The Internet Explorer 6 was released 8 years ago. Because of its ability to tie up with Windows XP, Microsoft was able to lock in an astounding 95% captive market.
Since IE6 was launched in August of 2001, the browser was already plagued with numerous problems that led to a plethora of unresolved browser bugs and security issues. Eight years have passed and the same nagging problems remain and it is now time for me to weigh my options and consider the reasons why it is time for IE6 to go.
IE6 has not been able to resolve the problem about its inability to support transparency in PNG as we end up with annoying gray color displays as replacement to the transparency. We are better off with Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE7 as they support transparency in PNGs.
Failure to update your browser is tantamount to opening yourself up to all sorts of security attacks. If you insist on using IE6, then you must have to contend with code snippets that are capable of shutting down your IE6. You can learn everything about them at Wikipedia. Read through the information and find out why IE6 is considered unstable.
The signs are all written on the wall. Facebook, YouTube and Digg are slowly disassociating from IE6 and they have recently announced plans to scale down their support for IE6. Ultimately, we will reach the tipping point where you will not be able to browse Youtube and Digg using IE6.
Due to the reasons stated above, as of this writing, I will not test my themes against IE6 anymore. Also, I will not support any IE6 related issue for my WordPress themes. If you are still using IE6, I strongly urge you to upgrade your browser to IE7 or IE8 to avoid problems.
And since IE8 is already released and its market share is getting bigger, I will start testing my themes against IE8. Removing IE6 from my browser test and adding IE8 to the list will now make my themes compatible with IE7, IE8, Safari, Opera, Firefox and Chrome.
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Leave a Reply to Brian Cancel reply
i think so ,hate ie6!
Really Great Opinion ,IE6 Has made my life with Css A nightmare ,We better kill this Idiot Browser =)
IE6 will receive the KO punch when Win7 comes out in October – and after all those companies using WinXP finally have a good reason to upgrade. Like you I don’t test my site on IE6 – unless the client is willing to pay extra for support -.
Bad news. Microsoft has said they’ll support IE6 through 2014:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/08/internet-explorer-6-the-browser-that-will-not-die.html
@Josh, it may be sooner that IE6 will eventually die out. Base on the browser statistic by W3schools, IE6’s market share is on the down trend. When it has less than 1% market share, Microsoft might just stop the browser, just like when IE5 ended the service in June, 2008
With the title i thought it was going to be an interesting article about the pros of ie6 or why we should all forget these ‘lets kill ie6’ articles, shame you just repeated the same old same old
@me, the main purpose of this post is not to repeat what others have been talking about for years but to notify my theme users that I no longer test my WordPress themes against the outdated IE6.
I could not agree more with this. As a web designer, IE makes my life miserable. When everything is beautiful on Firefox, Safari and Flock, Internet Explorer oftens fails to recognize the code that I’ve used to put together a blog or a website. IE is dumb and has not made any attempts to get smarter. This is unacceptable and makes me waste time making corrections so that IE can read me. Please stop using Internet Explorer and install Safari or Firefox. They are both free and work perfectly on PCs and MACs. Your internet life will be much smoother and fun.
@Diane Bourque, I totally agree with you and I have gotten tired of testing against IE6 @@.
The Beauty (your website) and the beast (IE6) :-))
Thanks
Joachim
IE6 must die, and i guess it is dying, i am using firefox as primary browser. even ie7,8 have some problem and in some theme there is separate css for this browsers.
One of our developers wrote a song called “IE is being mean to me” and you can find the video here:
http://with.us/meanie
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTzwJsHpU8
Hope you like it.
I like it 😀