any decision making process as far as company-wide browser standardization at those companies. In the one company in which I was involved in decisions like that, I was sure to encourage using LAMP for the servers precisely to avoid being stuck to browser specific extensions.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[gregmac]

Interesting experiment:

Find a site that exploits IE6 to install something highly irritating but otherwise mostly harmless (eg.. randomly flips the monitor upside down, or keeps showing a message "Rebooting in 30 seconds, click here to cancel.." or randomly open websites every few minutes). Preferably you have nothing to do with the creation, hosting, or anything else of this site -- you just found it somewhere.

Find a large-ish company, mandated to use IE6.. preferably one where the IT department says it's because it's "more secure" than other browsers (and yes, I know places like that - it's mind boggling).

Put an ad up on a billboard nearby (that many of their offices/breakroom overlook, or employees drive by, etc) that says "Hey (company name), do NOT go to www.badsite.com!"

Technically, you were doing a public service, warning them not to go there. All I'm saying.. it would be interesting to watch the fallout (knowing an insider in the company would make this more interesting).

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[HyperQuantum]

They don't want their users watching videos while they should be working. They are very likely happy (...)

They won't be as happy if they see that their employees start bringing a portable Firefox (or maybe another portable browser?) to work, just so they can enjoy 'the full potential' of the internet.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[Foolicious]

In fact many companies are also breathing a sigh of relief along with us techies, but for different reasons. They don't want their users watching videos while they should be working.

Yeah - because it would be so hard for them to block sites like YouTube via a proxy or other means.

Re:IE 6 Not dead in the workplace, doesn't matter

[trawg]

heh, but in the real world, one of the bosses will suddenly find he can't watch youtube in his corner office, and complain about it to IT, who will then probably have a better opportunity to get rid of IE6 than they've had before

Hooray!

[headkase]

The thing about supporting obsolete technology forever is that the people who want the support will always want the support forever. Sometimes, you just have to cut them loose because that is the only way to get them to move to something better. And once they are on something better they'll wonder how they got along without it - with the cycle repeating. Of course some of their outdated applications will need to be updated but really does it always have to get to the point where you insist you need "Windows 95" forever?

Re:Hooray!

[BenoitRen]

Of course some of their outdated applications will need to be updated but really does it always have to get to the point where you insist you need "Windows 95" forever?

Yes. It's still very usable, and upgrading your computer to something that'll run slower and not make you more productive is dumb.

Re:Hooray!

[shutdown -p now]

At this point, frankly, the vast majority of people involved want IE6 to go away. It's not just Google and other web devs - it's Microsoft itself, as well (then again, MS also has quite a few web apps of its own, and naturally also runs into problems with IE6 there).

Important Clarification:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It should be noted that Google is not breaking youtube for IE6 users(the poor bastards). Doing so would be pretty stupid, especially since most of the heavy lifting goes on inside the flash blob, and people slacking at work are probably a decent sized audience.

They are just declaring their intention to no longer subject new features to the "can it be made to work with IE6?" test.

Re:Important Clarification:

[mandelbr0t]

They are just declaring their intention to no longer subject new features to the "omfg how the f*** can I get this to work in this fscking old Microshit browser???!!" gauntlet of pain.

There, fixed that for you :-)

Re:Important Clarification:

[value_added]

It should be noted that Google is not breaking youtube for IE6 users(the poor bastards). Doing so would be pretty stupid ...

Correct on both counts. From the fine article:

YouTube will have an interstitial appear when users on older browser try to watch a video on YouTube. Google says the interstitial will show up indefinitely every two weeks until the user upgrades to the most recent version of their browser.

Implicit in the approach is an attempt to shame the user. That, combined with the presentation of a list of options (supported browsers) will go a long way to dispel the erroneous notions of folks who associate the internet with the Big Blue "e", or otherwise think the world begins and ends with Microsoft products. Overstated? Perhaps, but if I was Microsoft, I'd prefer not having one of the world's best known companies reminding my customers that my products suck.

Re:Important Clarification:

[cbhacking]

It's not so much that IE6 sucks as that it's outdated. At release, IE6 was a perfectly reasonable choice of browser. It might not have been a *good* browser, but there wasn't much choice, and in particular there were no exceptional alternatives, especially for free, so it was a reasonable one.

The problem is the aforementioned release is nearly a decade ago. If anybody were still using the Gecko/Mozilla codebase from back then (I don't think it was even open sourced yet, though I might be wrong there) you can bet that Google would be popping up a warning for them too (actually, they might anyhow). Similarly for anybody using KHTML (rendering engine in Konqueror and basis for WebKit) from that far back. It's just bloody obsolete, and now that there are far more capable alternatives, IE - especially IE6 - can no longer set its own standards for web content. The effort to make things work with its non-standard behavior just isn't justifiable anymore, any more than it is for any other vastly outdated rendering engine.

Re:Important Clarification:

[Hurricane78]

Doing so would be pretty stupid.

Sorry, but that is very stupid. (Especially since you brought no base argument why.)

People like you always assume doing that would cause raging torch-carrying mobs on the streets, because people are completely unable/unwilling to change anything in their life. (Which is already flawed logic, since becoming a raging mob is already a change.)

Repeat this with me: The only reason people are unwilling to change things, is because you trained them to expect it in the first place!

You know what would happen in reality, if Google would just block IE (Trident) as a whole, from now on?
It would take any random user about five minutes, to search for “browser alternative”, download and install it. Done.
There would be one week of media bullshit panic FUD. (With everyone already using an alternate browser, mind you!)
Then it would get back to business as usual. With MS bitching a bit every now and then. And buying or licensing some other small browser.
They would tell us all that their new Internet Explorer X “a browser for a new generation” would come soon... for a couple of months... and then deliver it as a standard update. Done.

That’s what would really happen.

The “companies still use IE6” excuse is a lie. I mean what company does not even do official MS updates with a huge “WARNING! UPDATE TO IE8 OR BE HACKED!!!” sign attached to it? I tell you what company: A soon cracked and bankrupt one!

Re:Important Clarification:

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted that Google is not breaking youtube for IE6 users(the poor bastards). Doing so would be pretty stupid, especially since most of the heavy lifting goes on inside the flash blob, and people slacking at work are probably a decent sized audience.

Sure, but a healthy diet and a little bit of exercise can help trim that size. Perhaps Youtube should also include a diet plan option when the "interstitial [that] appears when users on older browser try to watch a video on YouTube."

Re:Important Clarification:

[BenoitRen]

What happened to web standards? Websites shouldn't sniff web browsers and declare them outdated. They should use web standards, and the web browser will then render the website to the best of its ability. If someone wants to use an old Mozilla build, that's their business.

Re:Important Clarification:

[Fished]

Standards change--if not the standards themselves, then at least the versions. We're now on HTML 5 and CSS3 (or is there a CSS4 now?). And, more importantly, the expectations we have of standards change. I don't recall ever hearing the words "acid test" applied to browsers until about 5 years after IE6 was released. The first browser to say, "to hell with standards, we're going to add some tags that make sense!" (i.e. to "embrace and extend") was netscape. And not many people saw a problem, then, as the standard was evolving too slowly to be useful. Second issue is that as a business decision, I want to let customers know that it's their browser that's broken and not my site. sorry, but that's just common sense. We can argue ideals all we want, but no company wants to take the rap for something that's broken because of a customer's browser. The real problem isn't the warning, it's the sites that won't work at all unless you have a "supported" browser.

Re:Important Clarification:

[BenoitRen]

Standards change--if not the standards themselves, then at least the versions. We're now on HTML 5 and CSS3 (or is there a CSS4 now?).

Err, the standards don't really change. At least not in over 10 years, ever since CSS was introduced to stop the HTML abuse and separate style from content.

HTML 5 is designed to be backwards compatible, and does away with the versioning. The CSS versions aren't versions, but levels, and they complement each other.

There will be supplements, but in the end, a valid HTML 4 page will still be a valid HTML 4 page in the future.

Re:Important Clarification:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that Microsoft never supported HTML4/CSS2 properly anyway [IE8 does mostly, its CSS still kinda sucks though]. The problem here is that the browser is not standard compliant and is known to be broken when using standard HTML4/CSS/JavaScript functionality.

My understanding is that the site will keep working to the best of browser X's ability after showing the warning, but the best of that browser's ability is likely to be completely unusable.

It's all good to talk about CSS being "layered" but when you are using a mixture of absolute and relative positioning, all it takes is one block of newer CSS being ignored and parts of the UI can end up behind other parts, the text can be in the wrong part of the screen and everything can be crammed in a 25% width column against the right edge of the page.

Re:Important Clarification:

[petermgreen]

in the end, a valid HTML 4 page will still be a valid HTML 4 page in the future.
It will but the question is not can old pages that were valid by the standards still be viewed in modern browsers it's whether websites should struggle continue to support a browser with an old and broken css implementation.

I remember back when IE6 cane out table based layout was still the normal way of doing things and css was still considered pretty new. Compared to the main alternative at the time (netscape 6 came out about the same time as IE6 and afaict was nto well received) IE6 seemed reasonable. Malware was nowhere near as advanced and pervasive as it is today either. Does anyone know what mozillas css compliance was like back then?

Interesting precedent, content imposing software

[h00manist]

I wonder what consequences will website-imposed browsers have. Perhaps we're heading towards some kind of content - terminal matching OS, where all content will come with terminal specs, and you basically install a dozen terminal emulators on your systems. Kind of like thinstation. x86 is pretty much becoming a kind of terminal, with hypervisors. And win32 or Linux a kind of content-packager-gui or something.

And businesses rejoice!!!

[OzPeter]

This is one reason for businesses to keep IE6 - no more time wasting employees watching YouTube!! Hooray!!

Re:Interesting precedent, content imposing softwar

[Spad]

Not really. They're not imposing anything; IE6 will still "work" with Youtube for basic functionality. Google are simply saying that they will no longer actively support IE6 and therefore cannot be sure that any future additions to the site will work correctly, or at all with it.

IE6 over 9 years old and it wasn't exactly top of the technology & standards tree when it was released. The only reason it's been supported this long is because XP refuses to die and people have only really started to adopt IE8 on a large scale in the last 6-12 months - IE7s adoption was hampered too much by the relative lack of success that Vista had.

Bah

[Therilith]

Yeah, youtube wouldn't stop bitching about me using an older version of firefox (to escape the craptastic "awesome bar") on every. single. fucking. page.
I finally had to resort to changing the general.useragent.extra.firefox to 3.6.

Re:Bah

[HouseOfMisterE]

Try the "oldbar" add-on for newer versions of Firefox. It makes the address bar function pretty much just like it used to before they introduced the Awesome Bar.

Re:Bah

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Yeah, youtube wouldn't stop bitching about me using an older version of firefox (to escape the craptastic "awesome bar") on every. single. fucking. page. I finally had to resort to changing the general.useragent.extra.firefox to 3.6.

There are better options.

Great...

[Shinobi]

Now we'll never get rid of it in corporate IT...

PHB: I hear IE6 can no longer be used for viewing Youtube. IE6 is now mandatory for all employees.

Re:Great...

[Krneki]

Funny because it's true.

Yay, but

[wisnoskij]

It is great that they are doing this, but I really do not see this convincing all that many people to upgrade.
Most of the people using IE6 are corporations, and not allowing their workers/students to watch youtube would most likely be a feature for them anyways.

Firefox 2

[Leolo]

They are also going to drop support for Firefox 2. Which I still use because Firefox 3 requires a newer version of GTK. Which I don't have because I'm using FC5 on my desktop computer. And I haven't upgraded it because I can't be without a working desktop computer for the length of time an upgrade would take.

Re:Firefox 2

[Binestar]

Statically link a version on another PC and use the binary.

Helping hand...

[mauhiz]

In fact this could be helping their rival Microsoft, who has trouble advocating for global upgrades in corporations.

March 14th Might Have Been More Appropriate

[mano.m]

What better way to celebrate Pi day/Einstein's birthday?

And businesses lose out!!!

[catherder_finleyd]

YouTube is increasingly becoming an important tool, especially in marketing and training. For example, search for "PMP Certification", "ITIL", "iso 9000" on YouTube. Not to mention any number of technical skill areas.

Re:And businesses lose out!!!

[delinear]

Not to mention that it's trivial for businesses who don't want their users watching videos to simply block the site at the firewall. Why throw out all the additional benefits of a newer, standards compliant browser just to save your admins typing one line in a config file? Not to mention if Youtube ever did make the site completely unusable to IE6 users by implementing a UI they can't access, it would be a couple of hours before a bunch of opportunists threw up sites offering Youtube content with IE6 support using embedded Youtube videos.

Re:And businesses lose out!!!

[asdf7890]

Not to mention that it's trivial for businesses who don't want their users watching videos to simply block the site at the firewall.

Trivial, but more obviously their choice. If YouTube stops working for their people by circumstance beyond their control (it no longer working on the company's chosen standard browser) they'll get less complaints (or at least less complaints that they can't just say "not our fault guv" to) than if it stops working because they explicitly block it.

It could actually work in favor of people getting upgrades. If the PHBs start being inconvenienced maybe they'll demand the upgrade option gets taken seriously. Actually, cancel that - they'll just demand that they get upgraded.

Re:And businesses lose out!!!

[OzPeter]

YouTube is increasingly becoming an important tool, especially in marketing and training. For example, search for "PMP Certification", "ITIL", "iso 9000" on YouTube. Not to mention any number of technical skill areas.

I have no idea why you were modded as Troll (or me as redundant - what the hell was that meant to mean??). While I was actually trying for humor in my post, I agree that YouTube has some excellent marketing and training videos. Seeing a decent presentation of a product sure beats reading though pages of manuals

How does H.264 decoder hardware actually work?

[tepples]

As I understand it, Theora is simple enough that a handheld device that relies on dedicated hardware for H.264 can sometimes decode Theora at 320x240 or 480x272 partly or fully in software.

But how does H.264 decoder hardware actually work? Does it involve putting an H.264 stream on one pin and getting decompressed RGB video on another? Or is the codec split between a CPU that parses the bit stream and a DSP that performs things like cosine transform and YUV conversion, operations that should be reusable for other codecs like MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, and Theora?

Re:How does H.264 decoder hardware actually work?

[slimjim8094]

No, they're usually a "black box" you throw data at and get back video. See Wikipedia

Re:How does H.264 decoder hardware actually work?

[forkazoo]

But how does H.264 decoder hardware actually work? Does it involve putting an H.264 stream on one pin and getting decompressed RGB video on another? Or is the codec split between a CPU that parses the bit stream and a DSP that performs things like cosine transform and YUV conversion, operations that should be reusable for other codecs like MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP, and Theora?

No simple answer. Some stuff basically takes the full compressed video into the hardware, and then you trust it when it says that video is being output. You may not even have direct CPU access to the frame buffer with the resulting uncompressed frames of video. Other stuff gives uncompressed frames back to the CPU. Other stuff accelerates some of the steps.

AIUI, my n900 has a DSP on the SOC which is used for MPEG4 stuff, but could just as well be used to accelerate other codecs. It also has an OpenGL 2 ES GPU, which has support for pixel shaders. One can imagine a future firmware revision on a device like an n900 with full support for OpenCL on the GPU being able to use that to accelerate fairly arbitrary codecs in "semi-hardware." A more hardcore GPGPU guy than myself could probably accomplish quite a lot just using the pixel shader functionality to dump intermediate steps into a FBO.

Given how common pixel shader capable GPU hardware is becoming in the mobile space, I fully expect that we'll see OpenCL become very common for GPGPU stuff in handheld devices for DSP-like things. It'll take a little while, but eventually the wheel of reinvention will reduce video codecs back to software and it will become a moot point.

Re:How does H.264 decoder hardware actually work?

[Randle_Revar]

>AIUI, my n900 has a DSP on the SOC which is used for MPEG4 stuff, but could just as well be used to accelerate other codecs

see also: http://www.schleef.org/blog/2009/11/11/theora-on-ti-c64x-dsp-and-omap3/

IE7

[joeyblades]

So apparently IE7 is considered a "modern browser"???

Re:IE7

[compro01]

It implements something vaguely resembling the specs, which is a damn sight better than 6 does.

Ideally, IE6, 7, and all sites designed for them should be cast into a fiery pit and wrought anew respecting proper standards.

But since that is not possible, we shall have to compromise and I will take some improvement over none at all.

Re:IE7

[Hurricane78]

Depends on if the person you are asking knows anything about browsers.

IE7 and 8, and in fact every software with the Trident engine, is not considered a browser at all by professional web developers. ;)

The Trident “engine” ” or rather “upside-down pyramid architecture” — in the deciding factor.

But in the break room

[tepples]

They don't want their users watching videos while they should be working.

Yet some companies still keep IE 6 on the PC in the break room.

STW

[tsa]

I worked as a researcher at the University of Twente for a project that was funded by STW, the Dutch funding agency for applied physics reseach. In 2007 STW forced us to use their new online database which turned out to be powered by MS crapware. It was completely unusable when you tried to approach it with Firefox, and even with IE6 it generated massive amounts of the most horrible error messages when you uploaded a file. After two hours on the phone with one of their 'supporters' who kept telling us to use IE, even when we had said multiple times that that didn't work, he advised me to install an 'IE plugin' into FF. Then I hung up and wrote a letter together with my professor to tell their boss that we would hand in our reports and articles in the old way because of their incompetent IT staff.

and great lock-in

[BhaKi]

with their requirement on proprietary Adobe Flash.

Re:and great lock-in

[Dorkmaster Flek]

This is offtopic, but they have an HTML5 demonstration going with embedded video supported by that standard. If support for HTML5 video becomes more widespread, we can move away from Flash at long last.

Re:and great lock-in

[BhaKi]

The demonstration uses HTML5 video tag and gives video in h.264 format. What is being debated about YouTube HTML5 experiment is not the openness of HTML5, it's the closed nature of h.264 codec. Regarding support, though Firefox and Opera both support HTML5 but they lack the h.264 codec.

Re:and great lock-in

[Control-Z]

This is probably a test to see if users are willing and able to upgrade their browser just for YouTube. If they will, then Google can abandon Flash for HTML5, and then it's up to the browsers and users to upgrade to the 21st century.

9.5% of visitors on our our moderately active site are using IE6.

Re:and great lock-in

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Ah, I didn't realize it was limited to the "inferior" codec (from a licensing standpoint). Why wouldn't they support OGG as well? :P

Re:Interesting precedent, content imposing softwar

[natehoy]

Websites have been "imposing" browser limitations for years, largely because browser interoperability was a huge issue just a few years ago.

Granted, IE6 was a significant contributor to that mess, since IE6 was Microsoft's "extinguish" phase of their attempt to "embrace, extend, extinguish" the Web a decade ago. They provided inexpensive and well-designed web development tools that put out code that only their own web browser could read, then upgraded both the tools and the browser once they realized the whole IE6 debacle was a mistake, but provided no migration path for the code originally created by their own tools. Refactoring code for homebuilt applications to fit web standards is expensive and timeconsuming and really offers no "cost justification" benefits to the CFO, so a lot of companies still have intranets and other homebrew web applications that were built to the IE6 spec and will not function under any other browser.

But IE6 is certainly not the only issue. As newer, better, faster, or just more convenient tools get integrated into web browsers and the sites that feed them, their older brethren have trouble keeping up. If you want to visit a site that uses newer technology, you have to use a newer browser that supports that technology. Fortunately, IE6 compatibility is really the only "backward incompatible" example, so if you stick to a relatively recent version of {IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, (other)}, you'll be fine. Keep more than one of them around, and you can always experiment to see which browser works best.

There ARE still specific platform-dependent plugins that specific web sites choose to use, such as Silverlight (the major reason why I cannot watch the Olympics this year - Linux Users Need Not Apply). But thankfully they are in the minority. Most recent browsers can support most recent technologies, and HTML5 is only going to make that picture better by eliminating the barriers imposed by platform-specific plugins.

Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[argent]

RTFA

Google IS dumping older versions of Firefox as well.

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[jafiwam]

Google barely supports NEW versions of FireFox. (At least Google Docs always chokes on me unless I use Chrome or IE. Go figure.)

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as youtube still supports lynx I'll be happy

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[berashith]

yup, my eeepc 901 is as updated as the base distro will let me be, and youtube is about to drop support for that also. If I cared I would put a different linux on it, but loss of youtube access just isnt going to kill me. Many current flash sites wont work at all, without a big declaration of non-support, the boxes just dont do anything.

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[Hurricane78]

Yes, but no-one cares, since Firefox users already switched on their brain, to install FF in the first place. So they are usually already using the latest version. :)

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[NevarMore]

My corporation adopted FOSS software back in the 90's and we have an internal application that ONLY works on FF 0.6 you insensitive clod!

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[Anonymous Coward]

And while IE6 was released in 2001, they are dropping support for firefox 2.0, released in 2006, and chrome 3.0, released in 2009.

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[BikeHelmet]

If you have Ubuntu, download Ubuntu Tweak and enable the Firefox betas. I found them to be more stable and more up to date.

Re:Google IS dumping older versions of FF

[berashith]

I am still running the goofy distro that came with the box. It is amazingly tender to change. I can add repositories to apt, but every update that pulls from a new repo has to be closely watched to make certain that only new files are added. If anything is changed and updated, the system is highly likely to give strange results.

A newer Ubuntu would be the correct path, but my SSD died, and a laptop with less than 3G of storage (total) is not good for very much no matter what OS is running.

orkut?

[Anonymous Coward]

they could phase out support for everything and nobody would give a shit.

Re:orkut?

[nomadic]

Nobody outside of Brazil at least. Never quite understood why Google started it then did nothing that would make it usable, such as run it on something other than a TI-99/4a with 300 baud modem. Laggiest site I ever used.

An enterprise-ready turd

[Doug Neal]

The various coverage of the absurd longevity of IE6 recently has made me feel pretty good about my decision to move my career away from things Web-related. The pain of trying to make a modern website work with a 9 year old & buggy-as-shit browser is something I never wish to go through. IE6 is something I would maybe fire up for a bit of ironic nostalgia, typing in various URLs, giggling at how badly it renders and remembering that this is what the internet used to be like, before remembering that people are actually still using this software on a daily basis, and being very glad I'm not one of them.

Here's an idea for Mozilla and Google. Make your browsers configurable by Active Directory Group Policy Objects so that they can be locked down in "enterprise" environments like IE can be. This is surely the biggest barrier to corporate uptake of Firefox, Chrome, etc?

Re:An enterprise-ready turd

[Spad]

Here's an idea for Mozilla and Google. Make your browsers configurable by Active Directory Group Policy Objects so that they can be locked down in "enterprise" environments like IE can be. This is surely the biggest barrier to corporate uptake of Firefox, Chrome, etc?

I've said it repeatedly, but I usually get shouted down as a luser windoze admin who is apparently incapable of managing my domain(s) correctly. Firefox doesn't even store or read any (user-level) settings from the registry, so I can't just roll my own ADMX templates either.

Clearly what I should be doing is scripting scheduled tasks to run on every machine on the network on a regular basis that edit the prefs.js file in each users' Firefox profile and configures proxy & security settings there - couldn't be simpler.

Re:An enterprise-ready turd

[slimjim8094]

No, what you should be doing is instructing Firefox to look at Windows for proxy settings. Or, since it's open source, you can roll your own .msi that's all customized as much as you want.

The registry sucks. Perhaps GPOs should have the same power over files as they do over registry entries.

Not quite Friday the 13th

[Anonymous Coward]

March 13th is a Saturday, but there's a nice gray area for a 'soft' Friday the 13th.

DIE! DIE! DIE!

[Hasai]

'Nuff said.

Beware the Ides of March

[ei4anb]

Ides of March being the following Monday could be a busy day for some sysadmins, "hey my youtubes don't work" :-)

Re:Beware the Ides of March

[i.r.id10t]

Yeah but it is also Steak & BJ day ...

XHTML2

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad XHTML 2, at least for now, is dead. The Working Group charter expired on December 31, 2009. Development of the standard has halted.

I think I'll cut support too.

[MikeFM]

I think I'll cut IE6 support from all my websites on March 13 too. People that haven't upgraded will no longer be pampered but will simply see a screen telling them they need to upgrade. We waste a huge amount of time trying to keep everything working on IE6, IE7, and IE8. More than we spend on Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome combined.

Re:I think I'll cut support too.

[commodore64_love]

>>>will simply see a screen telling them they need to upgrade.

Why do that? Why not just simply treat IE6 users the same way you treat IE5 or IE4 users (give them the webpage, but it may not render properly).

Maybe they have a good reason for not upgrading (like owning a PowerMac or other old computer that won't anything but IE5 or IE6).

Re:I think I'll cut support too.

[MikeFM]

I'll probably remove all the styles for IE6 as the sites will look better without than with broken styles. I wouldn't recommend browsing that way but whatever people want. I had better browsers than IE when I had a PowerMac way back when. I'd be shocked if you can't get something way better now. But then if you're okay with waiting a week for a crappy modern webpage to load on a PowerMac you might not mind using IE with styles removed. At least it should speed up load time. Why not upgrade? You can install Mac OS X on a cheap PC for less than $400 or a Dell Mini 10v Netbook for about $250.

Re:I think I'll cut support too.

[bigman2003]

Well, that makes sense...since IE6, IE7 AND IE8 have more market share than Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome combined.

Not saying it is right, just saying it makes sense.

Re:I think I'll cut support too.

[MikeFM]

IE8 does. IE6 has about 10% of my traffic. IE7 has almost none - seems that people on top of things enough to upgrade keep doing it. It isn't worth >50% of my time for 1/3. The other browsers barely show up. The worst thing is that IE keeps us from doing anything really interesting and helpful because it is so limiting and we want equal support across supported browsers.

Re:I think I'll cut support too.

[commodore64_love]

Well when I had my PowerMac (200 megahertz and just sold a month ago), it wouldn't run anything more advanced than OS 10.2. Unfortunately 10.2 is compatible with nothing but IE6 and Opera 7... rather old browsers but better than nothing.

>>>You can install Mac OS X on a cheap PC for less than $400 or a Dell Mini 10v Netbook for about $250

Illegally you mean. And only if you have the skills which many web users don't have.

IE8 sucks too.

[MikeFM]

For that matter IE8 sucks too. I wish Microsoft would just get it together and use webkit or gecko as their rendering engine. They could keep the familiar IE interface and whatever extras they wanted without forcing this load of crap on all us poor developers that just want standards support.

Re:IE8 sucks too.

[A Friendly Troll]

For that matter IE8 sucks too. I wish Microsoft would just get it together and use webkit or gecko as their rendering engine. They could keep the familiar IE interface and whatever extras they wanted without forcing this load of crap on all us poor developers that just want standards support.

I don't know... Recently I made a CSS-heavy website with a ton of JS (MooTools), and to be honest, I haven't encountered *any* rendering quirks or bugs in IE8. It behaved just as well as the "normal" browsers. Everything just worked.

I found several bugs in IE7 (height: 1% and tweaking z-index helped), and I was done fixing the site for IE7 in 15 minutes. On the other hand, I found a couple of JS bugs/quirks in Gecko - one was my fault (used innerText whereas I shouldn't have), and the other one might have been the fault of MooTools.

I know this is heresy, but I'm quite happy with IE8. It never caused me any trouble.

Re:IE8 sucks too.

[shutdown -p now]

Can you give specific examples of where IE8 sucks at implementing the final (non-draft) W3C standards, such as HTML 4.01 and CSS 2.1?

Re:IE8 sucks too.

[Simetrical]

For that matter IE8 sucks too. I wish Microsoft would just get it together and use webkit or gecko as their rendering engine. They could keep the familiar IE interface and whatever extras they wanted without forcing this load of crap on all us poor developers that just want standards support.

IE8's CSS2.1 support is excellent, on par with any other browser. Its major problem is that it doesn't implement many of the standards that all other browsers do these days, like CSS3 Selectors, SVG, or certain parts of HTML5 (like <canvas>). But it's livable.

The awful thing about IE6 and IE7 is how they implement CSS incorrectly in a big way, so you have to figure out their crazy version of CSS and serve separate stylesheets. (There are probably JS problems too, but I don't do much JS, so I dunno.) IE8 isn't a big problem, you just can't use some features in it.

Re:IE8 sucks too.

[Simetrical]

Can you give specific examples of where IE8 sucks at implementing the final (non-draft) W3C standards, such as HTML 4.01 and CSS 2.1?

Why shouldn't they implement draft standards? You do realize that to get to Proposed Recommendation status, at least one implementation is required? W3C drafts are not meant to remain unimplemented until they reach Candidate Recommendation stage.

By the way, CSS 2.1 is a Candidate Recommendation, so it's not final. And it only even reached that level in September 2009, less than six months ago. Focusing on "final" specs makes no sense – large W3C specs can take a decade to get from first Working Draft to Recommendation. E.g., CSS3 Selectors was a Working Draft in April 2000, and hasn't yet reached Recommendation. Ian Hickson, editor of HTML5, estimates that it will reach Recommendation in 2022 (it was started in 2004). Waiting for REC before implementing would be crazy.

Great now Companies will stay on IE6 longer

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies have even more reason to stay on IE6 now. They know their employees won't be on youtube!

Re:Great now Companies will stay on IE6 longer

[the brown guy]

actually if you RTFA you would know that Google will not be testing any new youtube features to see if they are compatible with IE6. You will still be able to watch videos of a supermodel falling off the runway for example, just not with fancy new features.

Most Workplaces Block YouTube

[WebmasterNeal]

Most companies I've worked at block access to YouTube so there really isn't much incentive to convert companies from IE6 to something else. Some of the other Google apps may have more of an effect on this though. I feel that most IE users only upgrade their personal PCs when they buy a new computer so it's only a matter of time until we have all of those updated as most of the computers in the last several years probably haven't come with IE6 installed.

It's too early

[SnarfQuest]

The Mayan calander doesn't end until 2012, so isn't starting the Apocolypse now a bit early?

Re:It's too early

[DragonWriter]

The Mayan calander doesn't end until 2012

New Age (rather than classical Mayan) superstition aside, the Mayan calendar doesn't end, period (or at least, on any timescale that matters); it has many much longer cycles than the one that ends in 2012 and on which certain New Agers fixated for end-of-world hysteria.

Actually there are

[Anonymous Coward]

The benefit of IE7 is that it doesn't support IE6 apps, and there are no IE7-specific apps like with IE6. So upgrading to IE8 or IE9 etc won't be such a problem.

We have a couple applications at work that require IE7 and won't work in IE8. I'm not sure how they did it, but we can't get them to work in IE8 using any combination of compatibility mode/settings changes/etc. Everything we do just results in errors when testing in IE8.

Yes, I use it

[SmallFurryCreature]

To proof how superior google is.

Nah, some searches are better, although tech searches remain the domain of google with Bing typically given completely useless results.

But I have found a use for its image search... although only in the few cases I can't find a good image in the first few pages of google.

And of course, google with this move has just gotten itself a hell of a lot of goodwill from every web developer. No more IE6. Finally.

But I don't think they go far enough, they should just put 1 movie on youtube for IE6 users. 2 girls and a cup. If you use shit for a browser, then you got to love that movie.

Yeah, just wait

[MiniMike]

Just wait until IE6 support is dropped by AOL, then you'll see some complaints. If you pick up a Readers Digest, that is...

Youtube gives in to bad programmers

[Snaller]

A webpage works for all browsers or it is broken.
Features run server side, not client side.

Re:Youtube gives in to bad programmers

[H0p313ss]

A webpage works for all browsers or it is broken. Features run server side, not client side.

Define all. Mosaic? Netscape 3? Lynx? Just how backwards compatible are we talking about here?

Now how about killing IE 7 and 8?

[Cobble]

Now how about killing IE 7 and 8?

Now there is one more reason to keep IE6

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

IE6 still mostly in corporate machines, mainly because they run custom applications designed to work with IE6 as its GUI. IE6 has been EOLed. These applications are stranded. They are stuck in a limbo.

You go to the corporate bean counter who decided to use IE6 based applications in the first place, who is intransigently, adamantly and idiotically refusing to upgrade or recompile or port his applications all through these years and tell him, "IE6 cant access You Tube anymore."

He is likely to go, "Great! now my slaves will not be able to waste their time youtube and do my bidding even more. Woot!" and order his cadence caller, "Battle Speed" and go "thump thump thump", Poor Ben Hur will be rowing faster and faster ever, in his mind. BTW do you know that two guys per oar as shown in Ben Hur would never work?

Crime Spree

[scruffy]

After its conviction in Italy, Google should lay off killing things for a while.

Welcome to the Linux world

[CranberryKing]

Even on an updated distro/browser, half of the flash based video works like ass. I honestly don't ever expect the linux web experience to work as smoothly as windows unless they finally kill that fucker.

perfection vs precision

[epine]

Those two concepts are far from mutually exclusive. Pixel perfect means you can have flexible layouts that don't do unpredictable things because the rendering engine's calculations were off.

If that's what you mean, the term should be pixel precise. TeX has pixel precise layout, the calculations are well defined, and the web should, too.

Perfection sets off my warning bells. There's always a contingent occupying the high ground of right-thinking simplicity known as "one size fits all". These traitors to the crown are surely rallying under the banner of pixel perfect, regardless of any ostensible definition among those in the know.

Precision is a shared value (a precise system delivers precision to everyone), whereas perfection is a social construct, sometimes an entirely personal construct, which can be OK if the individual has the exquisite taste of a Michelangelo and the ascendant heights of the human spirit shine through.

One of my most heavily used Firefox plug-ins is NoSquint, by means of which I dispense with as much of a site's dress code as possible, optimizing the mental process of unpacking the text to determine whether the site is burbling gibberish or not. When I'm reading for critical faculty, my fonts are rarely set at less than 10 cpi, even the proportional fonts.

Right now, an article sitting open on my other screen on AI, augmented intelligence, and alternative intelligence is magnified to 10 cpi / 4 lpi, and I suspect that's barely enough for the landmines within. My landmine detection fonts tend to rupture the aesthetics of the presentation, which is just as well, since there is delicate thinking required.

In the ideal world, perfection is subordinate to purpose. My sole purpose for visiting most web sites is to determine if what they've written there is larded or illuminating. The fashion boutique strip malls at the top, right, and bottom of most web pages interest me not.

Perfection without purpose frightens me. It usually means there will be another force of will present, which I will likely end up battling with. If the user isn't going to supply force of will, it might be good if the operating environment does so on the user's behalf, which is the Apple model. When I use Apple products, I inevitably brush shoulders rather violently with the Apple aesthetic, which does not mirror my own. For every case where it facilitates my goal, there's another where it chafes ingrained preference.

Returning to original sin, my mortal enemy of imprecision is Microsoft Word. You can't assert your will against that thing for any reasonable investment of time or anger. However hard you tug the laces, it manages to squirt sideways at an inconvenient juncture in the middle of getting real work done. Soon one pines for the PDF straight-jacket. The very thought of pining for PDF induces black-leather nightmares straight out of Pan's Labyrinth.

I sincerely hope switching off IE6 marks the beginning of the end for all software that subordinates culture to quirk. In a different life line, I could imagine having this conversation:

Precocious grandchild: Grandpa, what does "imprecise" mean?

Greybeard self: Well, imprecision has been part of civilization since the beginning of time, but it was Bill Gates who made it famous. Ever heard of Bill Gates? No? Have you ever played holographic pinball? It's like that, only the pinball table is hidden inside a machine you depend upon to get things done, so you never know what's going to happen next.

Grandchild (perplexed): Why would he do that? Why would he make a machine like that?

Greybeard self: Well, it never made any sense to me. History is interesting that way. Every society seems to do something that makes no sense, and it's usually the children who figure it out first. Smart children like you. That's why the UN is presently debating a ban on life-extension research.

Grandchild: But th

wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent gets modded as 'troll'?!? Does this confirm the existence of IE6 fanboys?

What to wear, what to wear?

[mooncrow]

Anyone going to attend the Funeral ?