Thought some of you might appreciate this especially those of you just starting out and have a lot of questions about developing for IE6.

http://www.virtuosimedia.com/tutorials/ultimate-ie6-cheatsheet-how-to-fix-25-internet-explorer-6-bugs

9/15/2009 5:11:01 PM

Developing for NCSA Mosaic

9/15/2009 5:13:13 PM

Yeah, even I've slowly started to drop IE6 support from personal projects.

9/15/2009 8:09:42 PM

don't support IE6 period. The saturation level is much smaller than people would have you believe.

9/15/2009 8:11:19 PM

It's still prevalent enough in some corporate environments to be a concern yadda yadda yadda I'm not pulling up the stats again. If a client really wants or needs IE6 support, I'll include it. It's really not as big of a hassle as some people make it out to be.

9/15/2009 8:13:07 PM

for personal freelance projects I don't support IE6 unless they ask for it. But at my day job its required because all our clients still run on IE6.

9/15/2009 8:35:14 PM

Quote :

"It's still prevalent enough in some corporate environments to be a concern"

that's changing pretty quickly though


and fuck IE6, that's my word.

9/15/2009 9:56:12 PM

I LOVE IE6. If IE8 would allow me to explore my drives without spawning another process, I would upgrade.

9/16/2009 1:51:29 AM

13.6% eh.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

that's conservative, other sites, 25-31%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

[Edited on September 16, 2009 at 2:03 AM. Reason : ,]

9/16/2009 1:57:38 AM

sat in on a developer meeting the other day and the topic went to supported browsers:

"Yea, we usually just support the newest version and the one before that. So that's IE6 and IE7, right? Okay, everyone agreed? Good"

*facepalm*

9/16/2009 6:51:11 AM

The W3schools.com stats are skewed; I can't believe they'd have 13% of traffic using IE6.

9/16/2009 7:24:03 AM

It wouldn't shock me if their "Try It Now!" feature got a lot of IE6 testing.

9/16/2009 9:01:49 AM

back when I worked at GameVee we had a significant number of users on IE6. Don't remember the exact numbers though and this was 2 years ago though.

9/16/2009 9:40:38 AM

That's relevant

9/16/2009 9:46:49 AM

Quote :

"I LOVE IE6. If IE8 would allow me to explore my drives without spawning another process, I would upgrade."

Because we live in an age where process optimization is critical on our single core, low cache processors.

9/16/2009 9:49:07 AM

^^things haven't changed all that much. Most people that were using IE6 are using them because whatever corporation they work for has their own 'branded' IE6 and their IT departments are too lazy to test all their tools on something else. This hasn't changed and from my experience...I'm still seeing a lot of people on IE6.

so yes its relevant.

9/16/2009 9:52:03 AM

^Yep, unfortunately people stick with whatever comes on their systems, even moreso in business environments. Sad but true :/

At least in the RTM of Win7, you get an out of the box choice between 6? browsers (this may only be for europe, but honestly I hope its for everyone, because I loathe IE8)

9/16/2009 9:55:45 AM

^wait what? you get 6 browsers pre-installed?

9/16/2009 9:57:34 AM

^^ In my workplace and probably with many others that work for a large corporation - you do not have the option to change your browser or upgrade it. Our IT locks everything down.

The IT/support guy just yesterday told me that they are thinking about doing a citrix type of environment. Not quite sure what he means but he did say that we would be bringing in our own machines in to work. That was to be happening in 2011.

9/16/2009 10:04:27 AM

IE6 ruled from a UI point of view. Explorer and IE integration was also super convenient. There are tons of times where i would go from one to the other. IE8 has broken that habit though. I dont really have any reason to install another browser. Opera is ok, but im not going to get any benefits over IE8. Firefox is god awful trash. Safari and chrome are the same thing and i cant stand the UI in either one.

9/16/2009 10:06:00 AM

Quote :

"Firefox is god awful trash."

rofl

9/16/2009 10:09:42 AM

wait. firefox is trash now? how did i miss this?

9/16/2009 10:12:47 AM

idk have you ever used it? Its terrible.

9/16/2009 10:13:20 AM

yeah I thought I was Emo if I used Firefox. Damn.....

9/16/2009 10:14:07 AM

Shaggy has got to be the most bitter computer user of all time.

9/16/2009 10:18:42 AM

it's all I use. it's fast and safe for me... and the add-ons are great

9/16/2009 10:18:57 AM

Firefox would be great if they ever fixed the memory leaks they're always swearing they've fixed.

It'd also be nice if tab saving didn't mess up Flash playback.

--------------

I'll also mention that another reason for the still widespread usage of IE6 is probably related to the wholesale pirating of Windows XP years ago mixed with the general dislike of Vista (and therefore a lack of interest in pirating it).

[Edited on September 16, 2009 at 10:22 AM. Reason : .]

9/16/2009 10:20:52 AM

I love my Safari. I use FireFox for debugging because of its plug-ins (web developer, firebug, yslow, etc)

9/16/2009 10:22:06 AM

Quote :

"I'll also mention that another reason for the still widespread usage of IE6 is probably related to the wholesale pirating of Windows XP years ago mixed with the general dislike of Vista (and therefore a lack of interest in pirating it)."

You think the people that would pirate an OS aren't going to upgrade the browser?

9/16/2009 11:32:29 AM

^see the number of 'bitter' users in tech talk like shaggy that bitch and complain about everything. They also seem to be the same people that would pirate software.

9/16/2009 11:38:18 AM

Quote :

"You think the people that would pirate an OS aren't going to upgrade the browser?"

They probably turned automatic updates off long ago, meaning it wouldn't get pushed to their computer. On top of that, if they did update, they'd probably run into Windows Genuine Advantage notifications (though I don't know whether IE7 or 8 actually trigger it) and don't want the "hassle" of dealing with having to crack that too.

Also, the people that pirate the OS also aren't the only people who are running a pirated OS. The random housewife who had the neighborhood kid build her computer probably isn't going to know whether or not she's running legit Windows or not.

9/16/2009 11:52:29 AM

Eh, I just don't see that being a large number of people. Do you have a ton of experience with a big enough number of people that pirated XP to know their behavior?

I just don't see your average pirater sticking with 6.

9/16/2009 12:03:34 PM

Any experience I have would be largely anecdotal, but hell -- I have a legit version of Windows XP and still have IE6 on my desktop at home. I don't use it terribly much anymore, but every so often it'll come up.

9/16/2009 12:15:57 PM

Quote :

"I don't use it terribly much anymore"

Thats...kinda...the...point.

9/16/2009 12:17:57 PM

I don't. Others might.

The only reason I don't use it more is because my install Flash went wonky in IE, so I'm kind of forced to use Firefox. That said, Firefox's Flash is also becoming increasingly fucked on my machine, so I'll probably have to reformat.

I'm not saying "here is why every person out there still using IE6 is doing so"; I'm saying "this is probably contributing to the statistics people are seeing", which is that usage is dropping, but there's still a (for whatever reason) entrenched user group.

9/16/2009 12:26:56 PM

Chance, are you on some sort of douchebag tech talk rampage this week or something?

9/16/2009 12:27:18 PM

Eh? I admit, I was having some fun last night in the Neon thread because he did the whole Neon thing where he assumed everyone but him steals software, confidently ignoring the period in his life where he was just like everyone else.

But I don't hardly see how I'm being a douchebag to question this

Quote :

"I'll also mention that another reason for the still widespread usage of IE6 is probably related to the wholesale pirating of Windows XP years ago"

Maybe I'm way off here, but I don't see a convincing argument.

9/16/2009 12:36:26 PM

Dude said probably

He was just hypothesizin

It ain't science

9/16/2009 12:43:26 PM

discovered this today. supposed to work wonders making IE6 act like IE7

http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/

3/5/2010 5:12:32 PM

^there have been quite a few scripts similar to that floating around over the years. I tend to steer clear of them because of performance issues.

I had used one that allowed PNG24 in IE6 with transparency but it made everything so slow.

[Edited on March 5, 2010 at 5:16 PM. Reason : .]

3/5/2010 5:15:11 PM

IE6's EOL was announced for june - just about everyone has dropped support i thought

3/5/2010 6:01:02 PM

lots of big players have but it's really up to each site admin based on his site's usage stats whether he chooses to drop support or not.

if you're running a site for older people that don't update their shit, you should still keep supporting it obviously...

3/5/2010 6:02:38 PM

Where is this fallacy that old people don't update their shit coming from?


I'm pretty sure Windows Updates runs on its own to update IE6.

3/5/2010 6:26:27 PM

Assuming you have Auto Updates on, I think it does now, yes.

However if you're still using dial up on an older computer (with and OS up to and including XP SP3), it's still a very real possibility that you've got IE6.

7.5% of my overall traffic still comes from IE6. Greater than Safari (5%), less than Chrome (10%). Personally, I've begun leaving IE6 by the wayside and I was one of its biggest supporters for a long time.

3/5/2010 6:51:01 PM

i was out of town, otherwise i would have gone to ie6 funeral

http://ie6funeral.com/

R.I.P.

3/5/2010 6:51:14 PM

Aten should probably check their IE8 compatibility.

3/5/2010 7:02:37 PM

I'm stuck supporting the garbage that is IE6 at work because my users are in hospitals and hospitals don't have any plans in the near future to upgrade...sigh.

3/5/2010 7:43:53 PM

didnt read any of the above posts


just wanted to mention how ugly the modern IE gui is. It is like.......sun box ugly. Microsoft needs to hire somebody with at least a little talent to redesign it .

3/6/2010 1:58:37 AM

IE has always been ugly as sin.

3/6/2010 4:44:05 AM

i think share for ie6 is somewhere around 20-25%... and that's definitely not a stretch. we're talking about people who call IE "the internet" or "the e" --- people who haven't even gone to xpsp2. there are tons of these people out there

3/7/2010 7:12:44 PM