Petition to phase out IE6
Last Updated on Tuesday, 2 February 2010 12:05 Written by Dan Tuesday, 2 February 2010 12:05
According to BBC news ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8492862.stm ), there’s a petition been launched calling for the phasing out of Internet Explorer 6 as a web browser. This has been a raging debate for some time, and as the petition reportedly states, the browser which was launched in 2001, “… IE6 has security flaws and uses outdated technology, creating a burden for developers…”
With Microsoft Updates the issue of updating to IE8 has been pushed for sometime. There’s also pressure for users of other browsers to upgrade to newer versions where bugs and security issues have been dealt with such as PushUpTheWeb.com who are encouraging the use of code in the websites to identify users of older browsers whether it’s IE, Firefox, Safari or Opera and IE6NoMore in the US
But in addition to security, there is also the strain on developers to test across more browsers. Developing for one then testing on the others is a useful approach. I know that if I create something for Firefox and Safari it’ll work the same in both browsers, on Mac or PC, then there’s the issue of non-standards web browsers (IE) which have quirks which have to be dealt with. Removing IE6 from the equation.
Out of interest, looking at the stats for this site, 52% of users visited with Firefox, 25% with Safari and only 13% with IE (of which the majority used IE8).
Your stats are probably geek-centric. If government department users were your main users ie6 would be up around 25%. I know, we build sites for the public sector.
Petition is doing well though, isn’t it
Yes, I think those stats are geek-centric, given the nature of this site. Looking at other sites I look after the spread is different and has more IE6 users.
Anyway, signed your petition and posted the link to my pals on Facebook, should boost it by a few.
Good luck!