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YouTube Phasing Out Support For IE6 481

Oracle Goddess sends word that YouTube is presenting IE6 users with a banner exhorting them to upgrade to a modern browser, and TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube will be phasing out support for IE6 soon. This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net at the imminent demise of this most despised and non-standards-compliant browser. The market share for IE6 is now well down in the single digits.
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YouTube Phasing Out Support For IE6

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  • About time (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:53PM (#28695213)

    Good. That's like phasing out of support for cancer.

    • by CorporateSuit ( 1319461 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:13PM (#28695499)
      Perhaps next, they can follow Slashdot's example and phase out support for web browsers.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by MacTO ( 1161105 )

        > Perhaps next, they can follow Slashdot's example and phase out support for web browsers.

        This may actually be an advantage:

        show_articles.sh YouTube-Phasing-Out-Support-For-IE6 | sed s/IE6/Windows/g | more

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I have to agree.

        I prefer to use a web browser, not an add-on, extension fluffed "application display system." HTML. No CSS, no mime-types, no scripting.

        I can't say when, but /. changed something to make using this site painful 6-12 months ago.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cimexus ( 1355033 )

        Yeah what the hell is wrong with Slashdot these days. I'm using Firefox (not even an 'evil' browser like IE) and Slashdot renders all weird ... all this extra green space under the Slashdot logo at the top etc...

  • Market share (Score:5, Informative)

    by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:54PM (#28695235)

    The market share for IE6 is now well down in the single digits.

    According to whom? Even on w3schools.com [w3schools.com], which is visited almost exclusively by web developers, more than 14% of people are still using IE6.

    • Re:Market share (Score:4, Informative)

      by cml4524 ( 1520403 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:56PM (#28695271)

      Web developers are probably more likely to have IE6 around than your typical user since they need it for their job. I use Firefox exclusively at home, but when I'm having problems getting something to work on the job and need to look up a reference, I occasionally use IE either by mistake or just because I happen to be in it already.

      • Re:Market share (Score:5, Insightful)

        by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:00PM (#28695337)

        That doesn't justify that many people browsing the reference site using your test browser. People aren't mistakenly using IE6 to look up the HTML reference, they're using IE6 because that's what they always use. Look at the usage numbers, Firefox is almost at 50%, Chrome is already at 6%. That is indicative of web developers, not using a browser that is 9 years old. Web developers might be more likely to have IE6 installed, but they're not going to browse with it. Web developers are more likely to have a favorite browser to do all of their normal tasks in, and they'll use that one.

        Also, I'm a web developer and don't have IE6 installed, on any of my machines. I have access to it, but not on any computer I use on a regular basis. The debugging tools in IE8 are much better for web developers than having IE6 available to test on.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      A lot of those could be merely the hits to their validation services, used by web developers, just to test validity with different browsers, IE6 being one of them.
    • Re:Market share (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wjousts ( 1529427 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:09PM (#28695451)
      I agree. That number must be completely made up. Lot's of corporations still have IE 6 as their "corporate IT approved" browser. I know we do because all our corporate web apps are such shit that they don't work in anything else.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by JCSoRocks ( 1142053 )

        Lot's of corporations still have IE 6 as their "corporate IT approved" browser.

        This. This. This. Our web apps are written exclusively for big companies and we're still stuck supporting IE6 because our customers absolutely require it. It's painful. *sigh* What I wouldn't do to go Office Space on something that represents IE6.

    • Re:Market share (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Skylinux ( 942824 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:14PM (#28695513) Homepage

      Might be SPAM bots, they fake user-agents all the time and try to either hide as a major search engine or as a user.

      I am currently working on a question/answer based CAPTCHA system + bot trap and monitor the user agents triggering my bot trap.
      So far,
      59 falsely claimed to be Googlebot
      The rest claim to be some version of IE

      Don't rely on anything for user-agents, I am identifying myself as Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) right now to get around websites offering unlocked content to Google but require registrations from normal users.

      • Which websites are those? Experts-exchange puts the content waaaaaay down the page, but it's there if you scroll down far enough. (Apparently Google got pissy over the fact that they were giving Google content that they didn't let normal visitors see... or that's how I heard it, anyway.)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Skylinux ( 942824 )

          I just used it today to get a research paper which required me to come from the universities network OR be Google. I think they use Google Custom Search on an Intranet site so need Google to index things. The major flaw here is that they accept by user-agent and don't check if the originating IP is owned by Google.
          Now that I think about it, maybe they even use Referer: to validate internal network IPs .... I need to look into that :)

          But mostly adult sites with images on Google image search and some smaller

  • I don't know about anyone else, but I really felt that IE6 was a much better (although flawed) browser than IE7. Sure, IE7/8 has new features, but its UI is terrible and seems to be slower responding. IE6 was a decent browser, aside from the fact it was a pain to code for and insecure.
    • Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:58PM (#28695293) Homepage Journal
      IE6 was a decent browser, aside from the fact it was a pain to code for and insecure.

      This hamburger is decent, aside from the fact that it's growing mold and smells like urine.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So, you're saying it was a decent browser in all ways except what truly makes a decent browser decent?
    • Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hyppy ( 74366 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:02PM (#28695351)
      I can think of a few things that make IE6 (not exclusively, but still) a horrible browser:

      ActiveX
      Non-standard HTML rendering
      Lack of tabs
      ActiveX
      Lack of support for many standard files (PNG, anyone?)
      Crashing when fed simple code
      Oh, and ActiveX.
    • IE6 was a decent browser, aside from the fact it was a pain to code for and insecure.

      Huh? So aside from arguably two of the most important pieces of a browser, it was a decent browser? Are you just talking about the sparse UI? A UI doesn't make otherwise shitty software somehow good (and, if you want to talk about IE's user interface, make sure to mention the giant checkbox list under Internet Options). IE7 was an incremental improvement over IE6, and IE8 was a major improvement over both versions.

    • Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:08PM (#28695437)

      IE6 was a decent browser, aside from the fact it was a pain to code for and insecure.

      Car analogy:

      IE8 is your your new car. It runs smooth, and there are no real complaints about the reliability. The seats are little on the hard side, and you'd like more leg room.

      IE6 is your old car. It broke down every other week, belched poisonous black smoke into the cars around it, and the doors didn't close properly. But the seats were soft and you had more leg room.

      Your old car was 'decent' the same way IE6 was decent.

      And lets face it, IE8's UI isn't terrible. You might not be used to it, or like it as much, but its objectively not all that bad. They've moved things around, and hid a lot of stuff almost nobody used. But the tab support and integrated search alone make the UI superior. I don't find it slow (but I have lots of RAM). I still prefer Firefox, but I no longer loathe using (or developing for) Internet Explorer.

  • by chill ( 34294 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:55PM (#28695255) Journal

    What is needed is a good exorcism. IE6 needs to be cast out from the net and its bloated carcass nailed to a tree as a lesson to others.

  • by BlueBoxSW.com ( 745855 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:56PM (#28695267) Homepage

    My experiences with large corp and gov't clients tells me otherwise.

    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      I agree, where i work we have 30000+ workstations. IE7 was proven to buggy so its not being deployed.

    • by Eudial ( 590661 )

      My experiences with large corp and gov't clients tells me otherwise.

      Large corporations and governments* should hopefully not be major youtube users, so this really shouldn't be a problem here anyways.

      * ... or is the gazillions of narcissistic emo-videos on youtube some sort of CIA demotivation campaign?

  • I, uh, want to upgrade to IE8. Why? Uhhh, I hear it's safer to use. What do you mean the time sheet tool and headcount apps won't work in IE8?! I don't give a damn, how hard can it be to make them work? I need it NOOOOOOOOOW!
  • cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ocularDeathRay ( 760450 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @02:59PM (#28695311) Journal
    now if they would just make it so I can watch a few youtube videos in a row, without b0rking my firefox running in linux I will be happy.. seriously, can we get this done? Its gotten better over the last couple years, but I still have to kill -9 firefox after watching 10 or so videos. My favorite is when the audio freaks out and plays a 1 second loop at max volume until I kill it. Or I have seen no video, but audio is fine. I am not saying this is youtubes fault, but then again, maybe it is their fault for not using open technology for their videos, which would be available to everyone.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Try using a different Flash plugin. I've had some flash plugins eating 100% CPU all the time, and after upgrading or downgrading they are usable.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rho ( 6063 )

        Try using a different Flash plugin. I've had some flash plugins eating 100% CPU all the time, and after upgrading or downgrading they are usable.

        The future is nao!

        Sometimes I truly wonder what the fuck we think we're doing with computers.

  • by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:03PM (#28695371)

    I know quite a few LARGE corporate environments that won't be upgrading any time soon since IE7/8 "breaks" their intranet web apps and they aren't about to budget for updating apps that work on the existing browser.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      cant firefox be installed on a system with IE6 and IEtab used for the intranet apps, while firefox used for internet??

    • by afidel ( 530433 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:15PM (#28695533)
      We're a midsized business and until we upgrade our ERP system next year we can't migrate off IE6 so I can only imagine how bad it is for shops with tons of custom code. The version of our ECM system that we are currently testing supports IE7 and Firefox with only partial functionality, no IE8. That means we can upgrade to IE7 once we upgrade our ERP system but we will be on IE7 until mid 2012 at least since our systems are on a 3 year rotation.
  • by shawnmchorse ( 442605 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:07PM (#28695417) Homepage

    IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000.

    • Last time I checked, the year is 2009. The only reason to run Win2k at this point is in a VM. Now would be a good time to upgrade.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dltaylor ( 7510 )

        No #!%$ DRM, no activation, and at least through SP2 (SP4 was changed, but I never looked at SP3) no license agreement that explicitly allows Microsoft access to your hard drive.

        Every Microsoft OS since Windows 2000 has been a downgrade.

        FF works fine, thank you, and, since Microsoft no longer supports it, I don't have to deal with their illegal "you have to run Windows to get patches".

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Grishnakh ( 216268 )

        It doesn't matter that it's 2009. Lots of companies are still running W2K because they're cheap and lazy. There's one or two guys in my workgroup here who are running W2K, and they can't upgrade 1) because IT won't pay for the XP licenses, and 2) because their computers are so old and slow (and have no free HD space) they wouldn't run XP anyway.

        Yes, a new computer capable of running XP quite well probably only costs about $500-600 from Dell (not including monitor), but apparently that's too much for our I

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Lendrick ( 314723 )

      Firefox does.

    • Then go to portableapps.com and run Firefox off your desktop.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Firefox does though, so I fail to see the problem.

  • by mehrotra.akash ( 1539473 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:07PM (#28695425)

    if IE6 is not supported by youtube, and many other popular, non work related sites follow suit, wouldnt enterprises prefer to keep IE6 as it would automatically prevent employees from accessing video/social networking sites from work, and additional money would not have to be spent on proxies and other content restriction system??

    since their own apps are in house they can keep IE6 forever w/o any problems

    • by SydShamino ( 547793 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:30PM (#28695753)

      Yeah, the IT team can just rename the IE6 icon as "ERP Interface" or something, and install Firefox, naming its icon "Web Browser".

      Voila, internal apps keep working but employees are no longer at risk due to IE6 use on the wild wild internet.

      Even better if as a company they block IE6 access to external sites, so people who try to use their ERP software to browse the web would be cut off and told to launch Firefox.

  • by east coast ( 590680 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:07PM (#28695427)
    This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net

    Yeah, there's a virtual kegger going on over at Twitter about this. Is that going to be our new gauge of how things are going on in the computing world? Has netcraft confirmed it?
  • Slight problem... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Schnapple ( 262314 ) <tomkidd@gmail.LAPLACEcom minus math_god> on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:08PM (#28695433) Homepage
    On the one hand if Joe Average User can't get to YouTube.com anymore then yes they'll either upgrade to IE7/8, or maybe use that crazy Firefox browser.

    However, we still run across many many clients who still mandate IE6 in their workplace. No upgrading to IE7/8, no other browsers than IE6, etc.

    So they'll upgrade finally now too, right?

    Nope - those are also the same companies that probably block access to YouTube for bandwidth/time wasting reasons.
  • Why not just support the official html standard and be done with it?

    • Assuming you're not just trolling...

      As a developer, you support the browsers, not the standard, because the standards are vague and contradictory in places, which leads to different browsers implementing the standard in different ways.

      Oh, and because no browser fully supports any version of the HTML, XHTML, or CSS standards.

  • Flash (Score:3, Insightful)

    by R.Mo_Robert ( 737913 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:13PM (#28695511)

    Now, if YouTube would only phase out support for Flash...

    I know, I know, wishful thinking. But I do secretly think that YouTube could single-handedly decide which video format(s) become supported (or, if not in the specification, at least popular) for HTML 5. Chrome supports both Theora and H.264, but their HTML 5 test page [youtube.com] uses H.264. Not my personal first choice, but certainly a lot better than Flash.

    In any case, I can't wait for this imaginary day when YouTube goes Flash-less. :)

    • by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

      YouTube has always been Flash-less on iPhone/iPod touch.

  • by yurtinus ( 1590157 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:15PM (#28695531)
    Twitter search? Really? I mean.... Really?!?
  • Don't start celebrating prematurely. There's a good article [quirksmode.org] on Quirksmode about why IE6 will continue to live on corporate intranets.

  • by CFD339 ( 795926 ) <andrewp&thenorth,com> on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:19PM (#28695585) Homepage Journal

    First, actions like this from massively broad based sites are critical to finally wiping the scourge of IE6 development off the planet. So initial Kudos to YouTube for taking the step.

    Of course, YouTube == Google; so no shock that they're willing to disparage IE6, right?

    But here's the difference between Google and Microsoft --

    The banner shown here, on YouTube (owned by Google) doesn't JUST list Chrome as the upgrade path. It clearly gives equal exposure to Chrome, Firefox, and IE8 -- the biggest competing product to its own browser.

    That's the right way to do be competitive in a social networking context. I think we know that if this was say, Bing! or Hotmail, it would show a link to IE8 but that's it. Well, ok, we don't KNOW that, but most of us assume it. I certainly do.

  • This graph shows market share trends for relevant browser versions [statowl.com]. Of course, I REALLY wish it was "in the single digits".
  • by nilbog ( 732352 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:25PM (#28695685) Homepage Journal

    I saw this message today an decided to upgrade my browser. That's the internet, right? I called AOL and told them to upgrade my internet please. They happily obliged. It seems like the same internet to me and I still get the message on youtube.

  • by Zantetsuken ( 935350 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:35PM (#28695825) Homepage
    In other news, office cubicle productivity has coincidentally soared to heights not seen since before the launch of Youtube... Next up...
  • Doesn't bother me. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cro Magnon ( 467622 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:38PM (#28695869) Homepage Journal

    AFAIK, the only people who use IE6 (including me) do so because their job uses it. Very few jobs (including mine) allow Youtubing at work anyway, so why SHOULD they continue to support it?

  • Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pulse_Instance ( 698417 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @04:02PM (#28696269)

    This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net

    All that twitter search shows is that people who use twitter are commenting on it. It does not show jubilation breaking out all over the Net.

  • by j741 ( 788258 ) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @08:33PM (#28698911) Journal

    So I had a look at the banner mentioned, and I find it odd that it states "Please upgrade to one of these modern browsers" followed by only IE8, FF3.5, and Google Chrome. Why not mention (or even hint at) the fact that other "modern browsers" also exist. You know, browsers like Opera or Safari (the OS default for MAC users), or any others. Simply re-wording the banner to something like "Please upgrade to a modern browser such as the following" would be much more polite.

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