

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On - catone
http://mashable.com/2009/07/16/ie6-must-die/

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teilo
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.

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michaelfairley
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.

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roc
Stop supporting it and it will.

~~~
eli
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)

~~~
enomar
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.

~~~
eli
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.

~~~
enomar
_"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.

~~~
eli
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.

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

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

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

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

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schlichtm
Kill it. Make it happen.

