Google phases out support for IE6

BBC Reports Google phases out support for IE6

[scotland]

The BBC has reported that "Google has begun to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, the browser identified as the weak link in a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack on the search engine."

[news.bbc.co.uk...]

Does Microsoft still provide updates for Explorer 6 - I stopped using it a while ago and now Microsoft seem to push down the latest versions of their browser automatically when you use their newer Operating Systems. A lot of people with older computers will still be running IE6.

Will this affect you? I don't personally use Google Docs.

[scotland]

"A Downing Street petition is calling for the UK government to drop Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and move to a more modern browser."

[news.bbc.co.uk ]

Interesting development in "Dump IE6" movement.

After the publicity given by the German Gov on Internet Explorer recently this is not going to help Microsoft in the browser wars.

... and I still use and love Microsoft Explorer (IE8) so I am not bashing Microsoft.

[ChanandlerBong]

really snowballing now! That gmail/china thing ended up hitting msft as badly as google! :-)

a lot of people will read those articles and come away from it thinking "ooh, internet explorer is dangerous". Tbf, they wouldn't be much wrong!

[Trav]

Agree with UserFriendly (somewhat ironically named in this instance); why bother developing for it?

While I agree that corporate adoption is the major factor, I think that some of the blame rests squarely on our (the designers and developers) shoulders. If we just stopped supporting it, stopped designing sites to function in it at all, those that use IE6 would be forced eventually to move to a more current version, or a completely different browser.

You can say that it would break the web, but I think a lot of people would say it's already broken, and the brick that broke it is IE6. How much longer do we want that brick laying around, waiting to be misused?

[KenB]

From hence forth I'm not doing any new IE6 specific code fixes to make things work on my sites. What has been done to support IE6 in the past will stay in place for now. My goal is to remove my fix for IE6 tweaks within a year if they add to code bloat or impede functionality for others.

If we all join together on this we can kill off IE6. Remember this is what it took to finally kill off Netscape 4.7.

[Pixel_Ink]

Looking in my stats awhile back I was surprised how many people still use IE6. I agree that Microsoft needs to encourage people to update.

[dragonthoughts]

Pixel_Ink: Beware of those stats, many of the scapers etc, that I've identified recently show an IE6 (often on Win98) User Agent id string.

However some companies have other issues with upgrading. My partner is a accountant, and has had to undo an IE version upgrade as the corporate online banking software, supplied by the company's bank, would only run on specific versions of IE and on nothing else.

[blend27]

many of the scapers etc...

Not just scrapers, Websence is spoofing UAs like crazy as well.