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The Man At Microsoft Charged With Destroying IE6
Barence writes "The man in charge of Internet Explorer has told PC Pro that he's been tasked with destroying IE6. Internet Explorer 6 continues to be the most used browser version in the world at the ripe old age of nine. IE6's position as the default browser in Windows XP means many companies still cling to the browser. 'Part of my job is to get IE6 share down to zero as soon as possible,' said Ryan Gavin, head of the Internet Explorer business group. Microsoft has also been giving further previews of Internet Explorer 9, with demonstrations showing two 720p HD videos running simultaneously on a netbook, thanks to IE9's GPU-accelerated graphics."
To kill IE6, kill XP. Here's how.
1. End all security updates for XP.
2. Wait for the first botnet to come up with a XP hack.
3. Say "Sorry, you need to upgrade. Now!" to the crying victims.
If IE9 is supposed to destroy the previous versions of IE then they better support IE9 on XP.
XP is still a solid operating system and currently has the highest market share.
No one is going to upgrade their OS just because there is a new browser from Microsoft.
If they really want IE6 usage to reach zero, the people at MS will have to swallow some pride and realize that there are some of us who refuse to 'upgrade" like little sheep. Otherwise, IE6 will still be around for quite some time. Oh, wait, Firefox 3.6 runs on Win2k...never mind...
The problem, in the simplest terms, is that there are too many IE6 only sites and applications that are currently working "well enough", particularly internal to companies, and mucking with something that works already is a non-starter for many management types. No matter how much sense it makes to us, to them it's just money spent and risk taken to get back to where they currently are, functionality wise.
Could IE introduce a sort of "browser virtual machine" where IE9 would start up what would internally amount to a sandboxed version of IE6 if it ran into an IE6 only site? (Of course, that begs the question of recognizing such a site, but presumably Microsoft would stand some chance of recognizing such behaviors since they created IE6 to begin with.) If you can't kill the old applications, you've got to work with them if you want to kill IE6 - perhaps IE9 could borrow a page from the VMWare/VirtualBox world and sort of do a "browser within a browser" to try and maintain compatibility while isolating the IE6 badness from any sane webpage? OSX provided a bridge for old Mac applications when they appeared on the scene which amounted to an old Mac within the new environment, so perhaps that's another possible model.
Dunno if it's workable even in principle, but I don't see how else to move stubborn IE6 users.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I keep hearing about how IE9 will support HTML 5. I would much rather hear about how it will fully support HTML 4 and CSS 2. I'll even settle for its supporting 95% of HTML 4 and CSS 2.
I keep hearing about how IE9 will support HTML 5 media elements like <video> and <audio>. I'd much rather hear about IE9 correctly rendering nested, cascading <object> elements as HTML 4 describes.
Get the HTML 4 stuff working before trumpeting about HTML 5 functionality, please. God knows you've had enough time.
The Internet is full. Go away.
Karma is a bitch...
I expect they are now regretting that the barriers they put in place to prevent IE6 being displaced by Firefox, Opera, and other browsers is now effective at preventing IE6 from being displaced by another browser from themselves.
-- Terry
demonstrations showing two 720p HD videos running simultaneously on a netbook, thanks to IE9's GPU-accelerated graphics
How about demonstrating flawless backwards compatibility with ancient activeX plugins on Oracle financials running under winXP...
Since when did Microsoft start caring about backward compatibility?
Wait, what? When did Microsoft stop caring about backwards compatibility? Backwards compatibility was, for many years, the greatest asset that Windows had, and IMO is the biggest reason that it became as widespread as it is. It's also the source of many of their biggest security problems.
In fact, in the last few years (with the end of the 9x series kernel, the introduction of XP SP2, the introduction of UAC, and the removal of the 16-bit subsystems in the 64-bit versions of Windows), they have shown a willingness to break backwards compatibility that they had basically never shown a decade ago.
Forcing upgrades is a different matter, and is more concerned with forwards compatibility, which doesn't really have any bearing on this discussion.
Proprietary software and PROPRIETARY HARDWARE.
I didn't think BSD and Webkit were proprietary software and I certainly didn't think that x86 was proprietary hardware either.
Apple's been promoting a browser-agnostic web experience. They are better. They're contributing to open source. That does make them infinitely better.
When MS ships something like WebKit, Darwin or Grand Central Dispatch, we'll talk about who's better than who in the software field.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
1. Go to the head of the Office business group.
2. Make sure they drop support for XP in the next version of Office.
IE 6 won't die until XP dies. XP won't die until Office won't run on it.
GO after vendors that still require there users to us IE6 in the work place.
Once it's not in the work place, it will leave the home.
I would love to get rid of it at work, but vendors(I'm looking at YOU Oracle) still have apps that require it.
There slated to get rid of it, but not for 2 more years.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is the key. My company also rolled out a new intranet and only supports IE6 (in fact, they've issued warnings around the company that Firefox isn't secure as it doesn't received 'regular security updates'. Oh, the fun).
However, the person they roped in to build the intranet included a few comments in the source code, specifically "Internet Explorer 6 is fucking terrible" "I had to hack this code to even get it to work" and an entire subfolder named "IE6sux".
So that's what MS has to deal with, corporations who figure if it ain't broke then there's no reason to fix it. Problem is, they don't actually realise what 'broke' is.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
Including IE in Windows and making it the default browser isn't a barrier to using another browser. If it were nobody would be using other browsers today.
You clearly don't remember this, but from IE4 to IE6, Microsoft tried as hard as they could to push web developers toward proprietary technologies that were only compatible with Internet Explorer. They went out of their way to make IE's rendering engine try to guess what developers might have meant when writing sloppy non-standard code, which resulted in web sites that were designed exclusively for IE not working in any other browser (and being an enormous pain in the ass to fix). Also, because IE's support for the standards that other browsers were trying to implement was so shoddy, web sites designed for other browsers wouldn't work correctly in IE (also an enormous pain in the ass to fix), so there was a huge disincentive for developers who used IE as their primary browser (because it was bundled with Windows) to even try to support anything else.
With ~90% market share, Microsoft decided that IE6 was "good enough" and shut down development. But IE6 wasn't good enough, and somebody decided to take the Mozilla Suite, strip out all the non-browser stuff (the email client, the address book, the WYSIWYG HTML editor, the IRC client, etc. etc.) and try to make a stand-alone browser people actually wanted to use. And, after awhile, people started using it, and Microsoft was embarrassed.
So, they tried to clean up a few things with the release of XP Service Pack 2, then began an active attempt to make a browser that doesn't completely suck ass. They're years behind, and they know it, but they're slowly attempting to catch up. They also know they're not the leader of the pack anymore, so they have to cooperate with other browser developers and play the game on their turf, which is a weird thing for Microsoft to be doing.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I remember back when Microsoft was begging people to use IE6 and write apps to its API. In spite of all of the advice not to go down that path, some IT people did just that. They staked their reputation on that move. And now Microsoft expects these people to go to the BOD and say, "Remember how I begged you to go with IE6 a few years ago? And even though it was going to cost us a bundle in training, tools and development costs, it was going to be worth it. Because Microsoft promised us it was. Well, now they say we've got to spend a bundle more to undo all the crap we did. I know. They lied to us once. But we can trust them this time. Really. They wouldn't do it again, would they?"
The people responsible for tying their companies to IE6 have made it a few steps up the management ladder. If you thought they had some pull back when they made that fateful IE6 decision, what sort of power do you think they have now? Microsoft wants these people to make what could be a carer limiting (or ending) move. They'll have to admit that they bought the Microsoft sales pitch back then, cost the company a bundle of money, and now it looks like it was money down a rat hole. Gavin needs the trust and good will of these people if he ever expects them to buy the next Microsoft package. This doesn't look like a smart way of doing it.
Have gnu, will travel.