
Amelie() – a devious plan to get rid of IE6 - bdfh42
http://ajaxian.com/archives/amelie-a-devious-plan-to-get-rid-of-ie6
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BigCanOfTuna
Great idea. Punish the poor people who are forced into using IE6. A
significant portion of the users would assume that there is something wrong
with their vision rather than the browser.

I suggest an alert saying "Your browser is old. Please upgrade or contact your
IT department."

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thingie
I also think that intentionally breaking the website (in the worst possible
way) in an unsupported browser is exactly the behavior we're trying to get rid
of, along with IE6.

~~~
jrockway
Yeah. But unfortunately IE6 doesn't support any functionality that could break
the user, so developers are forced to break the browser instead.

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binarymax
While this passive agressive behaviour is good for a laugh, if you are serious
you could do what we did - officially end support of the browser with 6 months
notice (our support ended early April). Back in October we placed an alert at
the top of our screen when an IE6 user logs in telling them this. They can
still use IE6, but we refuse to address any support issues related to the
browser. If they have an issue we tell them to install FF or a newer version
of IE.

~~~
Semiapies
That's _way_ too adult, though.

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ck2
IE6 is bad but it's not like it's Netscape 4.

Don't torture people, instead give them a positive reason to upgrade/replace
IE.

Announce what features on your site(s) they could be enjoying beyond IE6.

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catch23
Usually most sites won't have many additional features if they used a browser
beyond IE6, like hacker news. But developers have to spend 2x time fixing
things because of IE6's broken css implementation. Sites that don't explicitly
target IE6 will just look strange, but may still function 100%.

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thinkbohemian
A number of people have responded "just notify IE6 users..." or some variation
to get them to change or switch. Digg did a comprehensive study and found the
majority of IE6 users would switch if they could. Its a good read
[http://ajaxian.com/archives/digg-takes-the-time-to-study-
the...](http://ajaxian.com/archives/digg-takes-the-time-to-study-the-pain-of-
ie-6) and for all of you advocating that education is enough either hasn't bee
paying attention, or aren't actually developing for the web.

If only we lived in a world where logic dictated everthing...happy friday,
good post!

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pbhjpbhj
>" _for all of you advocating that education is enough either hasn't bee[n]
paying attention, or aren't actually developing for the web_ "

In 44% of cases we have either no admin access (37%) or incompatible MS
Windows (7%) given as the reason - in both cases these are not valid reasons
alone.

At least one browser can be installed per user without admin access (unless
they mean "no permissions to install" which would really be covered by the 32%
block).

As for incompatibility, Opera 9.5 (for example) can be installed on MS Windows
95 (requiring a free winsock upgrade from MS). How old is their version of MS
Windows?

The numbers using MSIE surely do not all come from poor eduction but that's
not to say it's not a large chunk.

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CodeMage
_Hey, it is Friday :)_

Whew. You had me thinking you were being serious. And judging from other
comments here, I wasn't the only one.

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thaumaturgy
Or, just, y'know, use a reliable browser test ( _not_ sniffing the user-
agent), and if you have an IE 6 user, then replace the page content with a
gentle & friendly notice explaining that the site is not compatible with very
old web browsers (this is something that a lot of users can understand), along
with some helpful links to upgrading IE or downloading Firefox, and a link to
a reliable webmaster contact at the bottom.

This is what I do, and it's had zero complaints so far -- on the one or two
small sites I've done it for. ;-)

~~~
rlpb
The problem is that the majority of IE6 users are not in a position to upgrade
(the ones that are have done so already). There's no point in telling them or
bugging them since they are not in control of upgrades.

For example, the NHS (the UK's largest employer and one of the largest in the
world) is still using IE6:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/22/internet-
ex...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/22/internet-explorer-nhs-
vulnerability)

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/01/doh_ie6/>

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pigbucket
I daydream of torturing someone after the fashion of Amelie, but I've been
cursed with undeserving acquaintances. There are never any really nasty people
around when you need them; they're always off somewhere else waving flags or
inventing euphemisms for new holocausts. Who wouldn't love to put Preperation
H into the toothpaste tubes of the BP PR folk? Or just to downgrade them
stealthily and somehow irrevocably to IE 6? This post has whet my appetite
again, but does not do justice to the sublimity of Amelie's revenge, which
depends on changing things that, unlike IE 6, have always worked perfectly
without your thinking about it to things that suddenly don't quite work right,
or the same way. The intensity of the torture varies as the reliability of the
thing changed and inversely as the explicability of the change itself. But it
also needs to be justified.

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fairlyodd
Yea, this is indeed quite inane. I think a better strategy for Microsoft would
be to partner with the top 100 websites (most internet users are likely to hit
one), and have it display a prominent upgrade or gtfo message.

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pavs
This is really really stupid. Most IE6 users use IE6 not because they want to,
but because they have to at work.

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jheriko
Yeah, but most /businesses/ that use it and force their employees to only do
so because they mistakenly believe upgrading will incur a heavy cost, when if
managed correctly (just lift the restriction on your employees) the cost is
neglible...

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DougWebb
I don't think the heavy cost comes from having IT personnel going around to
everyone's computer and upgrading the browser. It comes from (a) internal
websites that were built when IE6 and ActiveX were all the rage, which nobody
maintains anymore, and (b) making sure that any other applications which are
installed that use the html engine from IE6 still work with IE8's engine, and
dealing with any incompatibilities.

I think a LOT of corporate infrastructure was built using Microsoft tools
during the period when Microsoft was trying to dominate by overwhelming
standards-based development, and the consultants that built most of that
infrastructure are gone now. Since you can't upgrade IE without replacing IE6,
companies are stuck leaving IE6 on the corporate desktops.

Could a non-IE browser be installed? Of course, and that solves everything but
the training issue: people have to learn to use IE for internal sites and the
new browser for outside sites. The issue here is probably more a fear-of-
training and fear-of-support than a real cost.

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rbritton
Many businesses are still running Windows 2000, which can't upgrade IE past 6.
In these cases, it's nearly impossible to get the funding for a replacement
computer that can capably run a newer OS version.

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petervandijck
hahaha.

I've tried similar schemes to punish negative posters on a forum I had: the
site would magically be much slower for them. They figured it out quickly
though.

~~~
m0nty
I used to deal with pr0n in the same way. The kids would just go to another
site if I outright blocked their current "interest", but making it way slower
using Squid just meant they sat around watching a pic appear pixel by pixel.
Between them, they had about 1Kb/sec of our bandwidth; everyone else got the
rest. Win-win situation. (They never figured this out, afaict. Never
underestimate the sheer determination of a horny teenager.)

