Should I upgrade to IE 5.5 or 6?

[Marcia]

I'm still with 5.0, should I stick with it or download one of those? What would the advantage be, is it worth it?

[shelleycat]

I read an article last year about IE 6.0 that put me right off it. I don't have a link right now (although I'll look) but the gist of it was that MS built in functionality which alowed them to add links to keywords on the page which weren't linked originally. This means they could possibly take a post I wrote about how annyoed I am with some MS product and add a link advertising said product. They don't use this functionality but it was enough to stop me upgrading. Like I said though, this was last year so I'll definitely look for the story to verify my memory.

Added to this, I use 5.5 with all the service packs installed and have never had a problem. There just doesn't seem to be any reason to upgrade.

[Lisa]

I would upgrade to 6. Newer the better. Microsoft doesn't fix bugs in old versions if a new versions are available.

And no, Microsoft is not releasing keyword software inside IE. That idea is long dead.

[shelleycat]

That idea is long dead.

I wondered if it was ever actually put in. I found a bunch of sites about it, they're called smart tags, but couldn't find anything definitive about if MS ever truely released them.

I would be interested in any real benefits of 6.0 over 5.5 though, personally I haven't seen any but I may be missing something.

[keyplyr]

6 has broader support for CSS2 as well as user side features like managing cookies, security and privacy controls. It's what comes with WinXP so from a WebDesigners perspective, it's probably a must. My visitor stats show IE6 well on top.

[PaulPaul]

mine 2, keyplyr.

[shanz]

Probably off topic but I usually stay a few browsers behind for design issues.

[andreasfriedrich]

IE6 is the first MS browser to support a standard-compliant mode [msdn.microsoft.com] which calculates width, height, and padding attributes according to the css standard. For the first time it is possible to have nice looking pages using css in IE6, NS6, Moz1 and Op5+ without having to tune them for different browsers.

At least on one maschine I would be running IE6 to test my pages.

[starway]

I have IE5.0 and don't plan any upgrade in near future. I don't use it for serfing (my choice is Opera) but only for testing purposes.
This allows me to be sure that I adapt my web works for the majority of IE users (various stats shows that v.5 and v.6 are about the same %). As well as for other browsers, od course!

[moonbiter]

IE 6 also has much better support for the W3C DOM (and thus javascript that uses it) than 5.5.

[dhdweb]

I still use IE5sp2 on my Win98se machine.

All the security issues with 5.5 and up have me concerned so I never bothered to upgrade.

I also have IE6 on my XP machine and see no visible difference between the two other than the new look of IE6.

I should say that this is at least true for the sites I design.

K.I.S.S = cross browser compatibility.

K eep
I t
S imple
S tupid

[Marcia]

>I usually stay a few browsers behind for design issues

I do the same, even NN4.7, though the second computer has OLD browsers. I think it even has NS3 installed. I deal with some AOL people, can't get too fancy.

I have to install some chat software and there's been a problem with it, I thought maybe a browser update would solve it.