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YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

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Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#41

Post by 100k »

eli wrote: post #38
drusenko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reply here as below: "Sorry, that's not an excuse. IE 8 comes with a "compatibility mode" feature where any site can choose to use the IE 6 rendering engine by setting headers or meta tags appropriately."

Nope.. that compatibility mode is for IE7 , not IE6. (And my understanding is that it's not even a perfect emulation of IE7.) Microsoft's official recommendation for developers is to install IE6 in a VM if you need to test compatibility. It's that bad.

Speaking of which, do you know where I can find IE 6 so I can install it in a VM and test our site?

MultipleIE doesn't work on Windows 7, which is what I'm using.

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#42

Post by drusenko »

eli wrote: post #38
drusenko wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reply here as below: "Sorry, that's not an excuse. IE 8 comes with a "compatibility mode" feature where any site can choose to use the IE 6 rendering engine by setting headers or meta tags appropriately."

Nope.. that compatibility mode is for IE7 , not IE6. (And my understanding is that it's not even a perfect emulation of IE7.) Microsoft's official recommendation for developers is to install IE6 in a VM if you need to test compatibility. It's that bad.

Hmm, you're right. Somehow that didn't make it into the final release. What a shame.

Either way, our perspective is still that the more people that complain about IE 6, the more pressure IT departments will have to upgrade their systems.

Starting with Firefox for a modern browsing experience wouldn't be a bad idea :)

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#44

Post by eli »

100k wrote: post #41
eli wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope.. that compatibility mode is for IE7 , not IE6. (And my understanding is that it's not even a perfect emulation of IE7.) Microsoft's official recommendation for developers is to install IE6 in a VM if you need to test compatibility. It's that bad.

Speaking of which, do you know where I can find IE 6 so I can install it in a VM and test our site? MultipleIE doesn't work on Windows 7, which is what I'm using.

Dunno about Win7 compatibility, but this is the official VPC image: http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21e...

Personally, I'd probably just use a VMWare image of XP or Win98 and download IE6 from here http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1E1...

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#45

Post by tedunangst »

there wrote: post #6

from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…

Were you actually expecting to hear from an IE6 IT shop on HN? The people living in that world don't often post here.

Next you'll say that nobody ever calls their computer case the CPU because you haven't seen anybody do it here.

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#46

Post by drusenko »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #39
aichcon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is internal legacy applications that only work in IE6. If they upgrade browsers the apps break, so in order to support these apps they keep IE 6. The question for them is 'do we spend time and money to update all of our applications to upgrade a browser, or just leave things the way they are for now?'

Sometimes the question isn't even "do we spend time and money to update our applications", because sometimes the code for the applications is long gone, along with the company that wrote it, and all they have left is the compiled code running on some server in a back closet.

Couldn't they install Firefox, then, and use IE6 for legacy apps?

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#47

Post by jadence »

there wrote: post #6

from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…

I know employees at Cost Plus World Market headquarters are stuck using IE6.

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#48

Post by hassy »

sachinag wrote: post #17
alaskamiller wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even the US military subject itself to the stupidity that is IE6.

The U.S. State Department, however, does.

As does Britain's Ministry of Defence as well as many other departments in the British government. Moreover, they don't even have upgrade plans in place either.

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#49

Post by lurkinggrue »

drusenko wrote: post #46
pavel_lishin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the question isn't even "do we spend time and money to update our applications", because sometimes the code for the applications is long gone, along with the company that wrote it, and all they have left is the compiled code running on some server in a back closet.

Couldn't they install Firefox, then, and use IE6 for legacy apps?

How about Virtual Box to run IE6?

Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6

#50

Post by emmett »

rawr wrote: post #43

Oooh, look out! A bunch of companies with no established user bases are going to boycott you! This will get the grannies to upgrade their computer machines for sure.

It's not a boycott, just a dismissible nag message. Did you read the article?

Also, the number of people from these startups is approximately (data from quantcast):

4.1 million (jtv us) + 1.3 million (weebly us) + 1.7 million (reddit us) + 1.3 million (posterous) + 0.5 million (disqus us) = 8.9 million US people. Global reach is probably 2-3x that much, but quantcast doesn't offer global numbers for all of them (JTV has 26 million globally).

I'd say that counts as an established user base.

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