Comments on: The slow death of IE 6 support; YouTube and browser placement

By: V1

V1 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:16:41 +0000

There is no reason people cannot run Firefox and IE6 side to side.. If you applications still require you to use IE6, than only use IE6 for that.. And use a normal decent browser for the rest of your internet experience.. Its the Job of system administrators to install a decent browser next to IE..

All that crap about I can’t update is just bullshit. Than don’t update just install a new better browser side to side with it. Microsoft should come up with a way that users can run IE6 side to side with IE8.. So they can atleast have there crappy shitty browser for the apps.. and still update and use a normal browser for the rest of the web.

By: Hiro

Hiro — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:12:59 +0000

It would be logically right to drop IE6 already, I certainly agree on maintaining accessibility and clean code which insures that information is delivered properly but at the mean time with rocket fast changing technologies it’s time to form NEW web STANDARDS.
So well done Tweeter you’ve got the balls to play ;) We’ll join you shortly …

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:03:02 +0000

@Joeri, Hmm. I use the latest browser, but I still use Office 2003 (with 2007 file format updates). There’s just no knowing which pieces people will upgrade.

By: Joeri

Joeri — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:25:50 +0000

Microsoft office 2007, a bastion in enterprise, even in financial services, requires Windows XP SP2, which was released in 2004. Why is it that nobody makes a bone about this, but when a web app author says that the latest version requires a browser that’s newer than 2001, this is suddenly a big problem? The problem is mindset. If people had the mindset that new web apps required newer browsers, there wouldn’t be an issue. It would just be the cost of doing business.

By: patrickmyles

patrickmyles — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:21:22 +0000

@WillPeavy – I agree, we are starting to see some movement in the financial institutions, mostly I think driven by user demand. I think that you’ll be safe only presenting a basic HTML page to IE6 users in 2011. Unfortunately our products have a monthly release cycle, so we can’t wait for 2011! Also, they just wouldn’t work in a browser without JavaScript, CSS, etc. So the best we can do is encourage users to upgrade, or at least scream for an upgrade…

By: WillPeavy

WillPeavy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:24:30 +0000

@Nosredna – I always try to make a basic HTML version available. There’s several reasons why, but the main reason is accessibility (i.e. I need to guarantee it works with screen readers). So I’m talking about serving the text-only, simplified, screen-reader version to IE6 (and to any other dinosaurs as well – if for some reason someone were still using IE4 or NS6, it would be *functional* with those user agents).

By: Jerusalem

Jerusalem — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:51:28 +0000

Good point, Here a snippet code on How to remove IE6:
http://jerusalemstyle.com/blog/dropping-ie6-no-more-ie6-support-appeal-webmasters-revolution-20090714-38

By: greim

greim — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:35:43 +0000

Okay, here’s a contrarian view, just to ruffle some feathers and get people thinking outside the box.

It could be that IE6, over the past near-decade, has actually introduced some stability to the web, whereas otherwise “web 2.0″ would have come along and the state of web technology would have taken a chaotic path. Maybe better than what we have today, but then again maybe not.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:49:50 +0000

@WillPeavy, that’s great, so you see movement?

Of course, you’re still saying that you’ll have to serve _something_ to IE6 in 2011, which means taking it into account. Which you must think there will be some banks still using IE6 internally two or more years from now.

By: WillPeavy

WillPeavy — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:40:40 +0000

@patrickmyles – I work on financial services apps too, and I’m pushing to make the next generation (will be released in 2011) serve basic HTML only (no Ajax/JavaScript, or any fancy CSS) to IE6. The apps I’m working on are used by 7 of the 10 biggest banks in the U.S. too, so I think there is (finally) a shift happening in that industry.

“particularly those in finance where IE6 remains stubbornly entrenched on bankers’ desktops.”

By: Jeria

Jeria — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:07:05 +0000

I tested the sites with IE 6 and saw some warning messages in some, but not in others. I could though, dismiss these warning and use the website as normal. Twitter, YouTube and Facebook worked fine with all its features.

By: ChrisHeilmann

ChrisHeilmann — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:59:27 +0000

I fail to see the big impact of this and wrote up some reasons:

http://www.wait-till-i.com/2009/07/14/did-digg-and-youtube-just-spell-the-end-of-internet-explorer-6/

The main one is that IE6 is used in companies that also block YouTube so the message doesn’t reach where it should go. Also, it would be more of an impact if the youtube embed code flagged IE6 as bad as 70% of the YouTube traffic is from embedded sites.

By: prosphero

prosphero — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:31:42 +0000

@Darkimmortal: I think there’s much more than keeping employees away from youtube. First of all, internet is knowledge and videos can be knowledge too. If you fear your employees to spend too much time watching funny videos on youtube, you can simply install a proxy server and track their visits. Second, websites like youtube or facebook are developing new and richer UIs, that highly helps user experience. It’s just like a technology boost to serve military purpose, that later will spread into everyone’s life (just like the internet itself). Internet developers make treasure of such UIs techniques and will use them to build serious, pro, web applications. IE6 is simply a stone on the back of any web applications, since it doesn’t conform to standards. If UIs techniques, ignoring IE, become industry standards, then I believe most companies will ask their ICT dept. to upgrade to newer browser.

By: eyelidlessness

eyelidlessness — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 05:08:16 +0000

LOL Nosredna. Someone is wrong on the Internet!

What drives me absolutely batty is that the IE 6 problem is much worse than it needed to be, exacerbated by terrible decisions in the last two IE releases:

1. IE 7 should have come bundled with the IE 6 engine, along with the meta switch that IE 8 has, and required “really” “real” standards-mode to be opt-in.

2. IE 8 should have come bundled with the IE 6 engine (and why it didn’t is beyond me), with the same opt-in requirement.

The web development and standards communities missed a very important opportunity here too, which is worth mentioning: by insisting that Microsoft place a priority on default rendering mode rather than on minimizing work necessary to add future-IE support, these communities are complicit in extending the life of IE 6 substantially by greatly increasing the perceived cost of upgrading IE 6-dependent web applications.

At this point, Microsoft should begin providing an IE 6 plugin, either for IE 8 or for all browsers, to allow businesses to begin upgrading while retaining full backward compatibility for their proprietary web applications. Microsoft gets *no benefit* from keeping anyone on IE 6, and I think providing a way out would garner a lot of good will compared to the current situation.

Of course the bean counters would probably never allow it.

By: greim

greim — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:30:32 +0000

I don’t think corporate IT is the whole picture for IE6. My site’s browser stats show an weekday average of ~19% IE6 usage, which only drops to about ~17% on weekends. If IE6 traffic is mainly corporate, why only a difference of 2%, unless there really are a lot of home users of IE6 to whom it’s never occurred to upgrade?

By: greim

greim — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:10:55 +0000

“Well good. But a large proportion of internet users don’t know what a “browser” is. They don’t know that they are running a browser.”

They don’t know because they don’t have to know. When their You Tubes stop working, they will figure it out in a damn hurry :)

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:09:51 +0000

Sorry. I know companies that have those IE6 apps. As long as they can keep their employees on IE6, there’s no business reason to spend to update them, especially in a hard recession.

Happily, I know of one company that is moving to standards-based browsers with a Java backend. Of course, it’s going the way many software projects go–slowly. Extremely slowly.

By: WebReflection

WebReflection — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:25:54 +0000

@Nosredna, that excuse cannot exist anymore. First of all if their apps is IE6 based and works only with IE6 it is truly old and the company poor enough to do not maintain it. Something kinda “have to do”, software speaking, or your app is simply death.
Secondly, if these administrators keep saying they cannot update because the app will not work they are still ignorant!
It is not youtube, it is the Web as is, if your local app works only with IE6 you can ALWAYS install Firefox or Chrome and use latter browsers to surf the Web and IE6 only for that death application.
How long will this story go on? Do we all want to be stuck forever because of these people whose internet is not in their interests/business? … Come on, be realistic, it is the ABC of whatever language/OS/application, it requires to be maintained and updated. This is called technology and it has to move on, excuses about IE6 are hopefully over!

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:15:32 +0000

@randomrandom, I agree. And I think that Microsoft ought to make IE8 coexist happily with IE6.

By: randomrandom

randomrandom — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:27:16 +0000

As discussed in the previous thread, there’s nothing stopping businesses running IE6 locked down for intranet use along with Firefox/Chrome… nothing except lazy, incompetent sys admins.

Bravo to Youtube and the others. Hopefully support will be dropped altogether or blocked entirely, pissing off enough corporate top brass to give these iron-age sys admins a kick up the arse.