Comments on: IE6 Independence?

By: The Hines57 Blog » Blog Archive » What is the Big Deal?

The Hines57 Blog » Blog Archive » What is the Big Deal? — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:28:12 +0000

[...] end result is that an absurd number of private and corporate entities continue to use IE6. WordPress continues to feel pressure to support IE6, while other (37Signals) have dropped it; and we continue to speculate on Why People Still Use IE6. [...]

By: Jonathan Dingman

Jonathan Dingman — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:45:52 +0000

Google finally did away with their IE6 support as well.

Let the movement begin!!

By: ハッピーバースデー、Firefox « ブログ « WordPress.com

ハッピーバースデー、Firefox « ブログ « WordPress.com — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:53:35 +0000

[...] 2008年 [en] と 2007年 [en] に書いた記事に比べて、WordPress.com のアクセス統計で Firefox がどういう位置を占めているのか興味がわいたので、調べてみました。 [...]

By: Happy Birthday Firefox « Blog « WordPress.com

Happy Birthday Firefox « Blog « WordPress.com — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:38:02 +0000

[...] out of curiosity, I wondered how Firefox was doing in our browser stats compared to the posts I did in 2008 and [...]

By: Kristian

Kristian — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 05:10:13 +0000

There’s STILL people on IE5. These old outdated browsers are glitch, bug, virus prone security disasters waiting to happen.

Sometimes you just have to FORCE the web into the right direction because others don’t know any better.

By: Johannes

Johannes — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:27:32 +0000

My site has just 18% of IE6 users, even thought I have lots of visitors from south korea (aka MS only zone). According to Analytics, they stay for a shorter amount of time and don’t visit that much pages as users of other browsers do.

Also, according to a study released 2 days most root kit affected pcs are infected throught the IE 6!

http://www.prevx.com/blog/107/Fiesta—Monitoring-ITW-exploit.html

I won’t drop the IE 6 support on my sites now, but I will put up a warning to them, that their browser is less secure and doesn’t give them the best online experiance. Thanks to conditional comments, thats a 10 minute task…

By: Rick Overman

Rick Overman — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:15:34 +0000

With the end of the year in sight and IE8 in the wild it would be great to get updated IE6 usage numbers from wordpress.com when you get a chance. –Thanks

By: Daniel Ballard

Daniel Ballard — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:11:30 +0000

Hmm.. you guys still have it pretty good compared to me.. as the target audience for my e-business blog is inside Thailand, an astonishing 55%-60% of my customer base (mostly inet cafe guests) are still using ie6 (yeah, you guys read right)..

if i were to follow along with your opinions i could say goodbye to at least 60-70% of my annual revenues.. not really worth it, eh?

By: Shaa

Shaa — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:11:00 +0000

Interesting stats. I detest IE6 with such passion. I just cannot be asked to hack my CSS for a dying browser. I think as developers we need to look for ways to get our users out of IE6 onto IE7/FF etc One method I am planning on using is by using javascript to check if the user has IE6 installed. If true then a popup will inform the user to update the browser with a link to the direct download. What do you guys think?

By: Gerben

Gerben — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:33:50 +0000

I agree with some of the above comments that if a vast amount of users is still on IE6, we as web-developers should continue supporting it. But on the other hand, we should also help (not to say ‘push’) our users to make the jump to a better, and safer web experience.

With Microsoft itself discontinuing support for IE6, and with many users moving to Firefox, I believe this is the right moment to give users that last (soft) push to abandon a browser that’s eight years old.

Remember the year 2001? When using framesets was still bon ton, and when we were all using tables to create a layout, and formatted text with loads of inline html? Eight years later the web is still a low-tech vessle compared to the vast progress in computer technology, but we as web developers learned techniques to take the web closer to our ideals.

When it comes to physical technical products, users are pushed to ‘upgrade’ all the time: you buy a portable CD-player which allows you to take dozens of songs with you, then there’s a minidisk which allows you to take hundreds of songs with you, because minidisks are much smaller, then there’s an ipod, which allows you to carry thousands of songs with you. But you can’t play your cd’s from 8 years ago on an ipod. You have to convert your cd’s to work on an iphone. And that’s a lot more work for a user then just pressing the download link for Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox.

What I mean to say, is: technology moves forward by a soft pressure by developers on their user-base, saying: “You can have all these new features, only if you upgrade”. What web-developers do is the exact opposite: “There’s a lot of new features, and we’ll also make them work with your old technology”.

If a few sheep stay stuck behind the dike, we do not leave them there: we help them over.

By: Lezione di design - Avatar’s Refuge

Lezione di design - Avatar’s Refuge — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:56:48 +0000

[...] sul blog di Matthew Mullenweg (postato il 4 di luglio, da cui il nome del suo articolo) che le sue [...]

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:39:11 +0000

Its true… unfortunately you can’t discount IE6′s still very strong share of the market. Its all too easy to think like “all my friends use Firefox, therefore everyone does” – it may be true for your friends, but far far far far from true of the general population!

Peace

By: Why People Still Use IE 6 - CSS-Tricks

Why People Still Use IE 6 - CSS-Tricks — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:46:13 +0000

[...] support it. 37 signals is phasing out support for it. Matt Mullenweg says WordPress.com is still seeing about 25% of visits from IE 6 but will consider phasing out when it drops below [...]

By: Wordpress.Com: IE6 Still on Radar

Wordpress.Com: IE6 Still on Radar — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:24:12 +0000

[...] bit old to be sure, but Matt of Automattic recently publicized browser stats for WordPress.com, which still shows Internet Explorer is king. Here they are, compared to last [...]

By: Data Circle » Blog Archive » 37signals waves goodbye to IE6

Data Circle » Blog Archive » 37signals waves goodbye to IE6 — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:51:59 +0000

[...] IE6 Independence? – Matt has some interesting statistics from WordPress.com, which suggest that around 27% of people visiting that site still use IE 6. [...]

By: oral seymour

oral seymour — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:23:54 +0000

developing for all these browsers are a pain in the neck, IE6, IE7, firefox 2 and 3

some apps behave different on IE7 for vista and IE7 for xp!

By: Blog Readers: Browsers & Operating Systems statistics

Blog Readers: Browsers & Operating Systems statistics — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:51:40 +0000

[...] dal post di Matt sulle statistiche di utilizzo del suo blog mi sono messo a fare la stessa cosa con i dati del mio, ovviamente gli ordini di grandezza sono [...]

By: Dekorasyon Design

Dekorasyon Design — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:33:39 +0000

I agree that the faster IE 6 goes away the better, but you can’t just drop IE 6 for products like that.

I run a (small) hopefully tech-savvy blog and I get these stats:
Firefox 2 – 33.6%
Opera 9.5 – 17.3% (mostly me)
IE 7 – 13.48%
IE 6 – 11.47%
Firefox 3 – 10%

IE6 still can’t be ignored!

?mm yes ie6 ignored im browaser ie7 imm good browser alternate opera , firefox our time ie-8 browser new intel to microsoft vista ignored ?mm in ie7

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 06:50:33 +0000

I guess the more upto sites are kept, the less IE6 will work with sites, so it’ll get ‘rotated’ out and people will be forced to upgrade. Like someone said, I can’t believe people are still using IE6 (no tabbed browsing!). I only test against FF and IE7, if it works with those two, then chances are it’ll work for the other major browsers.

(Been using WP for a couple of years now, and haven’t looked at ma.tt before (ahem), will keep an eye on it, it’s great.)

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:46:30 +0000

Well, it’s not like dropping support for IE6 makes sites completely unusable for those people. It might, but it doesn’t HAVE to.

I’m at the point where if IE6 users can at least get the information/use the website, that’s good enough. If the positioning is weird or whatever, they’ll live. =)

By: Vergogna! | Napolux.com

Vergogna! | Napolux.com — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:00:44 +0000

[...] Il buon Matt Mullenweg qualche giorno fa ha fatto notare la massiccia presenza di IE6 che a quanto pare non vuole saperne di andare in pensione, lui ovviamente è sborone e ha tirato [...]

By: Richard Morton - Accessible Web Design

Richard Morton - Accessible Web Design — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:06:22 +0000

I think I am with Jakob Nielsen on this, support the latest two versions, in other words drop IE6 support once IE8 is released. Might not think the same if IE8 was still four years away but it isn’t looking that way.
Supporting two versions isn’t that easy though because it implies the need to support Firefox 2 and 3 and whatever the latest two versions of Safari, Opera, Lynx, Mosaic are (OK I may be getting carried away here).

By: mccormicky

mccormicky — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:28:30 +0000

I just downloaded ie6 again because a new client of mine uses it and so the website looks a bit different to her when we look at our project together.I need to be able to see what she sees but I am working on getting her up to ie7.
The amazing thing was looking at all my sites with ie6.Very bad.Ha ha.Like your site–the sidebar doesn’t even show-just the cool background but no links or lists!

By: helly

helly — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:16:33 +0000

Our developers will be so happy if we dropped IE 6 support. We can only dream.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:41:28 +0000

It does very much depend on the audience. It still amazes me a little that people are still unaware of IE7 given that the update has been around for years (and you would think automatic updates would trigger for this thing).

I’ve dropped CSS support for IE6 at this point as I don’t have an easy way to emulate it (I have IE8 instead, which oddly, isn’t much better right now). PNG support is what I’m really waiting for. The day IE6 dies is the day the PNG format becomes much more of a standard on the web.