IE6 is Finally Being Laid to Rest!!!

March 7, 2011 - 23 CommentsWritten by
Categories → News

WOOHOO! IE6 is officially being put out of it’s misery by it’s makers Microsoft and you can help in their efforts by adding the countdown banner for IE6 clients. This really is a true red letter day in the design calendar.

Just released is the IE6 countdown site which gives stats over which countries in the world most use IE6, with China taking a massive lead. Of course the biggest problem will not be people at home using IE6 but companies like my bank that still have IE6.6 as their standard browser, or many of the corporates that I have dealt with in the past year that also demand the perfect look through IE6.

The reason that corporates decided not to upgrade is purely based on cost. Thanks to the ramping speed of roll-outs by major software houses such as Microsoft, and often failures in providing the quality wanted (such as Vista) it has become common practice within IT organizations to say “lets skip this release and wait for one that works properly”. They know that the cost of roll-out to their thousands of clients will make a major dent in their budget for the year. So, lets hope that Microsoft can get the ear of the IT manager & CFO and get them to understand that what they are using right now is disabling their workforce and not enabling it.

Either way, we should hopefully finally see a death to the 10 year old browser that has limited support for CSS and weird Javascript choices. Hopefully this will cause a knock-on effect and other products such as jQuery will no longer have to hold code choices for IE6 users.

As for you the designer or web creator, this really could not be a better day, on the IE6 countdown website there are case studies and Forrester reports on why your corporate clients should upgrade, and therefore you will not have to code with it in mind, and for your smaller customers you can share with them how cool they are to have not chosen to spend that extra money on making their website IE6 compatible, maybe remind them why they should be on IE8 (or maybe one of the other browsers available).

About the Author: (11 Articles)

Andy Killen has been working exclusively with the web since 1994 when he was Intel's internet engineer for Europe. Today he runs his own company phat-reaction.com and has created one of the most popular Wordpress plugins "share and follow", and was also part of the Adobe Fireworks CS5 beta test team. When Andy is not busy making websites, themes and plugins, he can be found enjoying life in Amsterdam.

Comments and Reactions

  • Matty

    It’s about time, good riddance to bad rubbish.

  • http://pixelpraise.com/ Kyle Ledbetter

    If only these corporations would adopt Firefox and/or Chrome, then updates would happen in the browser, and updates would not require an entire OS update…decouple that crap

  • http://discomint.com Khey

    Wow about time.

  • Nick

    I was having a case of the “Mondays” until I found this article. Any idea when they’re going to put a nail in the coffin?

  • http://www.dealsbygolly.com Joe

    Well heck at least China isn’t beating us in this. They can have all our old IE6 installs.

  • http://windridgewebdesign.com Windridge Web Design

    I couldn’t be happier!

  • http://www.glintt.in Kuldeep daftary

    Wohhooo ! :) Waow! ! Yahooo yippee :P Thats All I can say ! ! GREAT NEWS!

  • http://byme.se Tommie Hansen

    Purely based on cost — yes. However that cost isn’t just for updating computers with software and have people doing that. The cost is also to update systems that heavily rely on the client having a specific browser.

    So why would anyone develop for Internet Explorer? Well.. it’s the most stable regarding releases and support for various systems and huge web apps (think 10 years development, not apple apps that’s made in two months).

    Every other browser has a release cycle of two months and support is == 0 (yes, one could argue against this but… yeah).

    That’s the main problem. Companies being tied to an application they use that require version XX, not companies just being dumb or anything.

    It’s a simple fact of “if it works, why change it?”. Companies don’t care if your glorious CSS3-effects work, they care if their companies applications work and that almost NEVER include people surfing on websites where people even talk about CSS3 or anything similar.

    In the end one can only cross ones fingers and hope that companies will *NOT* go from IE6 to IE8 and instead jump directly to IE9 if IE at all (probably IE though).

    • Andy Killen

      interesting and valid point of view.

  • http://usabilitysnippets.com angelee

    This sounds better than aspirin..

  • http://www.indiabucket.com/ Rakesh Kumar

    Well this is all about time but we will good to see IE9.

  • http://www.register-domainname.in Register Web Domain

    That is a good news…

  • http://www.mcmahon-holmes.com TimMH

    And about time too…

    I still hope that one day all the browser agents will come together and use a standard rendering engine…. not one that has to use mod fixes like -webkit or -mozilla…

    Please all use a single defined model for CSS.

  • http://www.zipbox.co.uk Hannah Hurst

    Best news I have heard in a long time! I think designers all over the world should have a celebration :-)

  • Kicky

    Crap. The site I work for makes $40K a year on IE5 users. IE5 !!!!!! It’s a small company, so it’s not like we can lose that.

    But other than that, hoorah hoorah!

    • Andy Killen

      there’s nothing to stop you advertising for just that…. As one of the other commenter noted, it’s maybe a far too massive cost for corporate to move their inhouse apps to a new browser and they are forced to stay with IE6. As another designer I know commented “I’d be mighty upset if when I took my car to the garage I was told I had to replace it as it is more than 10 years old”

    • Steven

      Are you kidding me Kicky?? $40,000 is enough to pay the salary of a web developer. If that’s too much to lose, I’m not sure how valuable these IE5 users are and how much of a profit margin is being made off the product. (Hearing aids, walkers, hospice plans?). I would drop support for IE5, support IE8, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, HTML5, CSS3 and cater to NINETY FIVE percent of the population market instead of scraping by and holding on for dear life to their niche market.

  • http://www.sigididesign.com Vezu

    This is the best news ever, i hate optimizing for IE6.It’s a waste of time. i have started telling clients i do not design for IE6.

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  • http://www.eaglelight.com/ LEDs Lights

    hello:) one of the best news.this is really what I’ve been waiting for. thanks

  • http://www.espreson.com Das

    Still 12%. Microsof should campaign more on it to make it 0%

  • http://www.beautifulicon.com OC Wedding Photographer

    Now that FF 4.0 has been released, I hope this will encourage browsers to better themselves. Thanks :)

  • http://www.mactonweb.com/ Web design London

    Waow! ! Yahooo yippee..