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Google Tells Users To Drop IE6
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Jan 01, 2009 10:54 AM
from the my-mom-still-won't-do-it dept.
from the my-mom-still-won't-do-it dept.
Kelly writes "Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google's decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."
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Submission: Google tells users to drop IE6 by Anonymous Coward
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Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
FYI, Chrome is unsupported on Win2k as well.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Win2k is a decade old. Stable or not, you can't expect companies to go on supporting it forever. On the Mac side, there's a ton of software that's Leopard-only, dropping support for people who are using any OS more than 15 months old, and there's hardly anything wrong with Tiger. Windows has always had better backwards-compatibility than OS X, of course, but eventually the reason that you'll need to upgrade your OS is because all of your software requires it.
Of course what you want to do on your computer is your business, not mine, but just keep in mind that developers are going to stop supporting you eventually if you don't stay at least reasonably current.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhmm, the kicker is, I'm *STILL* running Win2k. And not only that, but I've got drivers from within the last year running on it for both my PCIe Radeon HD3650, and my Logitech Driving Force Pro. Nevermind that Realtek supports most of their chipset hardware all the way back to either Win9x or DOS, depending.
And the kicker of all this? Basically any game that doesn't require Windows Live and/or have a hardcoded check for XP will run and play fine on it.
WinXP for all intents and purposes was a rebadge of 2k with some additional eyecandy and a FEW interface changes. But the majority of said interface changes don't affect 90 percent of the applications out there.
Forced obsolescence is fine if there's a reason, but if your 10 year old OS has everything that a modern app needs to support it, there's no reason to upgrade. (Nevermind that 2k is the last windows version without that annoying Windows Activation stuff, and in fact is the reason I spent 300 bucks on it well after WinXP was out.)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
Uhmm, the kicker is, I'm *STILL* running Win2k. And not only that, but I've got drivers from within the last year running on it for both my PCIe Radeon HD3650, and my Logitech Driving Force Pro. Nevermind that Realtek supports most of their chipset hardware all the way back to either Win9x or DOS, depending.
And the kicker of all this? Basically any game that doesn't require Windows Live and/or have a hardcoded check for XP will run and play fine on it.
WinXP for all intents and purposes was a rebadge of 2k with some additional eyecandy and a FEW interface changes. But the majority of said interface changes don't affect 90 percent of the applications out there.
Forced obsolescence is fine if there's a reason, but if your 10 year old OS has everything that a modern app needs to support it, there's no reason to upgrade. (Nevermind that 2k is the last windows version without that annoying Windows Activation stuff, and in fact is the reason I spent 300 bucks on it well after WinXP was out.)
Keep telling yourself that. But there are actually a lot of enhancements [microsoft.com]. And no, those are not UI enhancements(which there are a ton, like wireless stuff in xp sp2). Those are just kernel enhancements.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
It also added things like plug & play - no more typing the IRQ numbers of your peripherals and expansion cards before they work.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
Among other things win2k brought WDM to the NT line. WDM added support for plug and play and allowed hardware vendors to develop a single driver for both 98/ME and 2K (and XP and for the most part vista too).
And decent directx support (afaict NT 4 had some support for directx but it was pretty crappy).
And USB support (afaict there was some third party stuff for NT 4 but few devices worked with it)
2K combined many of the important features of the 9x line (plug and play, wide hardware support, directx) with the stability and ability to handle large numbers of apps open at once.
2K to XP was a fairly minor change and that means if you are supporting XP then unless you use some really exotic apis your app or driver will most likely work just as well under 2K.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Win2k is a decade old. Stable or not, you can't expect companies to go on supporting it forever.
Why not? If there are enough users (especially large businesses) and people paying for support (i.e. licensed or bespoke software) then why cut off customers?
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
Huh? There is a lot [wikipedia.org] of new libraries and APIs in Vista apart from DX10. A new audio stack, new printing subsystem (both have support for legacy APIs, of course, but also totally new APIs enabling new features), kernel transaction manager, etc.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Google's main aim is to get people off the IE series, they care less about which browser replaces it for the time being. After all, Google are major funders of the Mozilla project giving them a lot of say so in how it is set up and the direction it goes in (e.g. that Google is the default search option in Firefox is at their request).
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 isn't much better. I had always heard how much extra work was caused by Microsoft's non-compliant browser. The browser alternatives to MSIE are generally known well enough that it was about the right time to start pushing back against the defacto requirement to support the broken browser that has been holding back progress and innovation on the web for years.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Although it does sound a bit anti-Microsoft on Google's part
So what. You don't think Microsoft wouldn't shiv them in the back every chance they get. They've only been doing it for 30 years and deserve much more than this little taste of their own medicine.
And no, I don't consider this "being evil".
Not only does Microsoft richly deserve this (i.e., real competition), but it's a service to users by helping to improve the Internet ecology as a whole, as the millions of users that are most likely to be pwned over are now being directly told to switch to software that isn't hopelessly insecure. If some people pay the price for allowing themselves to be locked in to the prison that is Microsoft software, well, hopefully they'll learn their lesson.
"Works with IE" is perfectly OK, "Requires IE" is stupid and evil.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 being a more natural progression for users of IE6 due to familiarity.
Actually all of the users that I've switched from IE6 to IE7 were more confused than the users I switched from any version of IE to Firefox. The interface changed quite a bit in IE7 and Firefox (version 2 anyway) seems to have more of a classical interface.
IE7 also annoys the hell out of me with that stupid "customize your browser" splash screen that refuses to go away on startup until you acknowledge it and save your settings.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Not 'different'. Just safer.
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Re:Brand of... (Score:5, Informative)
Protect yourself from typos in MS Word! Use LaTex!
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Re:yea it does (Score:4, Insightful)
And you are so eager to 'correct' someone that you didn't think you're comment through at all (or proof-read for grammar). It is IE7 that is not supported on Win2k, IE6 works fine (well, as fine as it does anywhere. ;) ). So you are wrong on your basic point. However, what I think you are trying to say is that IE7 doesn't work on Win2k and that this is somehow in contradiction to what I said. It isn't, though I invite you to explain how. Google is telling people to stop using IE6 and move to either Firefox or Chrome (which also isn't supported on Win2k, as it happens). Notable as a glaring omission is Google's rival's browser IE7. Google are using their influence in one area (ad-supported email accounts) to promote their products in a different market (browsers) at cost to their rival's product. That's anti-trust.
Please don't accuse me of knee-jerk responses. My post is more accurate than yours and reasoned through well-enough, I hope.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
This is similar in principle - use dominance in one area (ad supported email accounts) to promote business in a different area (browser technology).
You would have a point if Google dominated in that area (ad supported email accounts). But, they don't.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Precisely what about IE6 work the way it's supposed to? The plethora of rendering issues aside, it is by far one of the most unstable pieces of software I've ever used. And unless you dig very deep into the Windows processes and force it to run in its own process, it crashes your desktop when it goes down.
XP/Vista, fine. I prefer Office 2007's interface by far, but I've never had any memorable issues with any version of office, going back to at least the Win3.11 days (and for what I do, the functionality
Somewhere in Redmond.... (Score:3, Funny)
YAY!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Dear God Thank You (Score:5, Funny)
Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody using Firefox or Chrome has Google as their default home. Anybody using IE has MSN as their default home.
This is a war over who gets to propagandize you with their ads and collect your personal information. There is no good/evil dichotomy here if that's what you're looking for.
Further, I'll end with a categorical statement in order to offend people: Anybody with strong feelings about which web browser is the best is probably spending too much time surfing the web, and is in fact suffering from an internet addiction. IE 7, Opera, and Firefox are all pretty similar from a normal end-user perspective.
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Funny)
IE 7, Opera, and Firefox are all pretty similar from a normal end-user perspective
The gall! We are not normal end users!
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Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Er yes, "internet addiction".
Is it also possible that you are a web designer or at least the guy who got lumbered with getting the company site to "work on most browsers".
Designers worry about browser bugs and quirks, so the end user doesn't have to.
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Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 has an Adblock Plus equivalent? News to me. Whenever I have to use IE to browse the web, it's a nightmare. With effective filtering, I've lost my ad-blindness, so now when I go online unprotected I actually see all that crap. Horrible.
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Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
It works fine and well enough for a large % of ads. Its better than nothing when I have to use something other than firefox. As good as adblock is its still limited to one single browser. Ive been using the hosts file method for ages and I havent noticed an increase of ads lately. I disagree that anything has really been changed in ad delivery since 1996.
The fact is that a large majority of ads really do come from 3rd parties who use their own servers. Thats how syndication works. You dont host the ads, caselmedia does. Block casel and youre done.
I also build hosts files to block server names of malware and other unsavory destinations potential spyware might call.
>so if a site puts ads in a div class="adcolumnwrapper" or so.
Thats presentation/formatting. The image or flash object still needs to be loaded from the ad server.
>(This also works for many text ads, BTW.)
Blocking google text ads takes one line in the hosts file.
>I'm not saying that NOONE does that anymore
Just about everyone who does ad blocking in IE uses this method.
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dont bullshit please (Score:5, Insightful)
the fact is that, IE6 is WAY outdated now, is not supported anymore, is a gift from heavens for anyone writing exploits, doesnt even support tabs.
excuse me pal, ie6 is early 2000s.
its like the tech world equivalent of saying "dont drop 1930 model cars, even if its 1980s".
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There are two very big reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
You also missed in your list a last class: software developers writing reasonably modern code whose a
Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a few short years ago, Linux users such as myself were becoming decidedly second-class citizens on the web, with many pages not working at all or not working right. Microsoft-specific extensions were polluting the web and making it hard to enjoy without paying Microsoft. I'm not talking about something that could have happened, that did happen. The fact that Firefox came through and won enough market share to make web developers take notice so it doesn't matter so much which browser you use is a HUGE victory. Thanks Firefox!
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Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, remember when there were tons of websites that would refuse to display, only giving you the message, "Please upgrade to IE 5.5" (or whatever)? The wouldn't even render improperly, they'd just refuse to display at all.
Can you imagine major sites doing that now?
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Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Interesting)
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I agree! (Score:5, Funny)
"and is in fact suffering from an internet addiction. "
Internet Addiction users probably also suffer from sex addiction, money addiction and food addiction.
I personally suffer from addictophobia, so let me assure everyone that internet addiction is real. So all of you stop snickering out there. In fact, if you're reading slashdot, you're probably an internet addict. Here are the symptoms:
1) Constantly have a browser window up in your computer
2) Check your email more than once a day
3) Know browser shortcut keys. You know what cntl-D does, alt (or apple) backspace does, how to quit your browser without using the mouse.
4) Understand the importance of metatags
5) Knows how to spell URL
6) Users Ad Block Plus
This is a serious addiction.
Next week, we'll be covering work addiction (a tragic state where most of your waking hours are spent at a business doing stuff that some person tells you), water addiction (heart breaking... you require water every time your mouth gets dry. You end up in a condition known as "thirsty").
Finally, we'll be covering sleep addiction. Some of those addicts are known to spend 1/3 of their day in a completely motionless catatonic state. Tears are staining my browser as I type.
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Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Here's why. Two words: adblock, flashblock.
No other single innovation on the web has changed my whole experience of the web. Casual user or not. The web is truly awful without these essential tools.
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Re:Advertiser versus advertiser (Score:5, Insightful)
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Interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
At my previous job (fairly large company) they've standardized on Win2k on the clients. In fact they're still running it. Guess what browser is included? The client is heavily modified so rolling out a new one isn't an easy task.
From what I've heard they're little above 1 year in planning to switch to Vista, but since there are quite a lot of migration issues I don't see that coming soon. I'd say it's atleast 6 months away, probably more. The company uses some very specific programs written by people that might not be with the company anymore, and all those need to work for business to continue as usual.
So they will continue to surf the interweb with IE6 for quite a while. Other browsers can be installed but that is unsupported and might result in a call from the security department on why you use unauthorized software on your machine. You probably don't want that. And none of the internal applications work with anything but IE6 (IE7 is being tested with the vista change) anyway.
Large organizations are fun.
But you shouldn't read gmail from work anyway so that's not a big problem. As long as most other sites still work. Or perhaps they should use an "external browser" and one "internal" one. Hehe.
Re:Interesting. (Score:4, Interesting)
You offer this solution in jest, but in fact it is what I advocate to my users.
When Chrome came out, I tried it, and was impressed enough that my personal browsing is now done almost exclusively with it.
However, I still have a bunch of old, stupid network devices and other random corporate applications that either insist on, or just plain work better with, IE as a browser. So my "corporate" browsing is done through IE.
It also makes things easy to separate out visually; ie the IE window is safe to leave up when the boss/customer unexpectedly looks into my cube. :)
Interestingly, this meant that for me, Firefox was the browser left out in the cold -- between IE and Chrome, I no longer need it. I still have it installed, for the one-in-a-$BIGNUM site which insists on it, but it practically never gets started. My usage of it is so infrequent that it seems every time I start it up I have to almost immediately restart it because of some upgrade it has done.
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Re:Interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
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how does it feel when they do it to you? (Score:4, Funny)
That's right Microsoft, you heard me well.
No addons, No chrome (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as there are no addons like adblock possible i'll be sticking to firefox...
Big business is slow to respond (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big business is slow to respond (Score:5, Insightful)
[webapps.... only supports IE6]
I had the same situation in a department at a university... right around the time IE7 was force-deployed by Microsoft. I saw it coming, so I broke Software Update. I made a proposal that was accepted to mothball ALL the Windows XP Pro workstations for OS X iMacs. I purchased a site license for Parallels, and created a custom VM with that "stripped to the bone" edition of XP Pro off TPB (reserialized with our XP site license using keyfinder). Basically the VM was a kiosk... all it would do/could do is run IE6, and the ONLY site it could load were our webapp sites. The VM was never updated, never patched, never installed any anti-spy/anti-malware/anti-virus... so the VM booted in 15 seconds on these Core 2 duo iMacs. Every evening a cron ran to DELETE the VM, and unzip a fresh VM (that brought everything back to my zeroed original custom VM). All the user saw was clicking a dock icon that would launch the VM, which was set to auto launch IE6 in kiosk mode and bring up their webapp. It works like titties, absolutely beautifully for over 2 years now. When Microsoft's grip gets tighter, I don't understand why more IT hasn't just said "fuck you Microsoft! and fuck this!" and sandboxed the precise function they need... the solutions are legion once you realize a VM can do everything real HW can do.
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Support YOUR users, not GOOGLE's users (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the web developer pie chart [tinypic.com] will shift.
I'm all for dropping IE6. It is now nothing more than a bane to web developers and the advancement of web pages in general. But to stop accommodating IE6 in your websites simply becomes someone else says to do so is naive. You should support whatever your site's visitors need.
For my wife's site, I can drop support for 800x600 since they comprise of less than 2% of my visitors, and falling (hurray!). Yes, I know fluid design can accommodate all, but sometimes needs necessitate static widths.
However, IE6 still accounts for ~20% of my visitors, so no matter what Google/Yahoo/Microsoft/etc. says, until that number drops well below 10%, I will still support it.
All is fair (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is becoming a company that we should all be worried about, but they are playing a predictable games. MS grew because it offered the cheapest product on the block that more or less worked. Google is doing the same thing. The problem is that MS is now that inefficient behemoth with a business model that assumes a cut of every PC sales and aftermarket revenue. This is an environment where all Google needs to survive is a fraction of penny from every hit.
Google now offers cheaper products than Microsoft, read free to the user, and few people seem to worry about the opportunity costs in terms of privacy and all that. This is in the same way that no one worry about the issue with MS in terms of being assumed a pirate rather than a paying customer.
Beyond all this, why would any sane person with a competing product want to have anything to do with MS. MS could come up with an update to IE tomorrow that would break google apps. We all know that MS has the motive, and the will to break other peoples software is well documented. This justifies asking people to move away from IE because the day that MS does break Google is the day that google will lose a lot of good will. People will blame Google and not MS.
Not supporting IE is a gutsy move. It shows that Google is willing to play hardball. It shows that google is no longer the feel good get along with everyone company, but a company that is willing to dominate and create monopolies. Good for those that want a competitor to MS. Bad for those of us that want a quality product delivered by a company that treats the end user as a customer, not just a proxy to earn third party money.
This isn't about all IE browsers (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, this isn't about IE in general. IE 6 is a large and costly inconvenience for both web application and web site developers. IE 6 doesn't work in exactly the same way as IE7 & IE8. A person doing web development not only has to make sure that an application or site works in the Mozilla based browsers and IE, but that it works in multiple versions of IE. IE 6 is typically the browser that breaks when new code is developed when that code works in all of the other browsers. Even other versions of IE. Organizations and people are hanging onto IE 6. It is past time for those with muscle to begin nudging people away from IE 6
Only IE6? (Score:5, Funny)
Everything using that hellhole of I rendering engine called Trident should be shot, quartered, fed to dogs, burned, buried, dug up, defiled, burned again, and spread to all four quadrants of the galaxy wherever there are evil aliens to extinguish. In that order.
I wish, users would experience the horrors that Trident puts us trough themselves. But for this, every major site would have to code to the standard and ignore all quirks and bugs in it. I bet, if the top 10 sites on the net would put a message on their front page, to make it clear, that the bugs that the users see, come from their Browser being a load of crap, IE would be gone in hours.
But they seem to like more, to rant all day long, that their users don't switch. Idiots.
I, for one, have sworn, never to write Trident workarounds again. Ever! Even if I am shot, quartered, fed to dogs, burned, buried, dug up, defiled, burned again, and spread to all four quadrants of the galaxy while still being alive in some way.
Re:Chrome's OK but can't use it for anything serio (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously, market share has nothing to do with it. Any business that is serious is going to just use Linux and develop all its software for Linux, right?
Dream on. Windows has what, 90% market share? Followed by OS X with maybe 7%. Linux is last with perhaps 3%. And if you just count end-user machines and not servers it is probably more like 92%, 7% and 1% for Linux.
Sure, maybe it will change in the future. But for now the reality is that Linux commands such an incredibly small number of end-user machines that it isn't worth paying attention to for packaged software development.
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Re:Another step that makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
whatever IE's engine is called
Trident [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Another step that makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
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