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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.'"
And everyone lets out a collective exhale "Finally".
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 Of course some of their outdated applications will need to be updated but really does it always have to get to the point where you insist you need "Windows 95" forever?
Shh.
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.
If you want to be standards compliant, you'll throw away the outdated notion of a pixel-perfect lay-out.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.
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".