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Internet Explorer 6 laid to rest after 10 years of service
Mourning the passing of a trusted companion can be tough to cope with but for Microsoft, there’s reason to celebrate. To mark the demise of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft baked a cake and popped open the proverbial champagne as IE6 usage in the US has dipped below 1 percent.
The sixth major revision of Internet Explorer, IE6 was initially released in August 2001 right around the time that work on Windows XP was being wrapped up. The browser lived a long and prosperous life but Father Time eventually caught up to IE6 and it became the butt of jokes worldwide.
In a recent blog post, director of Internet Explorer marketing Roger Capriotti admits that Microsoft has been as eager as anyone else to see IE6 fade away. In fact, Redmond even launched an IE6 Countdown site last March to help accelerate the process. The site has generated over 2.7 million visitors and 5.6 million page views in less than a year. That day has finally come as the US joins Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway in dropping below 1 percent usage of IE6.
Capriotti hopes that the trend continues in other parts of the world where developers and IT professionals can consider the product a low priority and stop wasting time supporting such an outdated browser. Naturally, he goes on to urge these users to move to a more modern browser like IE8 or IE9.
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User Comments (12)
Post a comment|
tw0rld
on January 4, 2012 2:12 PM |
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. All that's left to do is to get rid of ie7. As a matter of fact we should only be using HTML 5 compliant browsers. We need faster releases of ie versions, just not at the rediculous rate of Firefox or Chrome realeses. |
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raybay
on January 4, 2012 2:24 PM |
Practically the only reason to use Explorer is when connecting to Microsoft for updates. |
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Guest
on January 4, 2012 2:33 PM |
@raybay: What's wrong with the fully functional built in Windows Update? Or are you not using Windows 7? |
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Guest
on January 4, 2012 3:16 PM |
Microsoft made a proprietary browser (IE 6) to keep all its users using a Microsoft browser; however other events (new browsers, technology, etc.) required Microsoft to make changes. They have slowly tweaked IE (7-10) to be more open and use more standards. Now Microsoft wants everyone to move off their old locked in browser. The main reason users may still be using IE 6 is because they are locked in and have to wait for upgraded applications. We use many browsers (IE 6 ? 10), Firefox and Chrome. We still have IE 6 around to support some customers that still have old locked in applications. Thanks Microsoft... |
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Rick
on January 4, 2012 4:06 PM |
The IE team sure loves baking cakes... http://bixhorn.com/?p=125 |
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AnonymousSurfer
on January 4, 2012 8:34 PM |
I'm glad we are starting to move up in the world... Next task: Upgrade all Microsoft 2000 licenses. |
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Per Hansson
on January 5, 2012 2:14 AM |
"Laid to rest" is a bit misleading, security updates and support will be provided for it for as long as Windows XP SP3 is supported, that is April 8, 2014 (Because a Retail copy of XP with SP3 comes with IE6 by default) |
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Rick
on January 5, 2012 3:01 AM |
Per Hansson said: "Laid to rest" is a bit misleading, security updates and support will be provided Well, maybe we could look at it this way: IE6 *is* six feet under, but Microsoft will be occasionally placing floral bouquets upon its grave site for the next two years. |
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Guest
on January 5, 2012 4:38 AM |
I still use it while working at the bank. |
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gobbybobby
on January 5, 2012 8:13 AM |
Interesting that the people republic of China still has 25% usage according to the IE countdown site, why they no upgrade Even Windows XP supports IE 7. |
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Guest
on January 5, 2012 2:42 PM |
Because 99% of websites are using HTML 4.0 |
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tw0rld
on January 6, 2012 4:58 PM |
Because 99% of websites are using HTML 4.0 HTML 5 compliance does not mean no support for older versions of the Markup Language. Just declare your doctype. It is pretty simple. |
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