

IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing - Isofarro
http://statichtml.com/2011/ie6-countdown-a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing.html

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maukdaddy
Do geeks always need something to bitch about? Microsoft is at least making an
effort to do as most people wish, getting users to upgrade from IE6.

~~~
SwellJoe
I want them to upgrade to a modern browser. IE8 aint one.

~~~
coderdude
IE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6. In IE8 you barely even need to tweak
sites to get them to look right. I'd be tickled pink if IE8 was all I had to
worry about. IE9 is going to be much better than IE8 -- by leaps and bounds --
but it's still in beta. At least the release candidate is out. Some people are
never satisfied and always need something to complain about. I'm sure you'll
find something else once IE9 is out (it doesn't work on their 10 year old
operating system).

 _Edit:_ So much idealism in this thread and not enough people being
realistic.

Here are the facts:

-Web developers hate IE. All versions of it.

-We live in a world with IE.

-Microsoft IS NOT going to suggest that people download Firefox or Chrome.

-It IS NOT in their interest to do so.

-The next best thing is for them to suggest IE8 and then IE9.

-It is in the users' best interest who don't know any better and it is in Web developers' best interest that people are _at least using something better than IE6 or IE7_

-Windows XP is 10 years old.

-The only thing that's going to be holding back users from upgrading to IE9 is refusal to upgrade their decade-old operating system.

-It would be like people being mad at Apple because the latest version of Safari isn't compatible with OS9.

~~~
SwellJoe
Somehow the Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera teams manage to provide a
modern browser on Windows XP.

This isn't about "finding something to complain about". I want a modern web,
and I want Microsoft to get out of the way of that happening.

~~~
coderdude
I think you're being a bit unreasonable here. IE9 relies on parts of Windows
that just don't exist in XP. Windows XP is ancient by software standards.
Sure, Chrome et al. work in all operating systems, but you're upset at
Microsoft because they don't want to support an operating system that they
want people off of already. It's their decision and I'm glad they want people
to upgrade. People got mad because users didn't want to get off of Windows 98
because of how dated it had become but fewer people are upset at the "Windows
XP is good for a lifetime" crowd.

IE9 is coming and it's much better. When the people holding back on upgrading
finally upgrade then you'll have your better Web.

~~~
texel
That's exactly the point- since they're holding off on upgrading their OS,
potentially for a much longer time, they won't even have the option of
updating their web browser. An OS upgrade is a much more monumental decision
than a browser upgrade, and the inertia is much greater.

At any rate, the fact that IE9 can't backport parts of its OS dependencies is
kind of an implementation detail. We're saying Webkit has no problems
providing a self-contained modern browsing experience, so IE9 doesn't _have_
to be any different.

~~~
bzbarsky
Webkit has no problems providing an experience that the IE team thinks is
subpar (in particular, lacks full 2d graphics acceleration).

Similar for Gecko: it's doing compositing acceleration on WinXP, but not 2d
acceleration.

Now maybe the argument is that IE9 should support such a mode of operation.
But by the same argument, Firefox should still have a supported PPC version of
Firefox 4 (even though it's JIT can't generate PPC code, so JS would be
interpreted and hence very slow). Some people _are_ making that argument, by
the way, but the general consensus is that this sort of decision about what
sort of quality they're willing to put their name on is up to the Mozilla
project. Why does the IE team not get the same courtesy?

I realize that you may disagree with their quality metrics (e.g. you may think
that a modern JS JIT is a must-have requirement for a modern web browser but
2d graphics acceleration is not). But it's not clear to me that this is
obvious, or that this will even be true in a year.

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ghurlman
Sooo... Microsoft links people to Microsoft's browser. This counts as
controversy? Shady behavior? Please.

~~~
mrcharles
The issue is less that they link to their own browser, and more that the
likely outcome is that it will push the adoption of _another_ nearly obsolete
browser.

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jerf
Hey, I don't know if you've noticed the pattern over the past 15 years, but
there's _always_ another "obsolete" browser. You can't "win", it's just about
the progress. There is no point in the past 15 years where you've been able to
just code to the latest beta of your favorite browser and nothing else.

~~~
generalk
That's true, but on the other hand, as TFA points out, IE8 is the latest that
a WinXP user can ever get from Microsoft, which is two-years old and
practically outdated now. Linking IE6 users to IE8 is progress, sure, but
useless given that they could be running Chrome or Firefox, which are actually
modern browsers.

~~~
smackfu
And how old is Win XP?

~~~
kronusaturn
Are you trying to say you think it's more effective to encourage users to buy
Windows 7 (and most likely a new computer to support it) than to encourage
them to install Firefox or Chrome for free?

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rbanffy
I would rather encourage users to download an easy and newbie-friendly Linux
distro and experiment with it.

Sure, XP is an obsolete OS. Modernizing the whole stack is a much better
solution than adding a modern browser to an obsolete OS.

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mtogo
This banner is less ugly and has a choice of multiple browsers:
<http://www.ie6nomore.com/>

~~~
sbierwagen
Upvoted to get useful information above the bickering.

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akamaka
They're trying to get XP users to upgrade from IE6 to IE8. This is a problem
because IE8 is already obsolete.

It would be preferable to encourage people to run pretty much any other
browser on XP, because they are all being actively updated with new features.

The point, which doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft-bashing: _Don't
run this banner on your site._

~~~
Helianthus16
marginal improvement is still improvement. we could just chill out and accept
that microsoft has the right to promote its product and we have the right not
to put the banner on our sites.

~~~
sjs
The problem is that many people who don't know any better and don't read sites
like HN will just go and use this banner.

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walkon
To some extent, it is a good thing that the warning banner is ugly because it
will annoy the users, increasing the chances that they'll do something (i.e.
upgrade to a newer browser) to get rid of it.

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tommi
"Given that everyone using IE6 is, at best, running Windows XP, and given that
Microsoft have stated that IE9 won't be available for pre-Vista SP2 OSs, the
most recent version of Internet Explorer they could ever hope to upgrade to is
IE8."

unless they upgrade Windows. Which they should.

~~~
mkr-hn
I've got no real reason to. XP works fine, and it's secure enough. Java isn't
installed, and flash is enabled on a case-by-case basis (<3 Flashblock). The
odds of me suffering an exploit will go down as hacking efforts shift to the
newer versions. This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or
otherwise, in all the years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned.

I'll probably have this laptop (and XP) for another year or so.

Now, try convincing someone who _doesn't_ know much about computers to
upgrade. All these "everyone should upgrade" declarations I keep seeing won't
do it.

~~~
jquery
> This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the
> years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned.

Just curious, how do you know you haven't suffered any attack?

~~~
mkr-hn
Because it would have to come through a vector that I haven't completely
walled off, and those are exceedingly rare (like the WMF thing ages ago). I
keep up on vulnerabilities, and I'd do a paranoia reinstall if I suspected I
were affected by one.

It would be one of these:

* Noscript exploit

* Simultaneous Flashblock + Flash exploit

* Image-based exploit

* Renderer exploit

And those are extremely rare. My software stack is also pretty stable, and
it's all from trustworthy vendors/projects.

~~~
Pahalial
You are clearly the typical XP+IE6 user being targeted by this campaign.

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EnderMB
My bosses aren't the most tech-savy people on the planet, but even they
realise that it costs them more to pay their developers to build with IE6 in
mind than to simply supply people with IE6 a unstyled page to use.

Developers need to cut the nonsense and just stop supporting IE6 completely.
Hell, our sales tripled (three purchases) from IE6 users when we unstyled
their pages. In this day and age there is no need to support such out-of-date
browsers.

~~~
bilban
I think that's a good point. You can still have a functional web page working
in an older browser. Graceful degradation. I use a modern browser, but I turn
off a lot of the functionality - so the web works for me. Accessible websites
get a thumbs up from me - you are catering for more than just ie6, by doing
so.

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gavreh
The banner is supposed to be ugly - that way people will notice it and not
mistake it for part of your beautiful site.

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nathanwdavis
> And while you're at it, find a designer friend to create a banner that wont
> make your users want to poke their eyes out with a stick.

I think that's the idea - startle the IE6 user with a logo that is so
atrocious that they give in ("Uncle, uncle, OK, I'll do it!!")

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defroost
Why do Microsoft have such a difficult time, to this day, developing a decent
web-browser? With their near infinite financial resources, surely it is no
accident that IE has so many issues, uses tons of proprietary code, and
doesn't support, for example, the <canvas> tag until IE9.

Like a good capitalist you may argue that MS is not in the business of
supporting standards, or it is not their job to make the lives of web
developers easier. You'll argue that they are a business, and by locking in
companies by using proprietary code, MS is being smart. To this I'd say that
Google and Apple aren't exactly running charities yet they manage to produce
web browsers that a truly first rate.

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acabal
I already do this on my own site. Visitors on IE6 get a big warning at the
bottom telling them they're using a dangerously out-of-date browser, and
provides a link to Firefox first, then IE8 second. Even if I can get just one
person to use FF instead of IE, the world will be a better place.

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coverband
With Win7, using Chrome, the site offers IE9 only, not IE8.

I'm quite pleased to be seeing this from MS, no need to be snobby about it and
put down IE overall. If it wasn't for the free availability of IE in Windows,
we wouldn't be using the web 24 hours of every day.

~~~
rbarooah
Netscape Navigator was free to consumers, and was the fastest growing software
product in history before Microsoft started bundling IE. We'd still be using
the web anyway.

The free availability of IE bundled with Windows just stifled competition in
the browser space, causing stagnation of the web until other companies with
deep pockets financed alternatives. (Apple - Webkit and Safari, and Google -
Firefox and Chrome)

If Microsoft had kept developing IE at the same rate as they did between IE3
and IE6, I doubt anyone would be putting them down.

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marckremers
How long until someone plays on this idea and makes one of these warnings that
work on any outdated browser, including ie8, and points them to a choice of
chrome, opera, firefox etc... has this already been done? I'd so use it on my
sites.

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sid_g
Its come to this. That its almost that a company is sorry that it ever made a
piece or software like IE6. When people do insane things for a really long
time. The next insane move starts to look really sane...

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abp
_And while you're at it, find a designer friend to create a banner that wont
make your users want to poke their eyes out with a stick._

Yeah, prettiness, that's what IE 6 users really care for.

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BasDirks
I don't design for tech impaired ducks, but if I would I'd refuse to suggest
to them an upgrade from one pile of shit to another. Maybe pile of shit 9 will
smell less, let's pray.

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slowpoison
Has anybody tested that the banner renders find in IE6 ;-)?

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DjDarkman
There is a better way: simply develop your site without hacking it up to work
in IE 6, and users will notice the difference eventually.

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EGreg
Or you could just put this:

<http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/>

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Trufa
That is sooooo Microsofty of them!

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andrenotgiant
Ugh, we all know 99% of English-speaking users on IE6 are forced to use it at
their workplace. That's going to be so annoying.

Maybe those IE6 Business-users should get their user-agents changed to:
"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) - YES I KNOW IE6 IS OLD,
TELL MY BOSS"

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reustle
Microsoft agrees with IE6countdown.com -
<http://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/43753653189885952>

~~~
shii
ie6countdown.com is by MSFT...

~~~
reustle
Yes, I didn't notice that at first.

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rbanffy
This is why I registered microsoftcountdown.com. It's not the browser the only
thing we need to dump - we need to get rid of the whole company.

~~~
recoiledsnake
And replace it with what? Companies that will charge 30% of all the money for
content that goes through their devices?

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rbanffy
False dichotomy alert!

Getting rid of Microsoft doesn't imply going to Apple. You must realize that
there are other entities in this market, frequently offering better products,
often for free.

Getting rid of a company that despises fair competition, that promotes bogus
standards in order to confuse the market instead of doing something it once
did adequately: build products its users want, would be quite good for the
market.

But you get some points for writing an answer. It seems others just opted to
downvote what they don't like to read.

~~~
Joeri
What market? It's damn hard finding PC's preinstalled with linux (that have
normal sized screens), and it's not easy finding compatible devices for those
PC's.

Sure, nerds always have choice, but for joe sixpack it's microsoft or apple.
There is no other choice.

~~~
rbanffy
> It's damn hard finding PC's preinstalled with linux

I always wonder why things like these happen...

> and it's not easy finding compatible devices for those PC's.

Funny. Just about everything I plug into my Linux notebooks works flawlessly.
Even my non-jailbroken iPod has no problem syncing with it.

The 90's called. They want their excuse back.

> Sure, nerds always have choice,

Sure we do. We, nerds, have choice and we can create choice where there is
none. We nerds can jailbreak locked-up tablets, phones and videogames. But we
also want to help Joe Sixpack get a better, safer computer, if, for no other
reason, to stop the spam zombies.

Actually, we do things like these because we are generous. We want everybody
to have cool toys.

