IE6 No More

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Ran across an interesting AUG 4th 2009 article, Startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6. It talks about the growing angst of developers against IE6, and that a group of companies have joined together to tell IE6 users to upgrade to a modern browser. This group has created the website IE6 No More

ie6nomore-logo

 

They have created a anti-IE6 banner and encourage other companies to join their cause by sharing the banner. They even include the script and HTML to install to detect the situation. I’ve embedded their code below.

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So, I’m cool with this, being an IE8 fan.  Another good point on this site is the age old question: What about the corporate users? This page addresses how corporate users are held hostage by their corporate IT departments, who are sometimes slow to keep up with modern browsers. I understand that pain, and have been having this conversation with corporate customers since IE8 Beta 1 came out. We at Microsoft want to help customers with this issue, and are glad to prove IE8’s value.

Back to the article, another excerpt stands out to me:

IE6 has been on the decline for a while. According to W3Counter , the browser accounted for 15 percent of the market last month, compared to 35 percent the year earlier, and 48 percent in July 2007. But it’s still one of the most popular browsers around, which means it continues to cause headaches for developers.

So, I always like to see the traffic monitoring sites, just to get a dose of reality. This site provides a free traffic monitoring capability, and they show the aggregate stat’s like web browsers and O/S’s. Let’s take a look at AUG 2009:

image

Wow! There are several curious facts/conclusions there:

  • IE6 is the 4th most popular browser. Hopefully a declining group.
  • IE7 still is the leader, but IE8 is gaining ground.
  • The Firefox camp is splintered at the moment.
  • The O/S table is interesting.
  • Windows XP is strong.
  • Vista is a distant 2nd.
  • Another gap to Mac OS X.
  • iPhone makes the list too.
  • Windows 7 is not even released, and is on the heels of Linux.

I don’t know if these numbers are accurate, but it’s always a trip to check these out.

In my opinion, I hope that all of this gets IE6 groups to move to IE8. As for group that wants to stay on IE7, my advice is: you’re making a mistake. IE8 is more secure, more performant, has impressive innovation with web slices and accelerators and search providers, etc. And with Windows 7 coming, it’s a perfect time to deploy a new browser. If you need help with this scenario, contact your local Microsoft contact, and tell them that you want to talk to a DPE evangelist (my organization).