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Comments: 481 +-   YouTube Phasing Out Support For IE6 on Tuesday July 14, @02:51PM

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 14, @02:51PM
from the ding-dong dept.
msie
internet
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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  • About time (Score:5, Funny)

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

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

    • by CorporateSuit (1319461) on Tuesday July 14, @03:13PM (#28695499)
      Perhaps next, they can follow Slashdot's example and phase out support for web browsers.
        • Re:About time (Score:4, Informative)

          by yoyhed (651244) on Wednesday July 15, @03:36AM (#28701073)
          I hate whatever new it is that they did, but as soon as it appeared a year or two ago, I enabled "Classic Index" in options - I can't stand how /. looks when I'm not logged in.
      • Funny is they don't figure what actually made youtube succsessful.

        Youtube would work in any browser which manages to run Flash in it. That is the trick. Nothing else needed. If Flash runs, Youtube is there even including mobile browsers (e.g. Nokia).

        Can't IE really display comments and Google ads? That is all needed for youtube. Flash works in its own way, glory days of "live script" is over really. Sad but true.

        IE 6 is still used on large corporations and there is no chance you will be able to "upgrade to chrome" unless you want a visit from BOFH with your manager asking what the hell you are trying to achieve. Yes, a managed client these days won't just stop you, it will also alert admin via security solution, "attempt to install unauthorised software" in recession would be a nice excuse for them.

        Oh BTW, unless some miracle happens and a open source/standard commitee invents something which will be a 1.1 MB download, without any dictation of software, completely supported in number 1 pro design suite and various pro video authoring/serving solutions, Flash is there to stay.

        HTML5 video would have a huge chance if they were wise to adopt H264 as standard and Dirac as optional codec. Also publicly bitching/whining/attacking both Apple and Adobe which are called "mecca of multimedia" won't really help.

  • Market share (Score:5, Informative)

    by amicusNYCL (1538833) on Tuesday July 14, @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, @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, @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:Market share (Score:5, Insightful)

              by whoever57 (658626) on Tuesday July 14, @03:36PM (#28695843) Journal

              IE7 and IE8 have both been declared critical updates by MS, so only home users who really hate IE7/8 and know enough to manually deselect that update, or users whose automatic updates are disabled or broken would still have IE6. This number probably isn't zero; but it isn't huge.

              And Windows 2000 users.

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

              by DNS-and-BIND (461968) on Tuesday July 14, @04:15PM (#28696469) Homepage
              And pirated copies of Windows XP, which is what Asia uses exclusively. I remember showing one fellow Firefox, he was flabbergasted that something could replace IE. It had never entered his brain that anyone could use anything other than IE6 that came with the system.
            • Re:Market share (Score:5, Informative)

              by Bourbonium (454366) on Tuesday July 14, @04:22PM (#28696543)

              This is the case in my office, where IE6 is the approved standard, and no one is allowed to use FireFox or Opera or Chrome unless they can submit a written justification to the IT standards committee and obtain their approval. That is rare.

              This is mainly because we use several different web-based applications developed in-house for submitting travel claims and interfacing with our purchasing department's back-end databases, all built years ago on non-standards-compliant IE6 code. The team of contractors who developed these apps are long gone, and updating them would require finding a new contractor and paying them to re-build all the apps from scratch, a difficult sell to management in today's economy. It ain't broke, they say, so why fix it?

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

      by wjousts (1529427) on Tuesday July 14, @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.
        • Legacy systems (Score:4, Insightful)

          by sjbe (173966) on Tuesday July 14, @07:49PM (#28698581)

          And who cares about corporations who refuse to move on from a tool that even the creator has killed off?

          You do. Forget Windows and IE - do you have ANY idea how many POS (Point Of Sale) systems there are out there that still rely on DOS? The answer will scare you. "Upgrading" software is an expense and a potential business risk. Sometimes the rewards are not worth the expense. I have clients that have computer systems that are 10, 15 and even 25 years old and not about the be replaced anytime soon. You can make a very profitable living maintaining and integrating legacy systems and there are lots out there.

          Survival of the fittest always wins, always.

          And what, pray tell, is your definition of fittest? Unfortunately I can think of many definitions of fittest that don't equal best, modern, up-to-date, robust or (sadly) secure.

          Why the hell don't some companies allow the use of another browser?

          Cost mostly. Typically they have some old code that will cost money to update and they can't make a business case to do it yet. Usually they'll upgrade in due time but it might take years or even decades.

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

      by Skylinux (942824) on Tuesday July 14, @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.

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

        by amicusNYCL (1538833) on Tuesday July 14, @03:10PM (#28695463)

        Testing what? Testing the w3schools site? Wouldn't you want to have your main browser open for references and things even though you might have another test browser open? Hell, I usually develop with 3 browsers open (Firefox, to use Firebug for debugging my Javascript stuff, Chrome to show the Javascript-heavy API docs, and Opera for everything else).

        IE6 has lingered around like a bad fart, hopefully this signals the true beginning of the end.

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

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

  • cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ocularDeathRay (760450) on Tuesday July 14, @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.
  • by ArhcAngel (247594) on Tuesday July 14, @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.

    • 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, @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, @03:07PM (#28695417) Homepage

    IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000.

  • by mehrotra.akash (1539473) on Tuesday July 14, @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, @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, @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?
  • 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.
  • Flash (Score:3, Insightful)

    by R.Mo_Robert (737913) on Tuesday July 14, @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 yurtinus (1590157) on Tuesday July 14, @03:15PM (#28695531)
    Twitter search? Really? I mean.... Really?!?
  • 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.

  • In other news, office cubicle productivity has coincidentally soared to heights not seen since before the launch of Youtube... Next up...
  • Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pulse_Instance (698417) on Tuesday July 14, @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.

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

      by TheRealMindChild (743925) on Tuesday July 14, @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, @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.
    • Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vux984 (928602) on Tuesday July 14, @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.

You are taking yourself far too seriously.