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.
I *WISH* it was down in the single digits (Score:5, Insightful)
My experiences with large corp and gov't clients tells me otherwise.
Re:Praise Jeebus! (Score:2, Insightful)
Support? What do you mean, support? (Score:1, Insightful)
You don't need to "support" IE6.
Youtube is a website, with an embedded flash object, that plays a movie. Youtube doesn't even need javascript at all (if you know the urls to the embedded flash).
Plus, many businesses are are running windows 2000 (for application reasons), because Win2000 is stable, well-known & well-documented, and still supported by Microsoft. Win2000 only has IE6 (and firefox).
Actually, that means business productivity will go up if youtube doesn't run on IE6. Go for it!
Re:I don't know... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't know... (Score:1, Insightful)
Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
Re:Market share (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Hello? IT Department? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Market share (Score:2, Insightful)
Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)
IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000.
Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Market share (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash (Score:3, Insightful)
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. :)
Re: cool (Score:3, Insightful)
The future is nao!
Sometimes I truly wonder what the fuck we think we're doing with computers.
Re:Praise Jeebus! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Support? What do you mean, support? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly what I was going to say. Provide a simple link to a video file and even lynx could view Youtube.
Re:I don't know... (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite true. But I will not be satisfied until IE7 support is phased out. The UI is fine, but the engine is still crap. IE8 at least brings Microsoft up to about Firefox 1.5, if not 2.0.
Re:Market share (Score:3, Insightful)
On ye olde business side, where IE6 is more likely to be lurking, IT controls the upgrade path with an iron fist and probably considers user inability to waste time and bandwidth on youtube to be a virtue.
Re:Market share (Score:5, Insightful)
And Windows 2000 users.
Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Fixed it for ya (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Last I checked, I couldn't upgrade (Score:3, Insightful)
Firefox does though, so I fail to see the problem.
Re:Market share (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:browser types for my sites: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't know... (Score:3, Insightful)
No offense, but that's exactly the type of bullshit Microsoft wants you to believe. They've implemented some of the CSS stuff, but they're a LONG way from meeting a standard even as simple as FF1.5.
Call me when IE's DOM support leaves the DOM1 standard and moves on to the DECADE OLD DOM2 support. Then we'll talk.
Re:If you get rid of IE6, you will rid also Win2K (Score:5, Insightful)
You refuse to use XP, Vista, Linux, Opera and Firefox, but IE6 is peachy-keen?
Lol.
Re:Market share (Score:4, Insightful)
Or they could roll-out FireFox (with NoScript) as the default browser using Group Policy with FireMotion's FireFox MSI [frontmotion.com] and create shortcuts on the desktop with a target of "iexplore http://your.wretched.old.internal.app.com/ [app.com]".
More security, same ol' craptastic IE6 "experience" for your internal apps.
Re:I don't know... (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite true. But I will not be satisfied until IE7 support is phased out. The UI is fine, but the engine is still crap. IE8 at least brings Microsoft up to about Firefox 1.5, if not 2.0.
Fortunately, it will be easy to gradually phase out IE7. Nobody is stuck relying on IE7 the way they're stuck relying on IE6. Anything that works in IE7 but not in other browsers should be very easy to make work in IE8's compatibility mode, if indeed any changes are required at all, although hopefully that won't be a common situation. When IE7 came out, I think most people with IE6-only web sites realized that rebuilding them to support standards-compliant browsers wouldn't really be any harder than rebuilding them to support just IE7, and with Firefox's significant market share, it made sense to do so.
Basically, anyone who's running IE7 can switch to another browser if they want to. That wasn't true of IE6 at all.
Re:Market share (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Market share (Score:3, Insightful)
If nothing else, it's going to make the VPs and PHBs running the company aware that their IE6-only software is relying on technology that is, at the very least, out of date. The people signing the checks (stereotypically) don't understand the technology involved and don't see a compelling reason to fund an upgrade to their software. This will help point out to those people that IE6 is obsolete technology and should be migrated away from. They can have IT create reports about it until they're blue in the face, but for some people it doesn't sink in until they're no longer able to log on and watch videos online in between meetings and telling other people to get to work.
Moreover, if IT wants to stop people from going to Youtube, the solution there is to block access to youtube.com, not enforce usage of an obsolete browser that Youtube doesn't support.
Even better, a more significant impact of Youtube dropping IE6 support is that other websites will feel more confident to also drop IE6 support. Youtube might not affect a lot of people, but if your boss can't log into his bank because his browser is obsolete, he's going to have IT on the phone pretty quick.
Re:Market share (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, was there a poorly-stated joke in there? Replying with "whoosh" is no excuse for not being able to craft a joke that's actually funny.
Legacy systems (Score:4, Insightful)
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:2, Insightful)
Of course you realize the majority of websites that require IE6 only require IE6 because of a check against the user-agent string. If you change IE8's user-agent to IE6, I'd be willing to be you could get most sites to work.
Maybe everyone should change their user-agent to this:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0))
IE8 masquerading as IE6 masquerading as Netscape (pronounced Mozilla)
I wish retarded web programmers would stop checking user-agent strings already and just the test the damn javascript function you need instead.
Re:Except IE is the only one that works with YouTu (Score:4, Insightful)
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.