Microsoft: Why We Can't Drop IE6 Support

[JMcEntegart]

Microsoft took to its Internet Explorer blog late last night to explain why the company would not be dropping support for IE6 anytime soon.

Microsoft: Why We Can't Drop IE6 Support : Read more

 

[jerther]

Do you think major websites should stop support for IE6?

Yeah, that's what we call progress. 8 years, it's kind of time.

Some sites already begun to leave IE6 support by the way

 

[Guest]

All I get from this article is that MS won't force companies to upgrade IE6, but they will force them to upgrade OS. I'm sure that if they were charging for IE, support for version 6 would have been dropped long ago.

 

[tomatallegro]

Yep, it is time to leave IE 6 behind. There really is no need for it anymore, other than lazy (or overworked) admins at large corporations who won't (or can't) upgrade their fleet of XP users. I think major web sites should force the issue by phasing out IE6 support at the end of 2009. I mean let's get into the 21st century already.

 

[scook9]

All the machines where I work have IE6 and XP....SO we all use Firefox since it is also installed.

 

[rbriz]

If you are a web developer trying to use CSS Layouts and web standards. Having to support IE6 is enough to drive you nuts. Learn2Upgrade.

 

[Guest]

I am still using IE 5 with Windows Me and I love it!

 

[duckmanx88]

I had applied for a job at SEIU and they made me take this test on their computers. they were still using IE6 and Windows 98. its ridiculous. I hate when people cling for dear life to old technology and software. very inefficient especially when all their computers had limewire on it.

 

[jerther]

[citation][nom]windowsmelover[/nom]I am still using IE 5 with Windows Me and I love it![/citation]
HUH!? you must be out of your mind!!!

[citation][nom]em3e3[/nom]All I get from this article is that MS won't force companies to upgrade IE6, but they will force them to upgrade OS. I'm sure that if they were charging for IE, support for version 6 would have been dropped long ago.[/citation]
You're wrong. They keep support for IE6 up because some of their still supported OS come with it. We're talking about WinXP

 

[silversquare]

As a web developer I whole heartedly think we should stop trying to fanagle our sites to work with IE6. But the fact is there are still plenty of users on IE6 that we cannot ignore it and our clients wouldn't appreciate it much if we did. In the interim though we don't try to make IE6 support every feature we have for modern browsers as long as the general experience is present. It will be nice someday when we don't have to worry about graceful degradation for any version of IE though wouldn't it?

 

[fuser]

Large public websites cannot afford to drop IE6 support. You can force your website visitors to upgrade or go away, but there's always the risk that users will pick the latter option.

 

[hellwig]

However, Dean goes on ... and highlights the cost of maintaining and updating so many machines, concluding that the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC.

What cost? If we believe Microsoft, maintaining and upgrading Windows is virtually free, while maintaining and upgrading Linux is so expensive not even Microsoft could afford to do it.

Do you think major websites should stop support for IE6? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments below!

No website should support IE6, or any specific browser for that matter. Internet standards exist for a reason. If millions of people complain tomorrow because they can't read Google.com, Facebook.com, etc.. because IE6 doesn't properly support CSS, that should be seen only as a blackeye to Microsoft.

Even worse are websites that require IE (or Firefox for that matter). I'm tired of websites telling me my browser may not work correctly. Opera supports standards as good or better than any other browser.

 

[Nik_I]

for the longest time my school's computers only had IE6 on them. People always did like to download and install firefox on them, but those computers would delete all stored data after they were restarted, and the dude in charge of the computers used to freak out if he caught you installing anything. (My friend got banned from the computer labs for downloading google chrome). It's for reasons like this that so many people still use IE6. Most, if not all public computers still run windows xp, often still with service pack 1 or even before that.

 

[paranoidmage]

If you take away support it will force people to change. Since it can with XP, It seems it would be a bad idea to drop support for something that comes with your OS. Imagine getting a brand new netbook, only to find the software with it is outdated.

 

[snotling]

[citation][nom]tomatallegro[/nom]Yep, it is time to leave IE 6 behind. There really is no need for it anymore, other than lazy (or overworked) admins at large corporations who won't (or can't) upgrade their fleet of XP users. I think major web sites should force the issue by phasing out IE6 support at the end of 2009. I mean let's get into the 21st century already.[/citation]
technicaly, IE6 is fron the 21st centuray as well...

 

[snotling]

[citation][nom]duckmanx88[/nom]I had applied for a job at SEIU and they made me take this test on their computers. they were still using IE6 and Windows 98. its ridiculous. I hate when people cling for dear life to old technology and software. very inefficient especially when all their computers had limewire on it.[/citation]
yeah it's like keeping that old vacuum cleener that sucks so bad that it doesn't suck anymore! but it still makes noise so it's still in working condition right?

 

[hixbot]

Websites can choose to stop supporting IE6 and I'm ok with that. Ofcourse Microsoft should continue to support IE6, millions of people are still using it. They can drop IE6 support when they drop XP support.

 

[jhgoodwin]

I think most of the posts have it bass-ackwards. The people who make the sites have to support their users. Making them upgrade arbitrarily is stupid. It just makes you look like your sites is broken or has requirements that others do not. Ideally, sites should go ahead and make their sites work on most browsers that their users visit them with, and if the older ones, just work, but have some legacy issues that only affect "clean lines", I think that's fine. (Example, lack of alpha blended transparent png). Considering the complexity of making a standards browser that is competitive, free, fast, able to render broken pages without crashing, and is also professional looking is an incredible challenge. To be honest, I'm surprised the web still works considering all the mitigating factors.

 

[IzzyCraft]

ie6 after patching etc is a good browser no reason to drop it when a ton of company still use it

 

[bourgeoisdude]

[citation][nom]fuser[/nom]Large public websites cannot afford to drop IE6 support. You can force your website visitors to upgrade or go away, but there's always the risk that users will pick the latter option.[/citation]

'Nuff said. (+1)

 

[NocturnalOne]

It's up to each web site to make that call. How can 'we' possibly say anything meaningful about it? They look at their webstats and can tell which browsers are visiting their site. They know if their site depends on that slice of the traffic or not. If you run a site that depends on visitor counts do you really want to cut off 25% of your visitors? 10%? Who's to say? For my sites I don't give a hoot but that's because I pay the bills and have no advertising. Quite a different story for e-commerce sites I imagine

MS should be applauded for standing by its customers.

 

[rbriz]

[citation][nom]IzzyCraft[/nom]ie6 after patching etc is a good browser no reason to drop it when a ton of company still use it[/citation]

There is no good reason not to either.

 

[rooket]

ie6 is like a trojan/malware magnet. if they stopped doing security updates for it, it'd be even worse than it already is i guess. I'm thinking about disabling ie8 in my windows 7 setup, i really don't like how easy it is for hackers to put their poorly coded crapware into my pc through ie.

 

[bfstev]

i think they may be contractually obligated to support it till xp support is done with

 

[kaby]

I am a admin at a company of almost 250 people. We use firefox for browsing and such, but we need to keep IE6 for proprietary databases supplied by some of the utilities, That is the only thing keeping us back.