IE 6 Update

I assume that dial-up users don't download Microsoft updates because of the download time and the frequency of updates. At this point, it's probably fair to say that IE6 users will only upgrade if they get broadband or replace their computer with one that has a better browser pre-installed. Since money is clearly a factor in both cases, I'm not holding my breath.

Color TV arrived around 1960, and it took 13 years to pass the 50% bar. (Source: http://is.gd/taGM) Clearly, there are some consumers who will only upgrade when something breaks -- probably because they just can't afford to do otherwise.

I actually feel for people who are still using IE6. For whatever reason, it's either impossible or impractical for these people to upgrade.

If you want to design a site that doesn't work with IE6 and you can afford to cut off 10%+ of the general population, just do it and explain (nicely) that the site requires a newer browser. They probably won't upgrade, but you've done your part. No need to resort to trickery.

I'm living in Korea right now, and you need activeX for any kind of school, internet banking, or government website. This would make a lot of them not understand what happened to their computer (not that they are particularly aware to begin with.)

I saw someone using XP the other day who didn't know that other browsers existed (other than IE) and Safari was even installed but she didn't know how it got there (I suspect quicktime) or what it was. The IE(7) she had crashed on virtually every link she clicked on due to an old toolbar that probably only worked properly with IE6. The machine was also dead slow due to 512MB memory and loads of task-tray stuff.

Although she already had IE7 I could easily imagine, similar users not being capable of doing upgrades especially on dial up or not wanting to because it might break.

I would have thought the best thing a lot of people could do for the web is actually offer to sort out a few of their non-techy friends computers, which I think would be more effective than a warning message.

For some reason every new generation of developers comes out expecting that to change, but it's not going to. There will always be browsers going out of life that you need to support. That's just the way it works.

And yes, there will always be people like this author whining about it and blaming his users for the his problem. That's the wrong way to go.

If you build web applications, you need to suck it up and support all the browsers out there. Yes, it's harder and yes, you need to use a common subset of all the available tools.

It's been this way since 1995. It's not going to change. Please stop complaining about it.

It's easy enough to tell them ourselves, but if there's a common/classy alternative, we'd check it out.

In the latter case I think this is a poor way to go about this. I've seen these information-bar mimics before but this one actually suggests you need the update to view the page. Trying to appear as a message from MS itself (which, to those not in the know, this will do) is just trying to trick the user into upgrading. Yes, it's got good intentions but is it ethically correct to almost white-hat-phish someone into this? MS are advising iE6/7 users to upgrade regardless.

I wanted a demo but didn't have IE6 to hand, in the end I installed ies4linux -> Wine -> Jaunty RC and I figured that others might want to see it in action so I sat up until 2.30am making the screencast.

Nick says he'll integrate it into their blog shortly, but in the meantime...

50 million people access the internet from work on locked down computers. One would hope they are current, but we know many are not.

Either way, there's nothing your user can do about it, so you can code to him or abandon him. Bitching won't help.

This is just too phishy and does instill bad habits in users who (using IE6) already don't have good habits.