IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On | Hacker News Reader

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On

mashable.com

22 pointscatone16 comments

Honestly, when YouTube cuts off the IE6 users, then the problem is solved, period. Watch the number of people using IE6 plummet once that happens.

YouTube will setup a chain reaction. A large number of users will upgrade. This will push down the IE6 percentage hitting other prominent sites, such as eBay, giving them the courage to follow suit.

The only hold outs will be corporations who have an installed base of web apps developed to IE6, which break on IE7+. I predict that when the C*O's discover they can no longer browse IE6, they will demand a solution, which will consist of one of the following:

1) Upgrade the damn web apps and upgrade everyone to IE8.

2) Install Firefox or Safari on all machines, and use IE6 only for company apps.

Either way, problem solved.

I'm not so sure about this. A large number of IE6 users are IE6 users because their corporate IT policy requires them to be IT users. How many corporate IT policies are going to change to allow their employees to watch YouTube on their office computer?

However, the chain reaction has the potential to shake things up. Especially as advertising increases on YouTube, and advertisers won't be receiving traffic from IE6 users from YouTube ads.

Stop supporting it and it will.

Cut it off and I lose 28% of my visitors.

That might be fine for your personal site, but it's no way to run a web business.

Lots of people in big enterprises are stuck on IE6 because of crappy intranet apps that rely on it. They're also not allowed to install alternative browsers (or any software are at all, really)

You could detect IE6 and suggest an alternative browser. Many sites seem to be doing that these days. But then you have to also consider which is more expensive -- supporting IE6 or annoying your IE6 users with warning messages.

Well, we'd have to do both, right? Even with a warning, we'd have to at least support IE6 well enough to make the basic site usable (and we're only doing slightly more than that now, frankly). Otherwise, you're not talking about a warning, you're talking about locking them out.

And the people you're annoying with this message are generally not in a position to do anything about it. I'm sure 98% of the IE6 users on our site know that IE6 sucks. We don't need to tell them that.

Ultimately, it comes down to how much time and resources it takes to support IE6 for your particular site versus how much you would lose by not supporting it.

"I'm sure 98% of the IE6 users on our site know that IE6 sucks."

What are basing that on? To me, it seems like 98% of people don't even know they're using a browser.

Just gut feeling.

It happens that our site caters to just the sort of business users who have to deal with locked-down desktops.

But perhaps you're right. It might be an interesting experiment to put a message up for a week and see how many people click through to download something else.

If it's gut feeling, say so. Don't make up statistics.

I think that's what he meant by "I'm sure 98%..."

"Well, we'd have to do both, right?"

What I mean is that you have to decide which is worse -- dealing with IE6 until it dies naturally or doing something to help speed its death which might also annoy your customers.

Yes, agreed. It's such a nice thought, and so many of the elite tops can do it, but when your clients or customers require support, it's either get paid or don't.

"Cut it off and I lose 28% of my visitors."

Graceful degradation, dynamic enhancement, ringing any bells (and whistles)?

All IE needs to die for the web to move on. (Unless MS stops its strategy of blocking new web standards)

True, but this is not an original idea. Less articles and more doing please.

Kill it. Make it happen.

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