YouTube to kill IE6 support on March 13 | Hacker News Reader

YouTube to kill IE6 support on March 13

arstechnica.com

63 pointsthere30 comments

This is pretty much a non-event:

"[IE6 users] will still be able to watch videos after that date, but new features may not work properly."

What percentage of people use any YouTube features outside of the (Flash) video player UI? It's got to be very low. I bet it is extremely low for IE6 users, as IE6 users are typically people that don't keep up with new things and/or office workers at work.

YouTube could add new features all day, every day, but for the vast majority of users, video playback is all they care about anyway.

In the short-term IE6 users won't see much difference, IE6 won't be blocked, it's just that the youtube devs won't test against IE6 compatibility in the future.

But there's a very real potential not just for "new features" to be unusable for IE6 youtube users but for the entire layout of the page to be broken for IE6 users, rendering the site unusable. Who knows if that will happen but youtube (aka google) is saying now that they don't care whether or not that happens in the future, it's the users' responsibility to upgrade to a more modern browser if they have that problem.

That is indeed very significant.

Where did Google say they wouldn't test it in IE6?

AFAICT, they're not going to let it become unusable for IE6 users. That would be silly, because they could just create a IE6-only stylesheet with "display: none" for everything on the page except the Flash video player. A lot of users would actually consider that a significant improvement.

There is this lightbulb you can click that sort of does that. I think it's a relatively new feature.

They have made Adwords pretty much unusable in IE6 but they are unlikely to make a user-centric site like Youtube unusable.

Do they display that nag screen when you next visit a youtube page once "Continue to Video" has been clicked?

Hopefully, the user gets some sort of warning that their browser is unsupported every time they visit. I suspect even the most complacent of users will want to upgrade if the nag screen is still in their face.

I'm fairly certain that for most IE6 users, the reason isn't complacency (or even ignorance). It's lack of control - corporate environments with "business-critical" ActiveX controls (yes, really), kiosks and so forth.

In my experience, it's less business-critical stuff and more "we don't want to pay for new boxes until the hardware physically dies"

I think a lot of us are expecting something to finally kill off IE6 and I don't think that's really going to happen. I think the watershed will be when most developers just stop caring. I think that this move is an indication that more of us should consider that option. Google is an incredibly smart company with a truly vast user base and this announcement shows that they just don't care about alienating IE6 users. Given their obsessive attitude to testing, I can only assume that they've worked out that pissing off the few remaining IE6 users with nag screens and bugs is cheaper than continuing to support them.

Of course Google have other interests in pushing modern browsers, but I would be flabbergasted if they haven't done a rigourous cost/benefit analysis on the decision. Given their economies of scale, I think this is an indication to those of us with more limited resources that we should just ignore IE6 users unless we have strong evidence that they matter. In the Pareto sense, it's just not a good use of developer time.

I have no evidence for it, but I have an intuitive expectation that IE6 users are generally bad customers - I would expect that they demand more customer support, are less likely to pay for online services, are more likely to contribute negatively to communities etc. Of course there are plenty of users who are stuck on IE6 because of bad corporate IT policy, but there are plenty who are too lazy or uninformed to upgrade their browser and frankly I don't want that kind of person as a customer.

To be honest, I don't think that the day when "most developers just stop caring" will actually kill IE6. I work making custom web-based help systems and most of our clients (who aren't software firms) base their browser support requirements on market share. We base our browser support requirements on their requirements. So until fewer people use IE6. As of last month, IE6 still has 10% of the market share (source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp).

So many companies won't ditch IE6 until fewer people use it. Of course, the surest way to get IE6 users to upgrade is for support to die. Thus the IE6 snake of suckitude begins to eat its own tail.

It could well be that it won't be until their hardware dies and they're forced to get a new computer that a lot of people will upgrade their browser.

Getting browser marketshare stats from W3Schools is like getting os marketshare stats from Ubuntu.com. It's a very specific site with a very specific audience that is far from representative.

Out of curiosity, what's a more reliable or representative source for browser share information?

Here's a TechCrunch article that actually quotes IE6's browser share at 20% - http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/internet-explorer-browser-s...

Any of the big guys tracking across a huge range of sites is generally alright, although your own personal stats are what ultimately matters - depending on who your audience is you might have 99% of your users using a browser traditionally regarded to have single digit market share.

The only relevant stats are your own logs. It doesn't matter what the internet at large is using, any more than the kind of cars they drive in China matters to a mechanic in Ohio. Browser stats vary enormously from site to site and app to app for obvious demographic reasons.

As I said in my first post, I don't think IE6 will be killed off, just that most developers will stop caring unless they have a real reason not to. Someone developing an app to order for a corporate client will continue caring for a long time yet, but for most of us it is dwindling rapidly as an issue.

The kind of companies that force their employees to use IE6 will probably welcome the help in preventing their users from watching YouTube videos.

What companies require the use of IE6

There are many office jobs out there that don't allow their employees to install software on their computers or give them anything more than what comes with a default XP install, thus leaving them stuck with IE6.

Some big companies simply do not want to take the "pain" of upgrades. I'm working as a consultant now, we are developing a project for a big international company on Microsoft CRM, that specifically works only with IE.

IE6 causes a lot of problems even with Microsoft technology. Nonetheless this client do not want to upgrade their browsers. This is not the first time this happens.

The placement seems interesting. Chrome in top left, obviously. But Firefox in the bottom right? Opera in what seems like it should be the 2nd-best position?

My guess is the idea is "surround Chrome with browsers that people like less and are less familiar with so that they might click through to chrome before even considering firefox (or IE8)"

Does anyone know if the placement is actually static? Given that it's Google I assumed it was randomized placement with statistics tracking so they can A/B test the various placements just for the fun of it...

The positions change with every refresh.

On my birthday. How fitting.

and a day before mine!

Didn't look at that post, but youtube is also threatening me because I have FF 2.0. Makes me sad, because it's the best version despite the horrible memory leaks. Not sure what the problem is. As far as youtube is concerned, the browser is basically just a flash wrapper.

Isn't this reason enough to stop using it?:

"Firefox 2.0 is no longer supported and the last update, Firefox 2.0.0.20, is affected by several vulnerabilities fixed in newer versions of the program. All users are urged to upgrade to the newest version of Firefox."

http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefo...

Well, youtube will drop testing their site in IE6, it may still work just fine (unlikely though).

i have a feeling that they'll be implementing a new feature on march 13th that is known not to work in ie6.

We can only hope.

I got randomly selected to beta test a new YT design. It's plausible that the new design will become the default on 13 Mar.

about time, this should have happened about 3 years ago

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