Microsoft rallies IE6 death squads Microsoft has launched a fresh campaign to eradicate Internet Explorer 6 from the web. Redmond's Internet Explorer 6 Countdown web page lets you watch the decline of IE6's market share decline, encouraging websites to drop support for browser and urging netizen IE6 holdouts to switch to "a modern browser". According to …
How long before MS s brought before the EU courts again? They take you to where you can go download the latest version of IE. On new computers they have to give the consumer a choice. Chances are, the reason why they use is installing IE6, they current computer cannot run anything later; you need SP2 or higher for XP to run IE7. Even then, why should someone be almost two releases behind what is current.
So if MS really wants people to be on a modern browser then they should be providing links to Opera and Firefox.
"Everyone loves to rewrite history. When IE6 first came out it was fantastic compared to the competition"
No it wasn't. IE6 was quite an improvement compared to IE4 or 5. It was not bad compared to the competition, but really was not fantastic either. By then Netscape had released their code and mozilla was up to the 0.9 series (Netscape 6 was based on mozilla 0.9). Opera was comparable too. These both had the big advantage of being cross-platform.
IE6 was streets ahead better than NN4.7, which was the main alternative when it came out.
NN 4.7 was a developer's nightmare. Everything would always work in IE6 and be broken in NN. That's why I, and most of the developers I knew, called it 'Nutscrape'. 'twas fookin' awful. Was like supporting IE6 now. People would *groan* when I said NN suppport by the end.
Netscape 6 was OK in comparison, but it was too little, too late. IE had won by then.
To use newer versions of IE you'd have to upgrade Windows to at least Version XP which is essentially impossible in most companies.
So what can you do? Switch to Firefox? Switch to Linux?
Why doesn't Microsoft go forward and offer their newer browsers for their own operating systems?
Maybe MS are trying to make sure that older OS's are retired as well. I'm sure that IE8 could be made to run on XP, but why give users the choice to not pay MS more money by replacing the OS.
Interestingly, I still run a system that I boot on occasion which is Win 2000 Pro. Firing up IE6 on this (IE 7 cannot be installed) already says "Install another browser", with a link to IE8 which then tells me it can't run on that OS.
I know that Win 2000 is out of support now, so I have no cause for complaint (this system has some legacy payroll software that I can't re-install because of expired license key restrictions that allow me to run it in query mode, but not re-install it on another system - and the supplier no longer exists!), which I have to keep running for 3.5 more years to satisfy HMRC data retention requirements. It gets started about once every 6 months just to prove it still works.
All these big corps that still use their internal site that require IE6 are going to have to start to think of getting it their systems rewritten anyway as once XP falls out of support there will be no further patches for IE6 anyway and newer versions of Windows such as Vista and 7 never had IE6 installed.
Im suprised that no software company has yet realeased an IE6 compatible browser that can be installed as a standalone application for those that need IE6 for internal use on newer versions of Windows. surely it cant be that difficult to take chrome or mozilla source code and add in the functions that IE6 included so that the internal sites still think they are running on IE6
Microsoft might have greater success in moving users from IE6 to IE8 if they had not introduced the new UI with IE7, which:
a) craftily distrbutes the most frequently used button all across the window, in order to maxinise the distance the mouse has to be moved; and
b) does not enable the user to configure the UI as was possible with IE6 (and still is with other leading browsers).
Redmond needs to learn that one size does not fit all, and forcing continual, often unncessary change on users is a great way of alienating them and giving them a reason them to try alternative products.
@david12: There are a lot of Win98 machines out there running on Pentium II 400 class hardware that seemed to be more reliable than MS would have wished for. I know someone who has such a machine and simply cannot afford to buy another. Nor does he see the point given that the primary use is POP email.
But I guess the IPhone carrying Gossip Girl classes don't understand the concept of not having 500 quid lying around to blow on irrelevancies (and yeah, the net is way down the list)..
"IE 6 still has a greater market share than all opera version combined..."
And modern IE versions still has greater market share than Firefox. Ha ha.
Or maybe being more used doesn't mean it's necessarily better. I get tired of people whining about Opera - it's an excellent browser, but if you want to use something else, that's your choice.
Opera was also about when IE 5 or 6 was the only alternative. When I switched from IE, Firefox wasn't even available, and I switched long before it became trendy to do so.
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