Filed under: News, Microsoft, Browsers
YouTube and Digg help speed up the slow death of IE6
Digg was considering adding a message encouraging IE6 users to upgrade their browsers, but ultimately decided against it, after finding that a huge number of IE6 users had to use the browser at work, or didn't have admin access on their machines to install something better. YouTube, on the other hand, gives IE6 users prominent links to each of the three biggest modern browsers (Firefox, IE8 and Chrome). YouTube hasn't released any statistics yet, but IE6 users only accounted for a single-digit percentage of Digg's traffic. If other high profiles sites decide they're sick of spending time and money to support 5% of their visitors, IE6 might finally get to rest in peace.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Japan-four said 11:19AM on 7-20-2009
>> If other high-traffic sites follow suit, perhaps business will stop forcing employees to use horribly outdated browser.
Because businesses want their employees on Youtube and Digg?
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Crazy Serb said 11:50AM on 7-20-2009
best. comment. ever.
(good observation)
Skapig said 12:43PM on 7-20-2009
Agreed, but it does provide helpful ammo when making a case to budget-conscious, non-tech management.
A lot of businesses have internal sites that are designed to work with the mandatory IE6 browser. There are surely some issues to be resolved, but it should be mostly minor CSS fixes. It sucks having to support IE6 and it ends up wasting a lot of time and money.
IE8 is a surprisingly decent browser with some real support for standards. It's way easier to write for since you don't have to perform any of the old, crazy tricks out of your hat. I tend to encounter more rendering bugs in Firefox than I do in IE8.
Josh said 5:07PM on 7-20-2009
I think there could be a large call for IE upgrades if Google were to stop supporting IE6. Google is already dropping it on YouTube, who's to know if they will continue supporting it on their search page?
HardwareGuy said 11:44AM on 7-20-2009
One of the coolest things about Chrome is you don't have to be an admin to install it, since it runs out of your user folder.
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Money Mike said 10:06AM on 7-21-2009
I agree and I know it's true that it installs in your user folder, but I was able to install Firefox myself a few years ago and I didn't have admin rights.
I should point out that the download itself was blocked, though, so I had to wait to download the program until I got home, but installing it was not an issue. Once installed, I also that I didn't have a problem getting and installing all the updates over the years. The only issue I ever had was getting the initial executable when connected to my company's network.
iubyont said 1:32PM on 7-20-2009
switch to ie8 already. its comparable to the other popular web browsers, is sometimes faster than ff, and is not as big of security risk as ie6.
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Dave Forster said 1:47PM on 7-20-2009
Until microsoft pull the plug then IE6 will stay and businesses won't bother to upgrade.
Consider the multitude of internal intranet applications that may be affected or the cost of upgrading 3rd party licenced software for "newer" browsers. It's an expense that most businesses would probably choose not to incur if they didn't have to.
So how do you get rid of IE6 ? simple... stop banging on about extending the life of Windows XP... as soon as that dies IE6 support dies with it !
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