IE6 is dead • Hacker News Board

Re: IE6 is dead

#61

Post by eli » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 12:56 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #54

eli wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we really want to kill IE[6-8], we need to do something more drastic, and do so with extreme prejudice. How about we all agree upon a certain date on which we intentionally break our websites and services for IE6 users? Maybe for a blog, but I'm not telling 10%+ of my customers to piss off. If the cost of supporting them outweighs the value of their business then I won't support them any more. But I would never…

These people might be using Microsoft software, but it would be a stretch to call them Microsoft customers. When was the last time they actually coughed up any cash? Besides, this is a bed Microsoft made, so they need to lie in it. The longer people stay with XP / IE 6-8, the worse the Internet gets for everyone. M$ is the only company that can do anything about it, and it's in their best interest to, so they just ne…

No, I mean they are my customers! Right now, today, I have 10%+ users on IE6 through IE8. If I can afford to dedicate the resources to support them, I will. I don't believe in punishing users and I certainly don't believe in turning people away if I don't have to.

I'm not sure about XP specifically, but I get way more than 10% of my traffic from IE6-8. IE8 alone is over 10% on some of my business news sites. Don't forget IE8 shipped with Windows 7.

Re: IE6 is dead

#62

Post by digitalengineer » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 12:56 PM UTC

owenversteeg wrote: post #12

Reports of its death are, from my experience, greatly exaggerated. It's still fairly widely used in businesses; as they say "if it's not broke, don't fix it." (Despite the fact that it is broken on many sites.) For anyone that wants to use a modern CSS framework that supports IE5.5+, check out Min ( http://minfwk.com ). Disclaimer: I made it.

Thank you. Bookmarked for sure.

Re: IE6 is dead

#63

Post by sentientmachine » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 12:57 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #45

kijin wrote: post #40

As others have pointed out, IE6 isn't dead yet. Any person or business that is stubborn enough to use IE6 nowadays is probably also stubborn enough to keep using Windows XP for another year or ten. And I'm afraid a lot of us have been complicit in the unusually long life of this dreadful monster, as well as of its just-as-dreadful offspring, IE8. By "us" I mean everyone who has ever developed a website in the last fe…

> If we really want to kill IE[6-8], we need to do something more drastic, and do so with extreme prejudice. How about we all agree upon a certain date on which we intentionally break our websites and services for IE6 users? Maybe for a blog, but I'm not telling 10%+ of my customers to piss off. If the cost of supporting them outweighs the value of their business then I won't support them any more. But I would never…

But still, making your app/service compatible with IE6 is a hassle for you and preventing you from doing a better job in other areas which harms your profits.

Perhaps we can take the hit for you. We could cause your customers to stop using IE[6-8] by specifically not fixing the sites to be backwards compatible. Your users will note that although your site still works in IE6, every other site won't. Then if we can drive down the 10% IE6 users of your site to 1%, then will you stop spending time making things compatible for it?

Re: IE6 is dead

#64

Post by wslh » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 12:58 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #40

As others have pointed out, IE6 isn't dead yet. Any person or business that is stubborn enough to use IE6 nowadays is probably also stubborn enough to keep using Windows XP for another year or ten. And I'm afraid a lot of us have been complicit in the unusually long life of this dreadful monster, as well as of its just-as-dreadful offspring, IE8. By "us" I mean everyone who has ever developed a website in the last fe…

Any person or business that is stubborn enough to use IE6 nowadays is probably also stubborn enough to keep using Windows XP for another year or ten.

No, two things:

i) It's not about being stubborn. Companies have invested a lot of money and time to run critical applications. Even if they have the money the risk of migration is high.

ii) They have already migrated to newer browsers! they just run IE6 side by side with modern browsers using application virtualization.

Re: IE6 is dead

#65

Post by JohnMunsch » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 12:58 PM UTC

WatchDog wrote: post #44

pjmlp wrote: post #15

It was replaced by IE 8.0, long live the king! :(

With the death of XP I would expect to see a usage drop, not only in IE6 but in IE7 and IE8 too. IE8 is the latest version of IE that can be installed on XP, I would assume that most people using IE8 would be XP users. If anyone has data on IE8 OS versions I would be interested.

For our app I've been monitoring IE8 usage for the last month. It is almost exactly one-for-one with XP users (YES!) and dropping a little at a time every day. When I first started looking the rolling 30 day average was roughly 15%. It has since dropped below 12%. I would imagine by the end of the year and a wonderful rash of XP viruses and worms, a lot of our customers will have had to drop both of them.

Re: IE6 is dead

#66

Post by blueskin_ » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 1:01 PM UTC

Tell that to the 23% of people still using XP.

Quite a few of those are likely to be IE6 users, primarily due to governments and bureaucratic corporations.

Re: IE6 is dead

#67

Post by eli » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 1:01 PM UTC

sentientmachine wrote: post #63

eli wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we really want to kill IE[6-8], we need to do something more drastic, and do so with extreme prejudice. How about we all agree upon a certain date on which we intentionally break our websites and services for IE6 users? Maybe for a blog, but I'm not telling 10%+ of my customers to piss off. If the cost of supporting them outweighs the value of their business then I won't support them any more. But I would never…

But still, making your app/service compatible with IE6 is a hassle for you and preventing you from doing a better job in other areas which harms your profits. Perhaps we can take the hit for you. We could cause your customers to stop using IE[6-8] by specifically not fixing the sites to be backwards compatible. Your users will note that although your site still works in IE6, every other site won't. Then if we can dri…

Sure, it'd be great if everyone used a modern browser. I don't think it's ever a good idea to intentionally punish users, though. I'm pretty sure anyone using IE6 (or 7 or 8) is very aware they are on a crap browser. Tons of sites have told them or just appeared broken. They likely aren't in a position to be able to do anything about it.

Re: IE6 is dead

#68

Post by bluedino » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 1:08 PM UTC

We have a large client with over 2,000 'zombie' XP/IE6 machines out there. Ugh.

Re: IE6 is dead

#69

Post by kijin » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 1:09 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #64

kijin wrote: post #40

As others have pointed out, IE6 isn't dead yet. Any person or business that is stubborn enough to use IE6 nowadays is probably also stubborn enough to keep using Windows XP for another year or ten. And I'm afraid a lot of us have been complicit in the unusually long life of this dreadful monster, as well as of its just-as-dreadful offspring, IE8. By "us" I mean everyone who has ever developed a website in the last fe…

Any person or business that is stubborn enough to use IE6 nowadays is probably also stubborn enough to keep using Windows XP for another year or ten. No, two things: i) It's not about being stubborn. Companies have invested a lot of money and time to run critical applications. Even if they have the money the risk of migration is high. ii) They have already migrated to newer browsers! they just run IE6 side by side wi…

i) and ii) are both excellent excuses to keep using IE6 on the intranet.

But there is no excuse for browsing the public web with IE6 anymore. Especially if there's a modern browser installed side by side with IE6.

Ideally, a firewall should be set up so that IE6 can't access anything outside of 10/8, 172.16/12, 192.168/16, and localhost.

Re: IE6 is dead

#70

Post by kijin » Tue, Apr 08, 2014, 1:12 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #45

kijin wrote: post #40

As others have pointed out, IE6 isn't dead yet. Any person or business that is stubborn enough to use IE6 nowadays is probably also stubborn enough to keep using Windows XP for another year or ten. And I'm afraid a lot of us have been complicit in the unusually long life of this dreadful monster, as well as of its just-as-dreadful offspring, IE8. By "us" I mean everyone who has ever developed a website in the last fe…

> If we really want to kill IE[6-8], we need to do something more drastic, and do so with extreme prejudice. How about we all agree upon a certain date on which we intentionally break our websites and services for IE6 users? Maybe for a blog, but I'm not telling 10%+ of my customers to piss off. If the cost of supporting them outweighs the value of their business then I won't support them any more. But I would never…

That's exactly why any hypothetical boycott of IE[6-8] will have to be an industry-wide affair like the SOPA blackout. If everyone boycotts IE[6-8] at the same time, nobody will suffer any competitive disadvantage because of their participation in the boycott.