
IE6 is dead - Eduard
http://www.ie6death.com/
======
iamthepieman
I do mostly contract work in the U.S. for state and local governments. The
RFP's (Request for Proposals) always say something about using HTML5,
responsiveness and the latest web standards.

And sometime shortly after (and sometimes before) project kickoff we always
see that a large percentage of their employees are using IE8 and we have to
support it.

I make a point of describing in detail what kind of resources will be required
to do both a modern website/app using the latest standards and one that will
support IE8. I mention that, for the most part, they are mutually exclusive
and I will effectively have to build the site (at least the "modern" parts of
it) twice and this will cut back on the features I'm able to implement within
the project budget and timeframe.

This usually makes the customer take a closer look at their actually IE8/XP
install base and I've had several customers decide they would speed up
migration from IE8/XP and remove the support requirement for that browser.

Just doing my small part to help kill IE8 - one small government agency at a
time.

~~~
cozuya
While I commend you for finding a way to communicate to your clients in a way
that allows you to not develop for IE8, you're not really being truthful. You
can use "HTML5" with IE8 as part of html5shiv.js of course and IE8 doesn't
need to be responsive - its a desktop browser. In most cases you can almost
certainly deliver an IE8 solution without a lot of extra work.

~~~
iamthepieman
I admit that I may overemphasize but it's never as simple as just using a
shiv. I always run into additional debugging and support issues when building
for IE8.

There is most definitely additional work required to support IE8.

------
owenversteeg
Reports of its death are, from my experience, greatly exaggerated. It's still
fairly widely used in businesses; as they say "if it's not broke, don't fix
it." (Despite the fact that it is broken on many sites.)

For anyone that wants to use a modern CSS framework that supports IE5.5+,
check out Min ([http://minfwk.com](http://minfwk.com)). Disclaimer: I made it.

~~~
mattmanser
I know this is a bit pedantic but it's definitely not 'fairly widely' or
'quite a lot' or 'some', there's a tiny, tiny percentage of businesses using
it.

Our UK website, not aimed at tech savvy, had 0.13% IE6 over the last 2 months
compared to 0.32% the year before and when I last looked a significant
proportion of that is bots and scrapers pretending to be browsers anyway.

Half our traffic comes during the business day (we actually see a significant
switch from desktop to tablet/mobile at around 6).

For all intents and purposes, certainly for consumer websites, it's dead.

For those interested, our IE7 is at 1.72% (we stopped testing IE7 a couple of
months ago as we don't have the resource and it was already converting badly
any way).

~~~
wslh
_there 's a tiny, tiny percentage of businesses using it._

Not really. Probably many fortune 500 companies (I know several) continue to
use IE6 and pay for virtualizing IE6. That's a significant amount of money in
licenses and support. That's why companies such as VMware or Symantec have
this feature in ThinApp and SWV.

~~~
danford
If you're virtualizing then you're probably using it for one specific purpose
and not general use, so imo it might as well be dead if it's not being used
for general tasks.

------
spydum
At my employer, they finally pushed a full blown enterprise wide upgrade to
IE10 with IE11 just around the corner (August).

Unfortunately in parallel, they could not get enough people to submit sites
that needed compatibility mode, so to prevent massive help desk problems they
decided to push USE COMPATIBILITY MODE FOR ALL SITES. This basically
downgraded everyone to IE7 mode permanently. So much for progress...

~~~
wil421
My Employer does this also, all sites are our intranet switch IE into IE7
compatibility mode. Does matter if the need compatibility mode or not. We
recently released a version of the web app I am building and I wish you
couldve seen the horror on our faces when we saw the app in IE 7 mode.

~~~
tmm
Well, unless they actually change it in group policy, this is the default
action for IE when it connects to anything on what it considers to be
Intranet.

You can override this by setting X-UA-Compatible to IE=edge as a HTTP header
on your server. The equivalent meta tag is ignored in this situation.

Or you could ask IT to change group policy, but I have no idea where that
setting might live.

~~~
wil421
>X-UA-Compatible to IE=edge

I believe we added this as a meta tag on the HTML pages, we didnt think of
changing the HTTP header on the server.

I doubt they will be willing to change the IT group policy because the app we
built has a smaller userbase than other apps. That and they are still
supporting web apps from the late 90s - early 00s designed for IE 5/6.

------
NicoJuicy
Actually, XP has a shorter life-span time here in Belgium (online banking
activities are blocked for Windows XP), so people actually buy a newer PC or
upgrade their PC for a newer Windows.

~~~
alxndr
> in Beligium ... online banking activities are blocked for Windows XP

Do all the banks agree to shut out XP on their sites? Legal requirement?

~~~
NicoJuicy
They say it's because the updates make the OS less secure. So they are all
going to disable Win XP because of vulnerabilities.

PS. They also don't support linux

------
olegkikin
Just checked the analytics on a non-IT website:

IE represents 10.45%

Out of that:

    
    
        IE6      .28%
        IE7     2.03%
        IE8    19.81%
        IE9    16.57%
        IE10   16.15%
        IE11   45.13%

~~~
apaprocki
Here's bloomberg.com:

IE represents 25.00%

    
    
        IE6    0.11%
        IE7    3.20%
        IE8   34.39%
        IE9   32.94%
        IE10  16.48%
        IE11  12.87%

~~~
jackmoore
That's really interesting, how did you get these statistics (do you work for
Bloomberg, or do they have this publicly available somewhere)?

~~~
apaprocki
I work for Bloomberg. (And yes, I verified that web guys didn't mind sharing
the numbers :))

------
kijin
As others have pointed out, IE6 isn't dead yet. Any person or business that is
stubborn enough to use IE6 nowadays is probably also stubborn enough to keep
using Windows XP for another year or ten.

And I'm afraid a lot of us have been complicit in the unusually long life of
this dreadful monster, as well as of its just-as-dreadful offspring, IE8.

By "us" I mean everyone who has ever developed a website in the last few years
and consciously tweaked the code to make it work in an old version of IE. Or
anyone who claimed to discontinue support for IE[6-8] but quietly kept fixing
IE[6-8]-related bugs in their spare time.

Because every time a website tweaks its code for compatibility with an old
version of IE[6-8], IE[6-8] gets another drop of unicorn blood to sustain its
life. Since the majority of websites even today work relatively well in
IE[6-8], the inconvenience of occasional breakage does not outweigh the
inertia of IE[6-8] users. Even among people who call themselves programmers, I
know of plenty who just don't bother to install updates. They won't act until
their pants are on fire.

If we really want to kill IE[6-8], we need to set fire to their pants. We
can't just sit back and count the days until somebody else (Microsoft)
mercifully kills IE[6-8] for us. How about we all agree upon a certain date on
which we _intentionally_ break our websites and services for IE6 users? We
should bring as many websites on board as possible, just like what happened
with the SOPA blackout. Any IE6 user who tries to visit any marginally popular
website on or after that date will be refused service and told to 1) upgrade
to Windows 7+ and IE 10+, 2) install another browser, or 3) nag their bosses
to let them do so. That's right, no Google, no Facebook, no Twitter, no
Wikipedia, no reddit, no webmail, no lolcats, no porn (!) anymore for you.
Within a month, IE6 will be wiped off the face of the planet forever, and
whatever remains will be safely confined to intranets. Just like smallpox.
Three months later, we repeat the blackout for IE7. Six months later, we
boycott IE8 as well.

Don't we, the HN crowd, have the power to pull off a boycott like that?

Will it be an ethical thing to do? Will it even be legal?

I don't know. It does sound rather perverse to refuse service to IE6 while
keeping the website fully accessible for Lynx.

But I do look forward to the day when website developers collectively decide
to stop being a slave to browser market shares and take the business into our
own hands once and for all. Because IE[6-8] deserves it. It has hurt us all a
thousand times more than the outgoing CEO of Mozilla has ever hurt gay
couples. We can't just sit and wait for it to die. We need to point our
keyboards at it and shout _Avada Kedavra_ with extreme prejudice.

/daydreaming

~~~
eli
> If we really want to kill IE[6-8], we need to do something more drastic, and
> do so with extreme prejudice. How about we all agree upon a certain date on
> which we intentionally break our websites and services for IE6 users?

Maybe for a blog, but I'm not telling 10%+ of my customers to piss off. If the
cost of supporting them outweighs the value of their business then I won't
support them any more. But I would never intentionally break a site for them.

~~~
jader201
Just curious, any idea why you have so many users (10%) still on IE8 or under?

I just checked my usage, and I only have 8% using IE period -- all versions.
Of those, only 8% are on IE8 or under -- which is only 0.6% of all users.

~~~
eli
We have a network of B2B news and information sites for various industries. I
think this is probably pretty standard for sites targeting enterprise users at
non-IT companies.

It's actually kinda interesting to see the variations between industries like
Healthcare vs Construction vs Utilities. If I get time maybe I'll write up a
blog post.

~~~
kaybe
Please do. It does sounds interesting.

------
crucialfelix
meanwhile IE 5 is alive in Wichita Kansas. Error message received today:
HTTP_USER_AGENT': 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT; DigExt)

because the old thing doesn't like URLs without a protocol:

//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js

<WSGIRequest path:/ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js/

~~~
toxican
what's the benefit of excluding the http:? I'd never seen that prior to a few
years ago when the jQuery links started doing it.

~~~
hesselink
It's a protocol relative link. So if the page is served over http, it'll be an
http link, and if the page is served over https, it'll be an https link. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_relative_URL#Protocol-...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_relative_URL#Protocol-
relative_URLs)

~~~
bigiain
And it breaks unexpectedly (and sometimes hilariously) when people use it in
html email, it turns into a file:// "link".

~~~
cbr
You can't have external css or js in an html email. [1] Are you talking about
links? Or image tags?

[1] Well you can, but no one will fetch them.

------
jongalloway2
If you're maintaining sites that are difficult to upgrade, I'd recommend
looking at IE11 Enterprise Mode. It lets you run with pretty good IE8
compatibility (e.g. ActiveX) in IE11, taking advantage of improved speed,
security, and base OS improvements.

20 slide deck:
[http://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http%3a%2f%...](http://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http%3a%2f%2fvideo.ch9.ms%2fsessions%2fbuild%2f2014%2f2-559.pptx)

docs:
[http://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn640687.aspx](http://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn640687.aspx)

good blog post: [http://love2dev.com/#!article/The-New-Internet-Explorer-
Ente...](http://love2dev.com/#!article/The-New-Internet-Explorer-Enterprise-
Mode-or-Why-You-Should-Never-Use-IE-8-Anymore)

------
JetSpiegel
Reports of IE6's death are greatly exaggerated.

~~~
masukomi
We run a SAAS app. We recently saw _IE4_ in our logs. Not a single one of our
customers has upgraded past IE8.

IE6 is alive and well in many large companies.

~~~
dictum
Consider the possibility that someone was playing with old browsers.

~~~
pjmlp
I joined a new project where IE 8 is the lowest required supported browser.

~~~
Gmo
This is nothing unusual when you do SaaS aimed at business customers.

We have to support IE7 on some of our software, only dropping IE6 a year ago
or so ... Other software minimum requirements is IE8, hoping to drop it by the
end of this year.

------
mehrdada
The zombie certainly still continues to live on shitton of computers across
the globe running unauthorized copies of Windows XP for customers who couldn't
care less about official support from Microsoft as they never had it in the
first place. Yeah, unfortunately.

~~~
sotiris-k
As a Web Developer I do not count those people as a potential target group. Or
even a subgroup for that matter.

------
pjmlp
It was replaced by IE 8.0, long live the king! :(

~~~
WatchDog
With the death of XP I would expect to see a usage drop, not only in IE6 but
in IE7 and IE8 too.

IE8 is the latest version of IE that can be installed on XP, I would assume
that most people using IE8 would be XP users.

If anyone has data on IE8 OS versions I would be interested.

~~~
JohnMunsch
For our app I've been monitoring IE8 usage for the last month. It is almost
exactly one-for-one with XP users (YES!) and dropping a little at a time every
day. When I first started looking the rolling 30 day average was roughly 15%.
It has since dropped below 12%. I would imagine by the end of the year and a
wonderful rash of XP viruses and worms, a lot of our customers will have had
to drop both of them.

------
crisnoble
As a dev I have been trying to convince the project managers of the following
theory of people who use IE6/7/8.

They must fall into one the following categories

1\. Windows XP, which does not allow them to upgrade to IE9 _AND_ do not know
that other non-sucky browsers exist

2\. They work for a company that requires IE8

3\. They are masochists who love pain)

4\. They are sadists who enjoy dealing out pain to Web developers.

Proposed solutions were:

1\. Tell them that other browsers have better experiences.

2\. Point out that they can usually get around this by using a Chrome frame.
Also point out that IE8 is riddled with insecurities and give them a form
letter for their IT department asking for an update.

3\. They love pain, there is nothing we can do about this. They probably enjoy
having incomprehensible boxes instead of icon fonts on half of the sites they
visit. Grids be dammed, they love misaligned columns.

4\. They probably don’t even use IE8, they (or their botnet) just use a User
Agent String that mimics it. These people are asshats, should be ignored at
all costs.

I felt this was a quite pragmatic approach, needless to say we still support
these users and their shoddy experience.

~~~
toxican
In regards to your first solution, I keep going back and forth on whether or
not it's professional to add a conditional warning that detects an old browser
and explains the upgrade process. I know there are some scripts you can throw
on your sites that automatically do this, but I'm not sure if that's a good
idea.

~~~
crisnoble
googleapps, facebook, youtube, nike, among many other gigantic brands seem to
think it is just fine to encourage their users to have a better experience.

------
stefs
the second badge at the bottom (the small one) has its own countdown timer.
seems there's an off-by-one-month bug.

(i always wondered why some libraries treat jan as 0 but the first day of the
month as 1)

~~~
a3n
Total guess, maybe _1_ is thought of subconsciously in the implementers minds
as a name, while number for months are so unlike the month name that they're
thought of more like an index.

------
andy_ppp
Having to support IE8 Compatibility mode for a bank is worse than IE6 - at
least IE6 issues and fixes are documented. IE8 Compatibility mode is a world
of pain, add in some proxy servers and latency sensitive JS and you have a fun
fronted time.

------
awda
Huh, I just went to the acid3 test in Firefox 28 and it _failed_. (Animation
wasn't smooth, final rendering did not match expected image at all.) Is this
surprising? I thought acid3 was a fairly old test.

~~~
voidlogic
I just went to acid3 with Firefox 28 and got 100%...?

~~~
awda
I got "100%" too, but there's multiple criteria for passing:

    
    
       - 100%
       - Animation is smooth, no stuttering
       - The final rendering matches the provided image

~~~
voidlogic
It was smooth for me and matches the reference rendering. Maybe your machine
is under powered (Netbook or something?)?

~~~
awda
Xeon E3 1240 v3 (Haswell) ;-).

~~~
voidlogic
Intel i7 950 @ 3.07GHz, discrete nVida graphics, Ubuntu

Maybe you are using integrated graphics or your graphics driver in on the FF
blacklist? Platform?

There has to be some reason why--

------
jrochkind1
I didn't realize there was actually an end-of-support date for IE6.

Is there one for IE7?

~~~
syncsynchalt
Today is the end of _paid_ support for IE6.

Today is also the end of unpaid support for XP (which I assume includes IE7 -
IE8).

------
giarc
It's not dead. I work for a large health organization (100,000+ employees) and
IE6 is still the default browser. Users can manually update.

Needless to say, but I'm still using XP.

------
clutterjoe
Is it 2010 already?

[http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/04/ie6.funeral/](http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/04/ie6.funeral/)

------
taude
I'm currently working in a very heavy enterprise space, most fortune 100
banking/insurance, etc. companies use our software. Our requirements are only
IE9+. I'd be scared of the legacy companies that need older support

------
MCarusi
I really can't say I'll be in mourning over this. I've lost count of how many
times I've had to convince clients to upgrade even to IE7 because IE6 isn't
compatible with some aspects of WordPress.

------
blueskin_
Tell that to the 23% of people still using XP.

Quite a few of those are likely to be IE6 users, primarily due to governments
and bureaucratic corporations.

------
joaodavidmateus
Time to start [http://www.ie7death.com/](http://www.ie7death.com/)

------
talles
The browser we love to hate. The version we love to hate.

Interesting (see footer) how many of those site were out there.

------
bluedino
We have a large client with over 2,000 'zombie' XP/IE6 machines out there.
Ugh.

------
dexcs
"Never passed the ACID test" :) Made my day!

~~~
pmelendez
That is actually unclear to me though. ACID1 was even included as an easter
egg in IE5 for the Mac [0][1]

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid1)
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:About_Tasman_IE5_Mac_OS_X....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:About_Tasman_IE5_Mac_OS_X.png)

------
amjd
I have only two words to say: if only.

On a positive note, now that Microsoft has officially withdrawn support for
Windows XP, IE6 may meet its long overdue death faster.

------
noel82
There are at list other 3 version over the 6 that should be erased from the
Earth surface. Just assuming someone would keep the last 2. Not me.

------
szatkus
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvAAYjmqkE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRvAAYjmqkE)

------
KhalPanda
Great, now we just need to kill IE7... and 8, 9, 10, 11, ad infinitum. :-)

~~~
toxican
I'd be happy with just 7 and 8 for now. 9+ has usable support of CSS3 at
least.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
10+ has WebSocket and strict mode. I'm happy!

------
sirwitti
it was unconscious for quite a while, so why did it die today?

~~~
Bootvis
Because it is off XP life support now.

~~~
PeterisP
XP has life support turned off, however, it'll still survive for a few years
despite that.

The end of MS support doesn't seem to have caused any mass migrations off of
windows XP, and it will be a _long_ time until it's less popular than windows
8.

~~~
Bootvis
Yes, I'm afraid reports of IE's death have been greatly exaggerated.

~~~
rplnt
Third time's the charm?

~~~
jenscow
The exaggeration of IE6's death has been greatly exaggerated.

~~~
rplnt
Well, now this thread got bigger. At the time of my posting perhaps quarter of
the comments said this.

------
alashley
Is it though?

------
higherpurpose
It would be better if IE, period, was dead. Otherwise we're just switching one
terribly obsolete IE for another terribly obsolete IE.

~~~
ivan_gammel
We are writing enterprise web application that uses WebGL for displaying
complex 3D models and we think that IE11 is damn good. Thus, I've no idea why
are you calling it terribly obsolete.

~~~
jenscow
Give it a year.

~~~
ivan_gammel
We'll have IE12 by that time.

