Microsoft Finally Says Goodbye to IE 6 in the U.S.
The numbers are in, and less than 1-percent of North Americans are still using Microsoft's ancient Internet Explorer 6 browser. They probably still use big giant mobile phones and outhouses too.
There's a good chance Microsoft as a whole is popping open the champagne bottles and tooting leftover New Year's Day horns, as the company has finally succeeded in pushing the masses into ditching Internet Explorer 6.
The company has for years literally begged consumers to update older versions of Internet Explorer, warning that it would reduce the (high) risk of acquiring viruses and other malicious malware. The company even just recently introduced a feature in Windows Update that will automatically update Internet Explorer, seemingly pushing users into staying current rather than ignoring browser revisions and risking infection.
But now the company employees are seemingly dancing in the streets, as the official U.S.-based Internet Explorer 6 numbers have rolled in, and they report well below 1-percent. Worldwide, the number still hovers just below 8-percent as of December 2011, with China serving as the biggest IE6 offender followed by South Korea and Japan. Norway has the least number of IE6 users followed by Finland and the United States.
For the record, Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421 is the latest official release from Microsoft as of this writing.
"IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we’ve been as eager as anyone to see it go away," writes Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Marketing. "In fact, we launched the IE6 Countdown site last March to help accelerate the process. Less than a year later, I’m thrilled to say that the United States has joined the ranks of Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway in dropping below 1-percent usage of IE6."
"In addition, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ukraine, Portugal and the Philippines are also entering the Champions’ Circle," he added. "We hope this means more developers and IT Pros can consider IE6 a “low-priority” at this point and stop spending their time having to support such an outdated browser."
Consumers still using Internet Explorer 7 or older should head here and install the latest version. Features include support for HTML5, hardware acceleration, a faster start-up time and more. It will be like a brand new internet!
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It's about time. Windows 2000 is the last Windows OS that is limited by IE6
This would be fun to see.
all those windows 98/2000 users switching to google chrome/firefox finally!
The real achilles heal for Microsoft and IE is Enterprise. Their failure to adapt to IE upgrades has really slowed IE and its version progress. Too bad Microsoft cannot simply do what Apple does and just stop supporting such old applications. To me what IE has become is a Enterprise browser. So many have turned to other browser that update more frequently and provide a better experience. Unless Microsoft can convince Enterprise to step up their upgrades. I think IE will become nothing more then a convenience browser for its OS.
In 10 years MS has gone from version 6 to 9. FF goes from 4 to umm I think 10 now in the span of a few months. We won't even talk about Chrome...
I can't wait for the latest release of IE to die...lol Chrome is SO MUCH BETTER...
Long over due ...
I still remember IE5.5 and 6, I hated both and from then on it has been FireFox but recently it to has been poor.
Microsoft? Oh yes, didn't they used to write software? It's been so long since I used anything from Microsoft I had almost forgotten.
Heck, I held on to my beloved Netscape Navigator 4.03b for as long as possible until they stopped supporting it. Sigh.
In 10 years MS has gone from version 6 to 9. FF goes from 4 to umm I think 10 now in the span of a few months. We won't even talk about Chrome...
Every time a Chrome developer sneezes they increment the main version number. Firefox felt left behind so recently they've been on the same path. I didn't see what was so wrong with Firefox's old versioning system, myself.
what happened to the north Korea IE6 figures
Anyway, there isn't much of a need to update from IE6 since IE6 works just fine for downloading firefox or google chrome
Worst. Browser. Ever. From the massive security holes, to the memory leaks, to its slow, bloated nature, to its rejection of web standards, GOOD FRIGGIN RIDDANCE.
And yes, today IS "obvious day".
Funny that so many people mock IE without using IE9
LOL
IE9 isnt perfect but in the browser benchmarks it is going toe-totoe with Chrome and Firefox
The fact is it wins some important browser metrics
Has some of the fastest page load times
Some people here better read the browser bench articles that Toms puts out
IE9 aint your Grandma's IE anymore
It is sleek and has a great GUI
It is behind just a lttle in HTML5 standards but has improved drastically even in that department
Dont get me wrong
I love Firefox also
I do something silly and have BOTH installed
I use IE9 for general browing of my everyday websites and then I use FF with NoScript,ADBlock and other security plugins along with PeerBlock ISP blocking software for when I venture out to unsafer parts of the web.
I might even install Chrome to check it out since I have seen some good benches with Chrome
What I am saying is
Your browser is not your girlfriend
There is no reason to get emotionally involved
There is no reason you can't use more than one
It is not cheating
i am surprised they offered support for this long....i would say that after about 3 years a browser should not be supported anymore....this holds back innovation and progression
About time, but IE is still the devil for web developers. Why do I have to code special html code just for IE? Not cool. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera seem to all process my php, javascript, and css files the same.
Every time a Chrome developer sneezes they increment the main version number. Firefox felt left behind so recently they've been on the same path. I didn't see what was so wrong with Firefox's old versioning system, myself.
you know if the change of browser so much that extensions become unusable because of the change, I believe that warrants a full version upgrade not just a .XX increase.
They can implement more stuff into the browser faster this way and it's not a complete pain in the butt to look up extensions and see if they work for your browser.
For the life of me I cannot see why people have such a problem with chrome and Firefox increasing their version numbers. Chrome I don't get why does that, but Firefox does that now and every version number breaks an extension, I prefer Firefox increase the version number opposed to a .XX increase if it's going to break an extension.
Funny that so many people mock IE without using IE9IE9 isnt perfect but in the browser benchmarks it is going toe-totoe with Chrome and FirefoxThe fact is it wins some important browser metricsHas some of the fastest page load timesSome people here better read the browser bench articles that Toms puts outIE9 aint your Grandma's IE anymoreIt is sleek and has a great GUIIt is behind just a lttle in HTML5 standards but has improved drastically even in that departmentDont get me wrongI love Firefox alsoI do something silly and have BOTH installedI use IE9 for general browing of my everyday websites and then I use FF with NoScript,ADBlock and other security plugins along with PeerBlock ISP blocking software for when I venture out to unsafer parts of the web.I might even install Chrome to check it out since I have seen some good benches with ChromeWhat I am saying isYour browser is not your girlfriendThere is no reason to get emotionally involvedThere is no reason you can't use more than oneIt is not cheating LOL
in the GUI department I think that Internet Explorer 9 is crap, I preferred 8 user interface to 9 easily, best that I generally take the minimalist, and Internet Explorer is even more minimalist than chrome.
There still a little wait to bury the damn browser I guess.....
all those windows 98/2000 users switching to google chrome/firefox finally!
Chrome does not do WIN2k !
Microsoft fudged themselves into this hole by making IE6 a hard wired part of the OS.
Got them into all sorts of trouble and now, that you can not uninstall and replace the thing all the Win98/Win2K machines switch to Opera, Firefox etc. There goes the market share.
I know, all gaming kids now cry out Win2K... get with the times... but Corporate America still uses boatloads of the older OS, they don't play high end games in the office, just Word processing and Excel. It is one thing to upgrade your gaming rig, and another to update thousands of PCs in a corporate environment.
Just the cost of retraining all those employees costs a fortune. And in these times nobody has money to burn. Hopefully M$ learned a lesson or two from this; also I doubt it.
How is that that Japan, Korea and China - the most technologically advanced countries use IE at all and IE 6 at that?
Because if you have a massive corporation that was an early adopter of being cloud-based and exclusively using web-apps on their internal LAN, the browser change is a very big deal, as every app needs to be properly tested on various versions of the new browser for functionality and security reasons. It's a massive job and while IE6 is terrible, it works so there is little justification for a project of this magnitude.
How is that that Japan, Korea and China - the most technologically advanced countries use IE at all and IE 6 at that?
have you ever seen Japan Korea or China's Internet?
The webpages look like old HTML abortions, I mean seriously think of really really really old Yahoo and that's what almost every website looks like. There are few exceptions, but the user interface for everything over there is just crap, when you take that into consideration you can see how Internet Explorer 6 lasted so damn long
I'd love to know why opera is left behind
nobody thinks about it
I'd love to know why opera is left behindnobody thinks about it
I was a lot like using a different operating system.
Internet Explorer Firefox and chrome all use about the same keyboard shortcuts. Opera out of the box does not use a single one of them besides maybe find. I could honestly never recommend that browser for anything, and the only reason I have it is because I was attempting to figure out which browser would be best for backup.
Funny that so many people mock IE without using IE9IE9 isnt perfect but in the browser benchmarks it is going toe-totoe with Chrome and FirefoxThe fact is it wins some important browser metricsHas some of the fastest page load timesSome people here better read the browser bench articles that Toms puts outIE9 aint your Grandma's IE anymoreIt is sleek and has a great GUIIt is behind just a lttle in HTML5 standards but has improved drastically even in that departmentDont get me wrongI love Firefox alsoI do something silly and have BOTH installedI use IE9 for general browing of my everyday websites and then I use FF with NoScript,ADBlock and other security plugins along with PeerBlock ISP blocking software for when I venture out to unsafer parts of the web.I might even install Chrome to check it out since I have seen some good benches with ChromeWhat I am saying isYour browser is not your girlfriendThere is no reason to get emotionally involvedThere is no reason you can't use more than oneIt is not cheating LOL
IE9 has nonexistent HTML5 support and caches everything so many pages don't refresh without restarting the browser. Thankfully there's Google Chrome Frame plugin for IE to turn it into an almost decent browser.
Good rid-dins
I am the 1%.
Not that I use that thing. A mixture of FF, Chrome and Opera take care of my browsing needs. But I like it how in IE6 I can browse from the windows explorer window, haha, and downloading FF the first time around.
Win98/ME/2K users have been hosed for a while. There is no real antivirus, flash players, etc. They can't even install a new printer. If you don't at least have XP, you essentially can't use a computer for anything other than solitaire.
This seems to coincide with a changeover by one of my company's very large clients.
Dear GXS,
Please update your web portal as we're having to use XP Mode from a Windows 7 client just to use your EDI facilities... .
Thank you.
Good rid-dins
I use Ie9 on several computers, and have yet to experience the page refresh issue you have described.