Beating the dead horse: Trying to kill IE6

kblessinggr

kblessinggr

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Sep 15, 2008
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Web citizens trying to kill Internet Explorer 6 - CNN.com

Some Web designers are staging an online revolt against an old version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which they say is hampering the ability of the Web to move forward in a cool and interactive way.

The designers say Internet Explorer 6, which was released in 2001 and since has been updated twice by Microsoft Corp., is crippling the Internet's potential and slowing down the online experience. They also blame IE 6 for giving webmasters a collective headache, because they have to write special "hacks" into Web code to accommodate an outmoded browser.

An estimated 15 to 25 percent of people still use IE 6 as their portal to the Internet, according to two Web monitors.

In recent months, several Web companies have launched sites devoted to the idea of undermining or killing Internet Explorer 6. The most recent site, called "IE 6 No More," has gained momentum this week on social-media sites like Twitter and Digg in part because a number of respected Internet start-up companies have signed onto the campaign.
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Just thought it was funny to have such a 'massive' campaign on this topic.

Course the best way to kill it is for most of the major sites to not even work for those browsers... but I don't know anyone other than operators of personal sites or small niche blogs that would stand to alienate as much as 25% of their visitors all at once.

I think Micorosoft has already taken the best approach (which was not mentioned in the article), by making Internet Explorer 8 a 'critical update' in their windows update utility, since never before have I seen IE in critical updates. This would make it where users who do run automatic upgrades, or are capable of running them will get IE8 automatically.

As a developer , I would like IE6 to die too, but thats ultimately up to the clients and their visitors.

But for those of you , who would really want to put a IE6 warning on your site when an IE6 visitor comes around, this site has the code for that http://www.ie6nomore.com/ (hehe or perhaps modify the code for your own automatic software download campaign "Your browser is old... download this...")
 


I use to have issues, now i just use jquery and quickly do things that work in all browsers.
 
Sadly, even though I've switched from IE at home a long time ago, we still use IE6 at work (government agency.) I wouldn't be surprised if 10-15 out of 15-25 percent were users in an enviromnent they cannot switch browser (work) even if they wanted to (my case here.) The ones that could actually do something about it don't, mostly for economical reasons (why change the browser when the employees are NOT supposed to fool around on random websites.) And as a developer myself, I have to agree it all ends up being a PITA to deal with.
 
mattfca said:
make more sense now?
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No, the internet is not going to change to accommodate the poor disenfranchised compliance nazis. I don't use ie6, but I'd tell anyone to fuck right off if I did use it and they decided it was in my best interest and the interest of everyone to take it away.
 
droplister said:
No, the internet is not going to change to accommodate the poor disenfranchised compliance nazis. I don't use ie6, but I'd tell anyone to fuck right off if I did use it and they decided it was in my best interest and the interest of everyone to take it away.
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It comes down to companies spending disproportionate amounts of resources to cater to a small and diminishing user base. It doesn't make financial sense to do it.
 
Francky683 said:
Sadly, even though I've switched from IE at home a long time ago, we still use IE6 at work (government agency.) I wouldn't be surprised if 10-15 out of 15-25 percent were users in an enviromnent they cannot switch browser (work) even if they wanted to (my case here.) The ones that could actually do something about it don't, mostly for economical reasons (why change the browser when the employees are NOT supposed to fool around on random websites.) And as a developer myself, I have to agree it all ends up being a PITA to deal with.
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Course the way I see it, is that corporations probably won't bother for two reasons.

1) Once an in house app is created, they usually stick to it til it can no longer work.
2) Most companies don't want you browsing the sites that would have the issues to begin with. :p
 
nvanprooyen said:
It comes down to companies spending disproportionate amounts of resources to cater to a small and diminishing user base. It doesn't make financial sense to do it.
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Actually what it comes down to is, are you going to risk losing conversions by alienating as much as 25% of visitors? If it were in the 1-5% range, I'd say sure, but 25% of say a million hits is still 250,000.

Most of the stuff I code only concentrates on IE7/8, Safari, FireFox. But I do on a good number of occasions ask to make sure it works in IE6, or to fix someone else's code for IE6 because they're getting enough traffic from IE6 users to justify it. Internet Explorer is one of the only browsers out of the current selection of them that has problems with users upgrading (probably because half the time they do they're ultimately faced with some kind of bug), where as users of FireFox/Safari/Opera are often considered safter because they tend to upgrade their browsers every time a new version comes out.
 
kblessinggr said:
Actually what it comes down to is, are you going to risk losing conversions by alienating as much as 25% of visitors? If it were in the 1-5% range, I'd say sure, but 25% of say a million hits is still 250,000.
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Sure, there is always a trade off and every situation is unique. When I'm doing a landing page it's one thing...and I normally take the time to do it. I hate it, it's a pain in the ass, but I do it.

But if substantial resources were being thrown to maintain something on Digg for example (where things aren't transactional) it might be a different story. Resources that could be allocated at making the site better, differentiating themselves, launching new functionality etc.
 
nvanprooyen said:
But if substantial resources were being thrown to maintain something on Digg for example (where things aren't transactional) it might be a different story. Resources that could be allocated at making the site better, differentiating themselves, launching new functionality etc.
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Hell if I had a site with the drive of Diggs, Youtube, MySpace, Twitter, etc. The ball would be in my court as to what browser is provided since people tend to want those services, and forcing the IE6 base to upgrade or switch would then be easier. But a landing page, they just say cya and don't turn back.
 
The problem here is that most people don't even know what a browser is. They call their browser their "internet." Just redirect all IE6 users to makemoniesonline. Problem solved. Only a porno virus scare would get the average user to voluntarily do a browser upgrade, once they realize they can't get any AV to "remove" it.
 
jryan21 said:
The problem here is that most people don't even know what a browser is. They call their browser their "internet." Just redirect all IE6 users to makemoniesonline. Problem solved. Only a porno virus scare would get the average user to voluntarily do a browser upgrade, once they realize they can't get any AV to "remove" it.
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Better yet redirect IE6 users to an antivirus offer that you have an affiliate program with. :p
 
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