

YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6 - drusenko
http://deals.venturebeat.com/2009/08/04/startups-unite-to-drive-nail-into-the-coffin-of-internet-explorer-6/?

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pg
This is the biggest example I've seen of the network of YC alumni organizing
to do something. YC itself didn't organize this or even know about it.

I've been looking forward to seeing what this type of network can do that a
traditionally hierarchically structured organization can't.

~~~
vaksel
I dunno, Google seems to have beaten them to the punch and no matter their
culture, I'd still call them a traditionally hierarchically structured
organization

~~~
rantfoil
What punch did we get beaten to, exactly?

~~~
whatusername
Doesn't google show Chrome ads on google.com and youtube.com for users with
IE6.

They have a couple more page views than the YC alumni network.

~~~
gdee
>> Doesn't google show Chrome ads on google.com and youtube.com for users with
IE6.

They do. I for one, wish they'd stop doing it for FF users too though. It's
getting really annoying.

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brandon272
Unfortunately, there are a huge number of corporate environments that have
virtually no reason to upgrade their browsing platforms. Many of these
environments don't even really have a technical reason to not do the upgrade,
they are just administered by overworked staff and upgrading IE6 to something
newer and safer is just at the bottom of the list.

The bottom line is that until the end users who have to use IE6 every day
become inconvenienced enough (in the form of sites blocking them out, not
warning them) or the people who pay these IT admins actually think it's a
priority, we're not going to make much headway on this issue.

With that said, I think that initiatives like this are a great start. What I
would like to see is a distributed technical effort to encourage upgrades,
which is what they are doing, followed up a technical effort to block access
to IE6 starting on a specific date. Let the note of encouragement that
participants place on their sites let users know that unless their browser is
upgraded, they will be unable to access the site as of June 1, 2010.

Eventually these IT admins will be placed in the position of having to choose
between keeping IE6 to support their legacy intranet applications and
upgrading IE6 because third party sites have started to implement
functionality that IE6 doesn't support.

~~~
jon_dahl
One of my clients ships software to such an organization - several of our
users had IE6 installed when Training day rolled around. Interestingly, rather
than going through Tech Support to request an upgrade to IE7 (which takes a
while), the users opted to just download Firefox.

~~~
trapper
You are luckier than us - some of our customers machines are so locked down
that they can't even change the date let alone install firefox. We even tried
using portable apps on a usb stick, no luck there either! Arrgh.

~~~
andyking
Someone installed Firefox on a computer at a non-profit radio station I was
involved with not so long ago.

The owner of the station sent an email to all saying that if he found out who
had installed the "firefox trojan" on the office PC, he would "sue them and
call in the police". A few days later, all computers in the building had been
_downgraded_ from IE8 to IE6 and locked down so users couldn't even reboot.

It's now official policy in that company that if anyone puts their own USB
drive into an office computer, they'll be asked to leave the station. There is
electrical tape stuck over the USB ports. That's the sort of mindless,
dribbling paranoia you're up against.

~~~
cpach
If they're running Windows, I can somewhat understand the paranoia.

------
there
from the comments:

 _You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work
where they have NO control over the browser..._

i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard
from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch
for this.

who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT
department, are so out of touch with technology that they fail to understand
their users are stuck using insecure, out-of-date software that is now
increasingly being blocked? are these users still using 500mhz machines with
windows 98, too?

~~~
aichcon
The problem is internal legacy applications that only work in IE6. If they
upgrade browsers the apps break, so in order to support these apps they keep
IE 6. The question for them is 'do we spend time and money to update all of
our applications to upgrade a browser, or just leave things the way they are
for now?'

~~~
pavel_lishin
Sometimes the question isn't even "do we spend time and money to update our
applications", because sometimes the code for the applications is long gone,
along with the company that wrote it, and all they have left is the compiled
code running on some server in a back closet.

~~~
drusenko
Couldn't they install Firefox, then, and use IE6 for legacy apps?

~~~
lurkinggrue
How about Virtual Box to run IE6?

~~~
jodrellblank
How about the cost of a Windows license?

~~~
robin_reala
How about Ubuntu and IEs4linux? Nothing like a few more layers of abstraction.

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jcdreads
So I wonder why Opera isn't that list of suggested replacements? Minority
browser, for sure, but it has worked pretty well in my few stints with it.

~~~
bradgessler
I think you answered your own question: "Minority browser, for sure ..."

~~~
drusenko
There's only so much space to design a widget that works for 640x480
resolution. We're already recommending 4 browsers, many others didn't make the
cut (Opera, Konqueror, Flock, etc)

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ujeezy
I hate IE6 as much as the next guy, but not everyone has the option to switch:
<http://blog.digg.com/?p=878>

~~~
drusenko
From my comment on VB: "That's exactly the idea. Even if a bunch of the
remaining IE 6 users are corporate, hopefully a few of them will become aware
of the fact that their browser is almost 9 years old and start putting
pressure on IT to upgrade."

The more prompts that are posted across the web, the more pressure the IT
department will be getting to get their ass in gear and upgrade their decade
old computer systems.

------
gcheong
Maybe they can tackle Apple's app store review process next.

------
fhub
For 'drop in code', it would be nice if they cleaned it up a bit... Removed
redundant whitespace in css, redundant white space between divs and used
better quoting e.g. the following

<a href='#'
onclick='javascript:this.parentNode.parentNode.style.display='none'; return
false;'>

could be written as:-

<a href='#' onclick="this.parentNode.parentNode.style.display='none'; return
false">

Wouldn't be suprised if the same effect could be created in 1/2 the size (pre
deflate/gzip).

------
tripngroove
I applaud everyone who participates in this for having the gumption to add
some inertia to the situation. It's ok to give the plebs some incentive to
user better, safer technologies. And furthermore, three cheers for the
realization that small, progressive companies can use consumer impact to
positively change the greater technological environment and accelerate the
pace of widespread adoption. Booya!

------
ErrantX
Once again this is fairly pointless.

The vast majority of machines running IE6 have requirements that see no
advantage to an upgrade. Example: corporate machine where the internet is not
used - in that case an IE upgrade is pointless, but the employee might still
surf the web.

How many home users are still using IE6? I doubt all that many TBH.

------
ddispaltro
IBM's "supported" browser is still only IE6 last time I checked which was
about a year ago...

------
makecheck
I wonder how many organizations use separate test environments; because
parallelism is really useful for this kind of migration.

In the case of IE6, it would mean setting up some machines with
$NEXT_GEN_BROWSER and some side servers with copies of the antiquated "web"
apps. Gradually, everything that's broken without IE6 is fixed by tinkering
with the side copy that no one is really using. Sometimes, the company's been
really stupid and doesn't even have source code, etc. so "tinkering" might
really mean "try something new entirely", but at least they'd be showing
interest in modernizing (however long it takes).

The simple fact is that all companies should have this kind of "beta flow", in
which they can basically try whatever they want (time permitting). Today it's
IE6, tomorrow it could be something entirely different; there will _always_
something new that "might" vastly improve efficiency, and a company that can
give these things an honest trial is way ahead. I cringe when I see change-
averse IT groups, because deep down I know they're shooting themselves in the
foot.

------
nico
Wow, I hadn't checked my site stats for a while, I thought IE6 browser share
was a lot higher. For me it's ~18% of total visits, ~30% IE7, ~12% IE8, 30%
Firefox, 7% Chrome, 2% Safari.

------
mattmaroon
Isn't just about everyone left using IE6 a corporate user whose employer won't
let them upgrade? While I'd love to see the death of IE6 & 7 as much as
anyone, I think most people using IE6 probably have firewalls that block
Reddit and Justin.tv.

On the other hand, this certainly cannot hurt.

------
Klonoar
What if we already provide a notice for all IE6 users to switch, just not
using your widget?

We've been advocating that all users drop IE6 at <http://webs.com/> since
December. Are you only listing those who've thrown up your widget?

~~~
cakesy
No, they have scoured the entire web, all trillion websites, and analyse who
has been doing what. Don't worry, your logo will appear in a few minutes.

~~~
Klonoar
While I heartily support your attempt at feeling significant by coming across
as an arrogant prick, my original question was moreso along the lines of "are
you guys restricting the featured sites to those using the code you've
provided?".

I haven't seen that explained yet, hence why I asked. ;P

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jgilliam
I've heard that IE6 is prevalent within the federal government.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I'm guessing most of the remaining IE6 installs are inside corporations and
government departments and are necessary to run legacy internal web
applications.

~~~
drusenko
Again, same reply: "That's not an excuse. IE 8 comes with a "compatibility
mode" feature where any site can choose to use the IE 6 rendering engine by
setting headers or meta tags appropriately."

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Great! Explain that to IT. :)

------
quellhorst
I plan on doing this for my startup also.

------
c00p3r
Still using IE6 means avoiding forced updates from MS, so, they probably were
disabled security updates. It means they are the source of bootnets and
hosting for trojans and viruses.

------
rawr
Oooh, look out! A bunch of companies with no established user bases are going
to boycott you!

This will get the grannies to upgrade their computer machines for sure.

~~~
emmett
It's not a boycott, just a dismissible nag message. Did you read the article?

Also, the number of people from these startups is approximately (data from
quantcast):

4.1 million (jtv us) + 1.3 million (weebly us) + 1.7 million (reddit us) + 1.3
million (posterous) + 0.5 million (disqus us) = 8.9 million US people. Global
reach is probably 2-3x that much, but quantcast doesn't offer global numbers
for all of them (JTV has 26 million globally).

I'd say that counts as an established user base.

~~~
Jem
Perhaps I'm misreading your analysis but it seems to me you're suggesting that
the US visitor count for each of those sites is 8.9 million people total? I
would suggest it's actually much lower - the chances are that the people who
use reddit are the same sorts of people that use posterous and disqus (and so
on). You're potentially counting 1 person who uses all 5 sites as 5 separate
people.

The problem I see is that - particularly for reddit, posterous and disqus -
the audience is mostly technical (or at least fairly Internet literate). These
are not the types of people who need to warned about IE6.

