Comments on: Should Microsoft Kill IE6?

By: John Baxter

John Baxter — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:52:36 +0000

Microsoft really doesn’t have much choice. It’s primarily their volume licensing customers who still run IE6, and they mostly still run it because they stupidly wrote in-house applications which count on the way it works. For them to stop using IE6 means rewriting working–if clunky–apps which are critical to those enterprises.

And they keep using XP in part because that’s the only way they can run IE6.

By: snarkydan

snarkydan — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:46:28 +0000

according to eSarcasm, IE6 is already dead. authorities are questioning Mashable’s Ben Parr:

http://www.esarcasm.com/3152/internet-explorer-6-found-brutally-murdered/

By: Matt R

Matt R — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:23:10 +0000

Seems to me that Microsoft should be interested in helping its users to find the best possible solutions and user experience. If this is true, then they should do all they can to move people off of the IE6 disaster.

It is logical that supporting an OS would required supporting the bundled browser, but why couldn’t they keep their commitment to “support” their OS, and simply require a browser upgrade to maintain that support? After all, there is no fee for an upgrade, and any reasonable person should see the many benefits, including security.

By: tom b

tom b — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:57:17 +0000

They should kill IE 7 while they are at it. All versions of IE are already irrelevant because: 1) they are slower than other browsers 2) they are less secure than other browsers 3) their standards compliance is poor 4) MSFT itself stopped caring about browsers about 10 years ago– that’s when they dropped IE for Mac. Having crushed Netscape, Inc., and making NO money in the process, MSFT moved on to other, more exciting projects, like the Zune, but somehow forgot to fire the browser team. Maybe they wanted to keep them around some at least a FEW people on the planet would give a “poo” about Silverlight browser support….

By: jgoto

jgoto — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:56:16 +0000

IE6 is mostly found in businesses running on older computers (like Win2K machines which couldn’t upgrade to IE7). Web developers if they feel like they can get away with it are perfectly within their rights to quietly discontinue support. Microsoft probably doesn’t have that luxury.

By: Bouke Timbermont

Bouke Timbermont — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:35:25 +0000

@steven: I almost voted that, because nobody should ever be forced to upgrade.

I voted for ‘drop all support’ though, cause just like the user can choose to keep using something, MS can choose to stop supporting it.

If users don’t like the lack of support, that must mean something IS wrong with their browser, so they should switch.
If they like the browser as it is (which they apparently do, since they are using it for almost a decade) they won’t mind the lack of support.

By: Bouke Timbermont

Bouke Timbermont — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:31:05 +0000

Nobody should force anyone to upgrade, but everyone should definitely drop all support for that hideous app that calls itself a browser… It’ll upset the last few morons that still seem to think IE6 does a fine job rendering webpages, but who cares about what they think anyway?

By: Steven Fisher

Steven Fisher — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:24:54 +0000

It’s hard to imagine 11 people so far have voted for “No, let the users run software that’s wide-open to anyone who cares to take advantage of it!” option.

By: Andrew Mager

Andrew Mager — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:10:46 +0000

Yes. Yes, yes, yes 1,000 times. There is no good reason to keep IE6.exe in existence for even one more second.