Much Ado About IE6 | Hacker News Reader

Much Ado About IE6

blog.digg.com

42 pointsNycto27 comments

While I appreciate that Digg actually took the time to do a survey of reasons why people are still using IE6, I don't think the results are really that surprising to most web developers.

However, just because users are not empowered to switch away from IE6, that doesn't mean that an IE6 upgrade reminder page is useless. It's just the "squeaky wheel" philosophy of getting things done. If enough users see enough "Upgrade Your Browser!" pages, and if enough of them complain to management often enough, then management might actually do something about it.

Let us not forget that Internet Explorer's market dominance was built on the notion that, after some time, many pages didn't work in other browsers. The only way to break that dominance will involve the same, but in reverse.

We might as well ask them to use firefox. If every website forced their users to do so, then our life would be made so much easier.

Actually, I'm a web developer and I've been looking for a larger site to do a survey exactly like this for a long time.

And as far as changing my behavior developing sites, I'll actually word it a bit differently now -- something like "please upgrade your browser, or if it's out of your control, take a moment to email your manager or IT department to ask them to upgrade your browser, as it is 8 years old and growing."

"Currently, IE6 usage accounts for 10% of Digg visitors and 5% of page views on Digg. While this is down from 13% and 8% a year ago respectively, IE6 still accounts for a fairly large portion of Digg usage."

This makes me sick. I seem to recall that when Firefox had about 5% marketshare, lots of people were saying "Why go to the trouble of supporting Firefox for only 5%?!". And then now when IE6 has 5%, they don't seem to have the same reasoning.

(Yeah, just an impression).

I take it you met these people inside corporate IT or other isolated development shops because I've not seen much of that attitude on public blogs and such. However if I imagine such a Microsoft-centric web developer for a second, I'm pretty sure they would be pushing for IE7 and dropping IE6 as quick as they can.

You might be surprised. Keep in mind that developing for IE6 isn't necessarily difficult if you don't care about standards compliance or cross-browser compatibility. In a corporate environment where IT is a cost center, it's often acceptable to support only a single browser company-wide if it means saving money.

Also, a lot of corporate IT shops are not doing anything particularly interesting technology-wise, and have already built IE6-compatible frameworks that make most of the front-end web development they need to do easy enough. On the other hand, upgrading to IE7 would mean exhaustive testing of all existing applications, and the support of "the business" to expend resources on the project. It's much easier to do nothing for as long as possible.

Just to add another data point - I work for a SaaS company serving the financial industry, and 25% of our user base is still on IE6. (We still have major clients running Windows 2000 too, but that's another story.)

Just look where the money is: they didn't list stats for ad clicks but I'm willing to bet IE6 users click more than their share of ads, and Firefox users less.

That's actually an quite interesting notion. I'd like to see digg show the ad clicks for each browser.

For many people out there Windows and IE were the first and the only. Those were the symbols of a computer and internet. It's hard to give up on a symbol, right?

Also, while FF was gaining traction among SOHO users, the large corporation defaulted (and still do) to IE, for various reasons. For many of them, it was unthinkable for IE to be replaced by any contender. And even should it get replaced, they want to be compatible with the large body of other corporations sticking to IE.

Last but not least, the typical web developer of this day is well capable of developing correct FF code. It wasn't necessarily the case years ago.

Serve them this: http://m.digg.com/

"we’re likely to stop supporting IE6 for logged in activity like digging, burying, and commenting. Users of IE6 would still be able to view pages - just not logged in. This won’t happen tomorrow, but we’re thinking about doing it soon."

Since a significant portion of the users were forced to use IE6 at work, the most likely response of IT managers to this action will be "Oh, so you'll be forced to spend less of your time at work interacting with digg (and other non work-related sites)? Sounds good."

To take it a step further digg should try to generate publicity around this and get other web apps on board.

I'd love to see a "ditch IE6 day" where thereafter I can just pretend all web browsers know how to render transparent pngs.

13% and 8% down to 10% and 5% if you stop supporting the browser now why support it previously it seems as though the 3% drop was irrelevant.

The real issue should be who is using ie 6 is it people that are loyal diggers who have no other option while at work, school, etc... or is it indeed people who refuse to upgrade or unaware that other browsers exist. It seems the former with the low percentage.

I'd hate to use a four letter acronym, so I wont.

The IE6 users is mostly people who use it on their work computers, as mention in the article.

Build a rendering engine in javascript. Redirect the IE6 users of the world to it.

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

but it's terribly slow.

I have a client that just made the decision to upgrade all desktops to IE7. They put together a project plan that lasts 6 months. That's what we're up against.

If you want people at work to use your site you still have to consider IE6.

I'm genuinely intrigued: what kind of rough steps are there in a six month plan to upgrade to IE7? Is it mostly testing existing internal applications for compatibility?

if reddit, myspace, facebook, twitter, and other applications i don't use also did this --- perhaps that damn thing would finally die

IMO, Facebook and Twitter could really change things if they wanted to.

Heck, don't drop support for IE6. Just show a banner on the top of the page which says something to the effect of "Hey! You're using outdated software. Would you like to upgrade?". Millions of non-geeks use Facebook/Twitter everyday. Even if 1% of them upgraded, it would make a hell of a difference.

Facebook degrades quite gracefully, actually. I'm surprised their site looks as good as it does on IE 6.

how many users is the 5%?

In my university, they still use IE6 everywhere. If a website asked me to upgrade I can not because we can not install anything on the machines. However, the machines do have firefox, so I tend to use that, but it does not come spontaneously to many people to look for firefox, while ie is right there on the desktop.

As for the article, I did find it insightful in as far as I did not know before why people continue using ie6. I thought the idea to ask them upgrade was quite a logical one. However, although it might work in forcing my university to upgrade, I am not too sure as I suppose the IT department has a lot on its plate and perhaps upgrading their browser is not as important as say upgrading the online learning environment.

Upgrading the browser is not too tedious a task. In fact, if your IT department had left Windows Update turned on, they'd have at least IE7 by now.

Of course, they can't leave WinUpdate on because they did not legally purchase Windows :p

this is a great point made by someone that has never worked in IT..

Nevermind the fact that nearly all proprietary software on a system may or may not function correctly with the release of a service pack or a new browser, testing should always be done before hand which is why auto updates are turned OFF.

on the IE6 front i completely agree, i have a redirect page setup with a link to IE 7 for our company website.. IE7 isnt the newest and greatest thing by any means but its a whole lot better than its predecessor.

I don't know why you're being downmodded, I think you've made a good point. I'd assumed that most orgs stuck on IE6 weren't offering Firefox in tandem, which is apparently not the case.

Perhaps "please upgrade your browser" messages should also instruct users to look for an alternative browser which may already be available. That said, I still think showing such messages to potential customers is categorically stupid.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com