Even Microsoft Wants IE6 Dead

Tarmas writes "Microsoft has launched a website intended to persuade people to upgrade their browsers from Internet Explorer 6. In Microsoft's words: 'This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers.' About time?" Of course they want you to upgrade to a newer Internet Explorer.

Comments

If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used ie6-upgrade-warning for some of my projects.

It's quite obnoxious, and usually gets the job done.

Re:If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[Pieroxy]

Another initiative of the sort: http://ieai.pieroxy.net/. The only difference is that it doesn't necessarily just target the version 6.

Disclaimer: as my nick probably shows, it's mine.

Re:If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[hairyfeet]

The problem is you seem to think the users are going "yay lets use crappy IE6!" when of course that isn't the case, it is the fact that all their Intranet will break since it was coded in crappy IE6 ActiveX and good luck getting the suits to pay to upgrade THAT mess!

But there is a good reason why IE6 usage jumps from 9AM to 5PM Mon through Fri, and that is because millions of dollars worth of corporate Intranet apps are written around IE6. Was it stupid? Of course. Do most places have the budget to replace it? Not in this economy they don't.

But if you want o run off the business users that's cool with me, free market and all that. But don't pretend there are millions of consumers running crappy old IE6 just for the fun of it.

Re:If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[sortius_nod]

You hit the nail on the head, and there's nothing that can be done with the disaster that is corporate intranets.

Having had to support these intranets, you have to install at least 2 browsers to have the machine able to access both the intranet sites for work, and internet sites for work. There's always a big "DO NOT UPGRADE IE" policy in every company I've worked for, the good thing about that though is that there's usually an "INSTALL FIREFOX IF A WEBSITE DOESN"T WORK" policy.

I suppose the knife cuts both ways there. IE6/ActiveX was the worst thing that companies bought into, and it's hurting them still, years later. The biggest problem there is that the IT managers are quite happy to accept their kickbacks from MS to have MS still deployed throughout their company. One would think they'd learn after the first time.

Re:If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[Shikaku]

Wow, that's annoying.

So are driveby infections because people still use IE6.

And the botnets/spam it creates. Pick your poison.

Re:If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[jonwil]

The problem is is that the alternative browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari is that none of those browsers contain the kind of admin features you get with IE.

What IT guys (not necessarily the actual guys down in the trenches doing the work but the PHBs in their cushy office making the decisions) would want:
1.The ability to push a browser installer (both the initial install and any upgrade installs) to the client and have them run automatically without the need to manually upgrade any clients. You cant get proper MSIs from any of the alternative browser vendors, only from 3rd parties.

2.The ability to ensure the browser wont update
(either automatically or initiated by users selecting "update") and can only be updated when IT pushes patches.

3.The ability to ensure only plugins and addons pushed by IT can be installed, upgraded, managed and uninstalled.

and 4.The ability to manage (via group policy or something similar) the features of the browser so the IT people can set settings like proxy servers and can disable features and the end-user cant mess with the settings and changes the admin guys have set.

Re:If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[compro01]

Chrome does all that just fine. Google is serious about wanting their browser on the business desktop.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/chromebrowser.html

Re:If only other devs used ie6-upgrade-warning..

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the IE6 users are aware of the problem but unable to upgrade because of corporate IT policy. Telling these poor folks that they should upgrade is like pouring salt in a wound.

Maybe you could make a webapp that does a reverse dns lookup, and for coporate adresses it will display something like:

"It seems you're stuck using IE6. Working at [company X] must suck. Maybe it's time to look for a new job?"

And a link to monster dot com or similar.

I'll switch

[camperdave]

I'll switch as soon as the update.microsoft.com website will let me. It keeps throwing 0x8DDD0004 errors.

Re:I'll switch

[TrancePhreak]

http://forums.techarena.in/windows-update/451062.htm

Five seconds on Google.

I'm a web developer and I don't like this

[WiglyWorm]

I'm not sure why I should potentially lower my conversion rate by hassling people to upgrade their browser. That seems like Microsoft's job, not mine.

Maybe they could use the same features that redirect you to msn.com or bing to redirect you to a browser selection page, no? In the mean time, I will just keep including stylesheets for IE6 that do some graceful degredation. It won't look great, but it won't be illegible.

Besides, it seems like most IE6 users in this age are enterprise clients who can't upgrade until their vendors start supporting new browsers, or until the interprise itself gets rid of legacy programs.

Re:I'm a web developer and I don't like this

[Pieroxy]

I am working for a big e-commerce website (think several hundred million euros of yearly revenue) and we are actually putting up a banner for IE6 users. We still test it for now but don't spend time on design. Most websites in France are moving in this direction.

Now, when I won't have to worry about it at all, I'll celebrate a second time !

Re:We can do better

[MoonBuggy]

Cross platform doesn't matter as long as the different pieces of platform-specific software all obey the same standard. It doesn't matter whether your TCP/IP stack was coded in malbolge by Russian monks and only runs on RISC OS, if it supports the standard it won't cause any problems for anybody.

The problem, of course, is that HTML & CSS are very complicated and, some might say, poorly-defined standards whereas TCP/IP, ASCII, and so forth are straightforward and well known. Really, though, your theory that one needs a cross-platform browser to ensure correct rendering implies that none of them are implementing the standards properly, and that's something I disagree with - there may be minor quirks, but on the whole you can expect a well coded site to display more or less accurately, although not pixel-perfect, in all modern browsers. IE6, however, made a complete hash of valid markup ten years ago, and does so to an even greater extent now.

Re:Beware of what you wish for.

[neokushan]

IE9 is beta (Release Candidate is still more "beta" than "final"), so you wished to use beta software by installing it in the first place. You could have just used IE8 and had no problems, then upgraded to IE9 when IE9 is ready.

This website looks great!

[snowraver1]

It sure does render good using IE6!

MS KB914224

[DigiShaman]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914224. In short, stop two services. Windows Update and Background Intelligent Transfer. Next, delete the entire folder called "SoftwareDistribution" located under the root of C:\Windows. Restart both services and try again.

BTW, that folder you deleted will regenerate after starting these services. Don't worry about it.

International version?

[fearlezz]

So, about 50% of the IE6 users worldwide are chinese... Actually, the top 10 countries with the highest IE6 usage are non-english... and they didn't think of approaching IE6-users in their own language? *sigh*

Re:International version?

[hduff]

So, about 50% of the IE6 users worldwide are chinese... Actually, the top 10 countries with the highest IE6 usage are non-english... and they didn't think of approaching IE6-users in their own language? *sigh*

What they really need is a free upgrade path from the pirated versions of Windows.