
The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown - ck2
http://www.ie6countdown.com/
======
ck2
BTW I just realized that site is actually owned and operated by Microsoft.

Have there been other products where companies practically beg people to stop
using it and fund initiatives to that end?

~~~
camus
well , Microsoft want people to upgrade their software ( and pay for it ) so
it makes sense. MS wants you to buy W8. The problem is businesses have legacy
software full of stuffs that would not work in modern browsers , so they have
to stick with IE6 or redevelop the legacy software ( at least the front-end ).
Or they could allow their employees to use a second browser...

~~~
bpatrianakos
Front-ends that work in IE6 but not in modern browsers? Are you sure? That
doesn't really make sense to me. I can see how maybe some outdated code or a
bunch of hacks could make a site designed for IE6 look just a little funny
here and there but I don't see how it would be a lot of work at all to make a
site made for IE6 work in a modern browser. As far as I know, the only reason
large companies don't upgrade is because they have a bunch of infrastructure
that's totally unrelated to websites that stop them from upgrading. Basically,
the IT department sets up the entire company's computer systems a certain way
and then resist upgrading anything so they don't have to do a lot of testing,
more patching, and generally adapt to the new tech after they've tuned their
infrastructure just so.

~~~
michael_miller
Large IT departments are really conservative for good reason. Hypothetically,
consider that a company maintained a web app that accountants used to track
revenue. Now, consider that the accountants needed to input interest earned
from investments. Let's say there was a Regex bug in parsing the interest
rate, and all values were interpreted to be NaN or 0 on non-IE6 browsers due
to an implementation quirk. This would have disastrous consequences for a
large company: they might face shareholder suits, government investigations,
etc. And of course, the people maintaining the system would likely lose their
jobs.

There are so many downsides, but what's the upside? So that FB loads a little
faster? The incentives are stacked against adopting new technology. Any new
browser has to be thoroughly tested against every one of the company's apps to
make sure that nothing breaks. As anyone who's done QA before will tell you,
that's a tall order.

I agree that the probability of such an incident is small. However, given the
disastrous consequences that would happen for a large organization should such
a bug occur, it's hard to make the case that an upgrade is a good idea for the
sake of "better technology."

~~~
melling
The upside? Javascript will run 100 times faster and your developers can build
even more functional software, moving software that once had to run on the
desktop to software that now runs in a browser.

~~~
PakG1
That doesn't change that IE is still needed for those old applications. So the
best case scenario is running whatever new browser like Firefox, Chrome, etc,
and running IE6 alongside. Ditch IE6 only after the old apps have been
replaced completely.

~~~
melling
I'm a little confused. Why is there IE6 lockin? Apps weren't built so they
could at least be easily upgraded to IE8? Some testing is required and no one
wants to do the work?

My memory isn't that hazy. What happened was that people said the software
only had to run in IE6 and Netscape wasn't important. Writing "good" web
software wasn't important. Simply support Microsoft's IE6 and you're done. If
you're still stuck on IE6/IE7 it really is your own fault.

~~~
saraid216
michael_miller explained it adequately above:

1) IT departments are massively conservative (and this is not an intrinsically
bad thing)

2) A lot of apps were built specifically for IE6. They still work with IE6.
Many times they _only_ work with IE6.

3) It hasn't been made worthwhile to upgrade.

> If you're still stuck on IE6/IE7 it really is your own fault.

A lot of us web developers have decided to just say, "Fuck it," and stop
supporting IE6. If it works, cool; if it doesn't, we don't care. This is a
luxury available to those of us who have clients who _aren't_ supported by the
aforementioned IT departments. Some of us are still required to support IE6
because we have clients who we can't drop and refuse to move off, and we don't
have the leverage to persuade them otherwise.

~~~
hellweaver666
For some companies it doesn't make sense to drop support for IE6. I work for a
company who's product is sold completely online. If we dropped support for IE6
we would loose hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars a year. Sure
it's a tiny fraction of our business, but it's a considerable amount of money
and pretty much covers the wages of our entire web development team.

------
eksith
The discrepancy compared to other countries is because the piracy of XP in
China is staggering.

Sources: [http://bradweikel.com/software-piracy-china-why-ie6-will-
not...](http://bradweikel.com/software-piracy-china-why-ie6-will-not-die-2010)

[http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chinese-Pirates-Choose-
Window...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chinese-Pirates-Choose-Windows-XP-
Over-Linux-Because-It-s-Free-306542.shtml)

~~~
snoonan
It would be interesting turn if they just open sourced XP and let the hackers
have at it. Deploying a moderned-up Chinese focused XP isn't going to move the
needle in either direction regarding the piracy culture there, but might help
carry them forward. Retail software just has to be free in some parts of the
world, made apparent by the preference for a hacked obselete, decade-old OS.

~~~
eksith
Some of the architecture is still part of modern Windows so I don't think they
would even consider it. Plus that's millions upon millions of lines of code
that must be vetted to prevent trade secrets from leaking out. And I imagine
there are other vulnerabilities in newer versions of Windows that would be
readily found by examining the older cousin's source.

Another reason why they use it is because XP came out before WGA
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Genuine_Advantage>). This made pirating
newer versions a bit more inconvenient (but certainly not enough to stop
piracy all the way to Win8, I'm sure). So that leaves the more easily pirated
pre-WGA XP

------
andreyf
> This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less
> than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet
> Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers.

Hours of work? I think if you combine all of the work put into getting sites
to work on IE6, it'll be measured in decades, if not centuries.

~~~
nivla
I think they mean save hours of work for every developer.

~~~
andrewryno
Per day? :)

------
JimmaDaRustla
This was posted over 2 years ago...
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2288550>

Edit: Domain was actually registered over 3.5 years ago

~~~
swang
I believe the original title for the link was something along the lines of
"IE6 usage is under X% worldwide" but one of the HN mods changed it.

~~~
SquareWheel
Well that would have actually given this submission a purpose, rather than
just being a repost.

------
lambersley
IE6 is still the standard browser in my place of employment. _vomit_

~~~
coopdog
Ditto, but I don't get it. Isn't it a massive security risk?

~~~
oatmealsnap
but it would be more of a hassle to upgrade all the computers to IE7, and make
sure all their software is still compatible. And then what? You'll just need
to upgrade to IE8 in a few years anyway.

~~~
josefresco
Clearly there are some who still weigh "hassle" and cost over the potential
risk that falling behind current tech brings to their business.

The "why upgrade when I'll have to just upgrade again later" logic is clearly
not a healthy long term strategy for any business (even outside of IT).
Skipping a generation to saves costs may work but how many do you skip before
your risk and cost to catch up becomes too much?

~~~
GFischer
What's the potential risk for a business when you're a monopoly? Or a
government - see Korea's stuff with banking and ActiveX, they managed to force
it for decades:

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/south-...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/south-
korea-still-paying-price-embracing-internet-explorer-decade-ago.shtml)

------
ricardobeat
Thankfully, IE7 is already more dead than IE6: <http://theie7countdown.com/>

Now we just need to wait for IE8's disappearance
(<http://theie8countdown.com/>). And then IE9's
(<http://theie9countdown.com/>), because it doesn't support text-shadow,
transitions, filters, the File API, FormData, gradients, columns, classList,
flex-box or WebGL...

~~~
niggler
<http://theie10countdown.com/>

"Hopefully there will be no Internet Explorer 10…"

<http://www.ie10countdown.com/>

"We won't need a countdown to extinction of IE10 if you don't use the piece of
shit to begin with."

~~~
ricardobeat
Hadn't seen those. Not funny :(

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Well, a little scepticism isn’t uncalled for. Nowadays, I don’t even think the
problem is the quality of IE, but the fear of users not upgrading. Microsoft
needs to be at least as agressive as its competitors in automatically
upgrading users’ browsers, even if its corporate customer base doesn’t care
for it. If not, corporate clients will continue to write for specific
versions, a practice that needs to die. That’s why we’re stuck supporting XP
and IE6 in the first place, 12 years after it was released.

------
lobster45
When I visited South Korea 2 years ago, 95% of their computers that were in
the hotel rooms were IE 6. I know that was two years ago, and those were only
in hotel rooms, but I was surprised to see so much IE 6. Good thing I had
firefox portable on my usb drive with me

~~~
milliams
I don't have the article now (maybe it was Techdirt?) but I read that the
government mandated a specific form of encryption for all banking and shopping
which was only implemented as an IE6 ActiveX plugin.

Ahh, here we go:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/south...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/south-
korea-still-paying-price-embracing-internet-explorer-decade-ago.shtml)

------
sivanmz
It makes sense to support IE 6 when you sell a product to an enterprise, the
UI is task oriented and doesn't have to be pixel perfect to entice users.

The trick is to make supporting IE 6 cost effective. You can still use
semantic markup and CSS layout, it would just be a simplified version of what
you serve modern browsers. It's called graceful degradation, and with a well
defined templating system, it's feasible without laborious adjustments and
hacks.

Some enterprises really can't upgrade, and if you are willing to support that
one troublesome browser, you can still sell the product behind it, which can
be innovative and useful.

------
gneis
IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10. AFAIK IE is the only remaining browser making a big
deal out of a new version. The only reason I can think of is that for them
it's all about sucking less instead of silently becoming more awesome.

------
muxxa
[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
daily-20130407...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-
daily-20130407-20130407-map) Yesterdays' stats from the spreadsheet download:

    
    
      China			4.59
      Cuba			2.75
      Iran			1.2
      Solomon Islands	1.18
      Swaziland 		1.05
    

No other country is rounding above 0.00%

------
kamilafsar
So finally it's time for ie7countdown.com.

~~~
jontro
Might aswell make it ie8countdown.com

~~~
Mahn
That does exist: <http://theie8countdown.com/>

Not backed by Microsoft though.

------
jamescun
I wonder how exactly they are gathering these statistics? For example the UK
shows that 0.6% still use IE6, however from my experience (in both education
and corporate, as well as a quick glance over laptops at a coffee shop) I
would say this figure is much much higher.

~~~
johnward
When glancing over laptops at the coffee shop is this what you see:
[http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/160230-libretto_orig...](http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/160230-libretto_original.jpg)

~~~
kristopolous
The libretto was a fine machine! I'd certainly be interested in a modern-
hardware version of it with the same sturdy, rugged design. (Here's a size
comparison from wikipedia:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/EEEPC901_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/EEEPC901_LIBRETTO100.JPG)
and here is one more: <http://rubenerd.com/uploads/photo.libretto.jpg>)

------
acdha
Akamai has a nice public stats collection based on their CDN traffic, which is
both enormous and significantly more global than some of the other metrics you
see. They show IE6 consistently around the ~1% level:

[http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html#stat=browser_v...](http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html#stat=browser_ver&top=15&type=line&start=20130101&end=20130406&net=both)

~~~
kasparloog
Akamai uses a different way to count the usage compare to Net Applications.
Hence the difference. Also, Akamai's presence in China is somewhat of a
question.

~~~
acdha
Akamai has quite a few endpoints in China. We've had a few problems with the
great firewall but those appear to be transient

That said, I'd love to know what the usage stats look like from the
perspective of ChinaCache.

------
hallomac2013
I sincerely hope it doesn't stop there and counts down to the complete
cleansing of the world from the filth that is IE.

------
ckarthik17
Now it is time for Android 2.x :-)

~~~
notatoad
yup, android 2.x browser is the new IE6. so incredibly terrible.

the good news though is that people who still have android 2.x phones don't
seem too interested in using them as mobile internet devices. Actual browser
usage share for android 2.x is pretty minimal on my sites, despite its
supposed market share.

------
TheBindingVoid
[http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/04/2124203/even-
microso...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/03/04/2124203/even-microsoft-
wants-ie6-dead)

Two years later it's on the HN front page. Come on kids...

------
restlessdesign
Why is this even news? It's over two years old. Where's the IE8 count down?

------
Nano2rad
Even if it is bad in terms of security, wrt system resources it is good. IE6
uses around 15 MB and Firefox uses 100 MB for browsing same sites. Or does IE6
uses virtual memory to show low memory usage?

------
peterkelly
Now they just need a similar website to countdown to the death of .doc/xls/ppt
so we can have (mostly) sane, modern file formats to work with in non-MS
Office apps.

------
bluedino
< 1% in the USA? Big deal. Our biggest client is still stuck on IE6. Luckily,
for everything else we've convinced the boss that we're only doing IE8 and
above.

------
RoryH
Can we organise 1 day where nobody tests any web application in IE6... just to
see if there's actually anybody left using it IRL? :-)

~~~
Mahn
IMHO, unless you target China, I think you shouldn't be caring for IE6 anymore
_at all_. Personally I don't test with IE6 and I'm fine with it.

~~~
jayflux
fully agree, we really shouldn't be testing/supporting IE6 anymore unless
targeting a high proportionate of ie6 users (which these days is unlikely)

------
jonahx
Not being able to boast ie6 support will be a huge blow to the egos of anal-
retentive front-end engineers everywhere.

------
vinnymac
At this point blocking the browser from your website with an explanation would
probably do more good than harm.

~~~
scholia
So you victimise people who mostly don't have any choice which browser they
use, and lose their business. Good going...

~~~
adrr
If your site doesn't work, i'd rather block them then give them a bad
experience. Lots of site do it but its more common with features like having
javascript disabled.

------
andrijac
<http://www.saveie6.com/>

------
ck2
China strangely at 26% but why is Japan (and India) at 2% still?

~~~
melling
Depends on who's stats you believe. According to this, IE6 in China has
dropped quite a bit in the past year:

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-CN-
monthly-201203...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-CN-
monthly-201203-201303)

It's under 5%.

On another note, IE7 is probably under 1% in most of the world. IE8 is the new
minimum browser for developers?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's a simplification but Netapplications count users and Statcounter counts
usage.

People using IE6 are unlikely to be heavy web surfers so they are more heavily
weighted on the Net application numbers (which ironically Microsoft generally
prefers, as it makes IE look more important.)

~~~
mtgx
Which is why Net Apps' stats are so useless and misleading, and I don't know
why sites keep using it as the standard. I don't want to be counted as a
"user" of IE if I happen to use it once a month or every 3 months, while using
Chrome 12 hour a day.

------
spyder
Oh... Norway 0.0% Do they have a law against IE 6 or what ? :)

~~~
ttjervaag
I have no evidence for the claim, but I suspect it has something to do with a
campaign that I think was started by the dominating classified ads site
finn.no to get rid of IE6 ([http://labs.finn.no/finn-anbefaler-ie6-brukere-a-
oppgradere-...](http://labs.finn.no/finn-anbefaler-ie6-brukere-a-oppgradere-
sin-nettleser/)).

They made a snippet that displays a red box on the page with a warning if you
are using IE6 and this got picked up by a lot of other sites. As you can see
from the post above, this was in February of 2009.

------
arthalbuwa
Great News!

~~~
Qantourisc
I wonder, does the site work in IE6 ? :)

