IE6 Countdown
Jan. 4th, 2012 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This has to be the most interesting thing that Microsoft have done for a while. Everyone I know in our industry has been hoping for the worldwide use of Internet Explorer 6 (and more generally, Internet Explorer) to reduce to the point where nobody has to support it any more, but now Microsoft themselves seem to be heading a campaign to finally wipe the old version off the face of the earth.
It's been around since last year, but it's recently come up again because its usage dropped low enough for it to be officially declared dead in the Western world. Currently it's at 7.7% worldwide, with the page hopeful to get it down below 1% eventually. Only China now has a significant share of it, with several countries on the brink of passing the 1% mark - America managed it, so there's no reason we can't!
(A note, just in case, because one of the most frustrating things for anyone to say in these conversations is "Why should I change away from Internet Explorer? It works fine". Do you know why it works fine? Because people like me have spent days battering its demented interpretation of everything and anything into shape so that it will at least work somewhat like other browsers that actually make sense.)
It's been around since last year, but it's recently come up again because its usage dropped low enough for it to be officially declared dead in the Western world. Currently it's at 7.7% worldwide, with the page hopeful to get it down below 1% eventually. Only China now has a significant share of it, with several countries on the brink of passing the 1% mark - America managed it, so there's no reason we can't!
(A note, just in case, because one of the most frustrating things for anyone to say in these conversations is "Why should I change away from Internet Explorer? It works fine". Do you know why it works fine? Because people like me have spent days battering its demented interpretation of everything and anything into shape so that it will at least work somewhat like other browsers that actually make sense.)
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Date: 2012-01-04 10:58 pm (UTC)Since I upgraded from XP to 7 last week I've also moved finally from IE to Firefox. It's the former's inability to load Facebook Timeline correctly that finally did it for me.
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Date: 2012-01-05 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 12:24 am (UTC)It's been a long road, getting from there to here. . . .
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Date: 2012-01-05 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 05:08 am (UTC)Alas the site I am getting paid to work on now still has like 8% of visitors on IE6. Somehow Safari is actually more popular than either Firefox or Chrome as well.
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Date: 2012-01-05 02:23 pm (UTC)Do those browser figures include mobile devices? I can see Safari leaping ahead thanks to the iPhone and iPad all using versions of it.
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Date: 2012-01-08 04:10 am (UTC)It's frustrating. The website originates from Australia, and since I'm in Canada, that ends up with us both having to use IE for a bit longer. I'd prefer never to use it, and I'd even like to uninstall it from my home computer, but I have to keep it for compatibility's sake. At least we're both at 1.4%.
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Date: 2012-01-14 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-14 11:09 pm (UTC)Since IE8, though, it's had developer tools built in and Firefox doesn't, which seems a bit... the wrong way round.