I’ve got a great idea; let’s annoy the hell out of 75% of IE6 users by showing them a “you should upgrade” message, even though none of them have the actual capability to upgrade! Seriously, what a superb idea! It’s like having a “fly to work” sign instead of a train station, when everyone knows that only 25% of humans can actually fly!
Yes, a recent survey by Digg revealed that only one quarter of all IE6 users have the power to change. This minority is made up of two groups: those that simply don’t see a need to upgrade and those that prefer IE6 to other browsers.
So, without sounding too pessimistic, trying to get IE6 users to upgrade is almost entirely pointless! Your efforts would be better spent teaching 75% of humankind how to fly!
I haven’t really got a good idea; in fact, I’m equally as clueless as most of you… How on earth are we going to solve the IE problem, or, rather the “Microsoft” problem?
Have you ever read about that world record that was set when a bunch of people somewhere jumped up at exactly the same time? Speculation has it that the earth was temporarily knocked off its axis, which, consequently saved the earth from a massive meteor strike!? Well I haven’t, but I do have a similar idea that is almost guaranteed to work.
Imagine, if every single website on earth suddenly broke in IE – users of IE would be utterly confused and annoyed – there would be an epic stream of complaints battering every IT department this side of the sun! Eventually it would result in the demise of IE (all versions). So you see, it is possible! Together we can bring down IE, it just takes a tad of collaboration!
Kill it with fire apathy!
It’s not irresponsible; it’s only logical.
I think the personality types associated with workers in this industry (the “web” industry) prevents us from taking the kind of action inherent in other FFS (frequently-found-striking) industries! At our fingertips we have the ability to destroy or to save; with a single line of code we can affect millions!
Take a stand! Indifference will, for once, save the world! Long live Web Standards!
Thanks for reading! Please share your thoughts with me on Twitter. Have a great day!
Unfortunately, you missed one important aspect. Microsoft hasn’t released the Enterprise tools to push IE 8 mainstream internally yet.
At our company we support the latest two versions, but only after Microsoft has released the enterprise tools to push both versions mainstream in an office setting.
Why? Because a number of our clients as individuals do not have the ability to change upgrade, however, if Microsoft releases the enterprise tools to push the updates, the Administrators at those locations can. Therefore today, we still support IE 6 and IE 7.
With that support we developers run IE 6 on our machines so we are running the lowest version we support. Once IE 8 releases the enterprise tools then we developers will be upgraded to IE 7 and we will support IE 7 and IE 8.
Microsoft is just as much to blame as ignorant users at this moment. IE 8 has been out for a while and they still haven’t give large companies the resources to push IE 8 down to their users.
What I really can’t understand is ‘why’ Microsoft aren’t pushing enterprise tools for upgrading? They obviously understand the problems relating to IE6 so is it a money issue or some other internal political complication? If only they would share their reasoning, then we could all collaborate and try to come up with solutions to the issue at hand.
I just recently put a nag box, inserted via js, for anyone who visits my site using ie 6/7.
Because it uses ‘highly advanced’ features like pngs and css generated content, the site will look varying degrees of broken in ie < 8. Having a nag box means I don’t look unprofessional to any potentially important visitors; it makes it obvious that the browser is the problem, and not my design/dev skills 🙂
Actually, the problem can be solved for the single largest chunk (37%) that said “I can’t upgrade because I don’t have administrator access on my computer” by asking them to upgrade to Portable Firefox instead. That doesn’t need admin access.
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
While it doesn’t mean they can remove IE6 from their machines, at least there’ll be an alternative.
This could probably be done by adding a small piece of HTML. I’ve never tried to make IE happy so I don’t know how to detect it reliably and all that jazz. Perhaps you could publish a small snippet of code that everyone could include in their HTML. I will add it to my sites.
There ya go:
This web page may not not look good in this browser. Upgrade to a newer version of the browser or use a browser that supports modern standards
If people are aware of the issue they will start to pressure their IT departments, and generally when IT go around offices and notice these kinds of messages coming up, it’d be quite embarrassing. That’s motivation for them. This is regardless if the users have direct authority to make upgrades happen.
The situation you pose with breaking sites uses the same principle, except is more extreme. I think your own argument defeats it – the users still don’t have the power to force upgrades, and now are going to get far more annoyed. Yes that means more pressure, but also a lot of anger towards web developers.
Personally, I’m considering rejecting all IE browsers on personal projects owing to the massive spanner in the works MS continues to throw at browser and language dev. Javascript? Gotta fork for IE. CSS? Would love to use more of it’s features, but unfortunately IE doesn’t support many of the good ones. XML/XHTML – great idea, but of course, IE doesn’t and won’t support it in this or future renditions of it’s browser.
If MS weren’t playing this infuriating game, then the user experience of the internet would be vastly improved overnight. We would be free to focus on development rather than catering for stinking, poxy Internet Explorer.
You are not using a browser to view this page. This page looks better if you use a browser. Contact your admin to get a browser.
@S Anand, Portable Firefox isn’t a solution within most companies. For example, our proxy at work would disallow the downloading of executables, zip files, etc. Pretty much anything that could contain a virus. As for our clients many of them are on Thin Clients with no USB, CD-ROM, or other devices that could be used to bring Portable Firefox into the office. It just really isn’t a solution.
Now many of our clients do have Firefox installed, however, many companies that work with selective groups still program solely for Internet Explorer and do not really focus on browser compatability. Why? Cost. It is easier to support one line of browsers than 3-5, even if it is one that doesn’t follow the rules very well.
The only way to kill IE is to deny access to web sites when the client is using IE.
“You’re using Internet Explorer, please use Firefox or another modern browser. Thank you.”
In the past and still at the present, you have some websites that require IE.
Download Firefox Portable at your home
Rename extension from .exe or .zip to something else
Send it to your email
Download it at work
????
PROFIT
I don’t understand why companies so worried about security use the most insecure browser and operating system…
The main reason I’ve heard of why IT departments won’t upgrade from IE6 is they’ve spent a lot of money on Intranet applications that were written for IE6 and don’t work correctly on new browsers. That leaves them with two options: spend money and time upgrading all their internal systems so they run on modern browsers or stay on IE6 and then invest the time to upgrade the browsers and train users or stay on IE6.
So, while I wait I wish IE6 would die already, I understand the issue. Some will argue just support 2 browsers, but that’s easier said then done.
Why would I want to take a stand again IE in general? IE8 is actually one of the best browsers out there (yeah, I know how wrong that sounds – but’s its actually true…)
Now taking a stand against IE6 – I am all for that!
I think one of the main reasons people dont upgrade is simply because they are running an illegal copy of Windows XP and therefore cannot upgrade.
Sad but true.
I think I would have a hard time telling my clients that I want to make their sites unusable for 15% of their customers. I think that if big sites like google, yahoo, amazon, etc. cut off IE6, it would be more effective than breaking a bunch of smaller sites.
@Paul
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20090704/xhtml-rip/
Thanks to IE, XHTML was screwed, and now XHTML2 is no longer in development. This is good in some ways because we can focus on a single standard, but XHTML was pretty cool goddammit!
I agree with Anthony’s comment. If Google banned all IE6 users, you would see IE6 disappear in a matter of months, maybe weeks. If a few other mini-giants did the same, it would probably be even faster. Even those companies that refuse to spend the man-power to do the upgrades will quickly realize that they cannot stay in business without Google.
Good news: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/youtube-will-be-next-to-kiss-ie6-support-goodbye/
I quit developing for IE6. It isn’t worth it time wise to deal with it. Why exactly can’t people use Firefox, Chrome, or Safari instead of IE? That way they can still keep IE6 if they need it for business stuff.
Oh yeah, and Microsoft uses the same tricks we have to use for their browser. It seems like their web developers would complain enough about it to get them to actually program their browsers right.
^Look what is even on Microsoft.com and Xbox.com
It seems like when you have to do that with your own websites, that it means you screwed up, and screwed up BAD.
But James, your site looks very well in IE6! 😉
You know I’m all for it, IE6 is a major kick in the nuts. If you’re going to develop for it, do it from the START.
Many websites have stopped supporting it, such as anime-planet.com as well. I’ll still support it to a degree but I suggest you tell your client developing for IE will cost more money because it takes more time. =P
I’m just opposed to IE6&7.
IE8 is better than before in CSS