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War on Internet Explorer 6
2009-03-05 10:58:51 by Martynas Jusevičius
The Internet Explorer 6 browser was first released by Microsoft in 2001 and is well deprecated by today's standards. It has been long hated by Web developers for its bugs and lack of support for Web standards. Recently some of them got fed up with that, and an action has been started to encourage IE 6 users to upgrade to a modern browser such as Firefox, Opera, or Safari. It seems to have started in Norway, but has now spread across Scandinavia and as far as Australia. There are ready-made widgets that Web developers can include in their sites to warn IE 6 users about the problem.
I guess there have been similar attempts before, but this time it is becoming widespread, probably because it has been initiated by some well-known big sites collectively. I have been wanting to do a similar thing for quite a while, but did not dare to annoy the users. Now I might actually have a reason to implement it in support of the action. Hopefully we all get rid of IE 6 soon.
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del.icio.us!Comments (4)
Well if they encourage users to upgrade and Firefox/Opera/Safari sounds strange to them, why not encourage users to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7/8? They are very viable alternatives and are very similar with IE6
IE7/8 may be better, but....
...it just sets up Web users for another IE6 experience. Microsoft didn't restart IE development (after resting on their laurels for years following their victory over Netscape) because they thought they could make a better browser: they were spooked by Google's rising online dominance and realized if they didn't do *something* they would be completely shut out of this market space because people would choose to use Firefox or Safari or Opera.
We need *fewer* people using *any version* of Internet Explorer. If you think IE7 and 8 are decent Web browsers -- I don't -- then imagine what Microsoft could churn out if they had to fight for 45% marketshare.
If IE maintains -- or God forbid, grows -- marketshare, we'll be having this same conversation in 4-5 years...at which time Microsoft will be talking about the pending release of IE9, which still won't support the canvas and video tags or CSS3 but will be marketed as "the best platform for delivering rich Silverlight 5 content!"
2009-03-09 15:24:11 by Žilvinas
Don't see the point for MS to hold on to IE if they aren't capable to do the best job available. Opera, Safari and IE should just pack their bags and go home. Firefox is great for developers but slow as hell. Chrome is fast and furious but still too buggy.
I wouldn't blame IE6 or any other browser because they all suck at some point. It would be way easier for everyone just to ignore lower versions of browsers if there are newer ones and provide links to upgrade ;)
I used to like IE
I used to like IE, but recently it has been crashing a lot, so I've had to change to Firefox. I really don't care what I use, as long as it works!
Why not Internet Explorer 7/8?
2009-03-05 17:10:54 by Spike