RSS FeedFarewell, IE6
January 22nd, 2008 by Verne
It is with great sadness but greater joy that I share the news that IE6 will finally be put to rest come this February. According to InfoWorld, Microsoft has finally given the thumbs up to an autoupdate of IE6 to IE7 which is set to occur on February 12.
As web designers, we’re constantly kept awake at night fighting crime in the war of browser compatibility issues, hoping only to build websites that deliver consistent experiences to all users regardless of their browser of choice. Microsoft did us all a favour with the release of IE7 not too long ago, marginalizing the differences in how it displays websites between it and its next leading competitor Firefox. But despite this and all the new features and innovations that IE7 brings to users, there still remains a significant portion of internet users who haven’t been incented enough to make the leap from IE6 to IE7. This essentially has meant that the designers who choose to make accomodations for outdated users must design websites for 3 very different browsers. Until now, that is.
On February 12, the update will roll-out and a good 30% of the internet population will see many websites in a whole new light and in the way they were truly designed to be seen (despite our greatest efforts, many websites are still not fully cross-browser compatible). For us, it means the old ‘tester’ computer that still runs IE6 may finally be unplugged. Coincidentally, its power supply died last week.
You can read the full article on InfoWorld here. For the truly stubborn, the article also mentions ways to avoid the autoupdate.
This is great news for the community, and it comes shortly after the announcement of another exciting IE milestone. It’s definitely a good time to be a web designer.
Louis
February 16th, 2008 at 11:53 pmFeb. 12 has come and gone, so has this update taken place? At my job there are two people that still run IE6 and neither of their browser’s has been upgraded. I think users need to have Windows update set to ‘auto’, from what I remember reading.
Verne
February 17th, 2008 at 2:14 amThat’s a good question, Louis - I’d be interested in looking into how the update process went. I just took a glance at our traffic data but it hasn’t been long enough since the update to confirm whether the % of IE6 users have really dropped.
Doing a quick comparison between the week before the update and the time since the update, the % of IE7 users has increased and the % of IE6 users has decreased, but neither of them significantly. The effects will be more apparent over time I’m sure.
But I think you’re right in that Windows Update will probably need to be set to ‘auto’. Then again, the people still on IE6 are likely to be the same people who wouldn’t know that such an option exists, let alone know how to change it.
There were also methods outlined to help companies keep IE6 on the network in case it was needed for testing or compatibility with internal applications, so that could have been another reason why you might have seen it around the office.
That was definitely the long answer to “I don’t know”.