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IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

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Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#21

Post by jquery »

mkr-hn wrote: post #18
tommi wrote: post #10

"Given that everyone using IE6 is, at best, running Windows XP, and given that Microsoft have stated that IE9 won't be available for pre-Vista SP2 OSs, the most recent version of Internet Explorer they could ever hope to upgrade to is IE8." unless they upgrade Windows. Which they should.

I've got no real reason to. XP works fine, and it's secure enough. Java isn't installed, and flash is enabled on a case-by-case basis ( I'll probably have this laptop (and XP) for another year or so. Now, try convincing someone who _doesn't_ know much about computers to upgrade. All these "everyone should upgrade" declarations I keep seeing won't do it.

> This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned.

Just curious, how do you know you haven't suffered any attack?

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#22

Post by Enlightenment »

rbanffy wrote: post #17
recoiledsnake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And replace it with what? Companies that will charge 30% of all the money for content that goes through their devices?

False dichotomy alert! Getting rid of Microsoft doesn't imply going to Apple. You must realize that there are other entities in this market, frequently offering better products, often for free. Getting rid of a company that despises fair competition, that promotes bogus standards in order to confuse the market instead of doing something it once did adequately: build products its users want, would be quite good for th…

You are delusional to think that Microsoft should recommend another non-IE browser.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#23

Post by jackmanbob »

andrenotgiant wrote: post #20

Ugh, we all know 99% of English-speaking users on IE6 are forced to use it at their workplace. That's going to be so annoying. Maybe those IE6 Business-users should get their user-agents changed to: "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) - YES I KNOW IE6 IS OLD, TELL MY BOSS"

In 10 years of development, I have never worked for a company that required any version of IE.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#24

Post by Helianthus16 »

akamaka wrote: post #19

They're trying to get XP users to upgrade from IE6 to IE8. This is a problem because IE8 is already obsolete. It would be preferable to encourage people to run pretty much any other browser on XP, because they are all being actively updated with new features. The point, which doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft-bashing: Don't run this banner on your site.

marginal improvement is still improvement. we could just chill out and accept that microsoft has the right to promote its product and we have the right not to put the banner on our sites.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#25

Post by mkr-hn »

jquery wrote: post #21
mkr-hn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got no real reason to. XP works fine, and it's secure enough. Java isn't installed, and flash is enabled on a case-by-case basis ( I'll probably have this laptop (and XP) for another year or so. Now, try convincing someone who _doesn't_ know much about computers to upgrade. All these "everyone should upgrade" declarations I keep seeing won't do it.

> This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned. Just curious, how do you know you haven't suffered any attack?

Because it would have to come through a vector that I haven't completely walled off, and those are exceedingly rare (like the WMF thing ages ago). I keep up on vulnerabilities, and I'd do a paranoia reinstall if I suspected I were affected by one.

It would be one of these:

* Noscript exploit

* Simultaneous Flashblock + Flash exploit

* Image-based exploit

* Renderer exploit

And those are extremely rare. My software stack is also pretty stable, and it's all from trustworthy vendors/projects.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#26

Post by TheSOB88 »

mkr-hn wrote: post #18
tommi wrote: post #10

"Given that everyone using IE6 is, at best, running Windows XP, and given that Microsoft have stated that IE9 won't be available for pre-Vista SP2 OSs, the most recent version of Internet Explorer they could ever hope to upgrade to is IE8." unless they upgrade Windows. Which they should.

I've got no real reason to. XP works fine, and it's secure enough. Java isn't installed, and flash is enabled on a case-by-case basis ( I'll probably have this laptop (and XP) for another year or so. Now, try convincing someone who _doesn't_ know much about computers to upgrade. All these "everyone should upgrade" declarations I keep seeing won't do it.

And you're someone who knows about computers. Try to explain to someone who doesn't know too much why they should buy a $400 OS... Good luck!

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#27

Post by generalk »

jerf wrote: post #12
mrcharles wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is less that they link to their own browser, and more that the likely outcome is that it will push the adoption of another nearly obsolete browser.

Hey, I don't know if you've noticed the pattern over the past 15 years, but there's always another "obsolete" browser. You can't "win", it's just about the progress. There is no point in the past 15 years where you've been able to just code to the latest beta of your favorite browser and nothing else.

That's true, but on the other hand, as TFA points out, IE8 is the latest that a WinXP user can ever get from Microsoft, which is two-years old and practically outdated now. Linking IE6 users to IE8 is progress, sure, but useless given that they could be running Chrome or Firefox, which are actually modern browsers.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#28

Post by Natsu »

jerf wrote: post #12
mrcharles wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is less that they link to their own browser, and more that the likely outcome is that it will push the adoption of another nearly obsolete browser.

Hey, I don't know if you've noticed the pattern over the past 15 years, but there's always another "obsolete" browser. You can't "win", it's just about the progress. There is no point in the past 15 years where you've been able to just code to the latest beta of your favorite browser and nothing else.

> Hey, I don't know if you've noticed the pattern over the past 15 years, but there's always another "obsolete" browser.

He's saying that they'd get a more modern browser by going to something other than IE, given that their OS can't possibly support the latest version of IE. We know there's nothing you can do to be up-to-date forever.

Re: IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing

#29

Post by yuhong »

generalk wrote: post #27
jerf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I don't know if you've noticed the pattern over the past 15 years, but there's always another "obsolete" browser. You can't "win", it's just about the progress. There is no point in the past 15 years where you've been able to just code to the latest beta of your favorite browser and nothing else.

That's true, but on the other hand, as TFA points out, IE8 is the latest that a WinXP user can ever get from Microsoft, which is two-years old and practically outdated now. Linking IE6 users to IE8 is progress, sure, but useless given that they could be running Chrome or Firefox, which are actually modern browsers.

Yea, I think the real problem here is that IE9 is not available for XP, which is the newest version of Windows shipping with IE6, so they are stuck upgrading them to IE8.
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