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Internet Explorer Microsoft

IE6 Almost Dead In the US 335

SharkLaser writes "Microsoft, and the whole tech world, is celebrating the fact that use of Internet Explorer 6 has dropped below one percent in the US. 'Time to pop open the champagne because, based on the latest data from Net Applications, IE6 usage in the US has now officially dropped below 1 per cent!,' said Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer marketing. 'IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we've been as eager as anyone to see it go away.'"
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IE6 Almost Dead In the US

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  • by DCTech ( 2545590 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:38AM (#38584554)
    Why? IE9 is a completely good browser. It's on par with Chrome, but in fact it offers even more features and security than Firefox does currently, like sandboxing. It's also standards compliant and supports HTML5. There's nothing to hate about IE9.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:41AM (#38584586)

    It's also the only browser that supports GPOs. Firefox had somewhat of a start, but it's not officially supported and they keep changing the damn thing.

  • by netsavior ( 627338 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:53AM (#38584722)
    I don't want to like IE9, because MS is the company we love to hate... but I vastly prefer it to chrome.

    My first complaint: Chrome's gigantic header is 18 pixels taller than IE, on my netbook that extra 3% of the tiny screen that is unusable for content is kind of a big deal.
    There are chrome add ons to make the URL textbox into a combo box with recently visited pages, something that has been standard in browsers since like 1998, and pretty much the only way I am used to browsing. I guess it feels weird to have to use some third party extension (That doesn't work perfectly) to add my most used feature, when it is not an obscure or weird feature.
    Home. There is no home button... I know I can search from the address bar, but I vastly prefer to just hit the home button and search on google's homepage... I mean, I want to give your site more traffic, don't make that harder on your own browser. 5 years ago I never would have thought I would be saying this, but with firefox completely ruined to the point of being unusably slow and buggy, and with chrome being the monstrosity of user interface that it is... IE9 is the only browser that I like right now.
  • by DCTech ( 2545590 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:53AM (#38584730)
    Back in the day Internet Explorer saved us everyone from the non-standard shit Netscape was trying to pull out. I guess you're too young to remember those days. If it wasn't for IE the web would be much worse now.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:58AM (#38584768)

    it is not just a new version, this is practically completely different browser, its faster than FF and Chrome, it starts faster, it even uses less memory, it was first browser to support 64bit mode ( for people asking why is that important just look memory usage of browsers today, my browser with 200-300 opened tabs goes way above 4GB of ram ) it supports standards like HTML5 almost like FireFox, if not better, i must say Microsoft really learned how to make browsers it seems

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:59AM (#38584788)
  • Re:A cheer goes up (Score:5, Informative)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:10AM (#38584932) Homepage Journal

    its not inherently clear in the HTML how things are being laid out on the page

    It's not supposed to be clear from the HTML alone. It's supposed to be that you can swap the CSS and have the document laid out differently.

  • by avgjoe62 ( 558860 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:15AM (#38584982)

    I've seen your post before, but on the off chance that you're not just getting paid to copy and paste, let me tell you that there IS a home button in Chrome.

    Click on "Customize and Control Google Chrome" (the wrench in the upper right corner).

    Click on "Options" (about two-thirds down in the list of choices, fifth from the bottom).

    On the first page that opens, "Basics", in the third section down, "Toolbar", check the box for "Show Home Button".

    Close out the options page and the "Home" icon will now be in your toolbar.

  • by 1u3hr ( 530656 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:49AM (#38585380)

    Back in the day Internet Explorer saved us everyone from the non-standard shit Netscape was trying to pull out.

    In the days before that, Microsoft seriously proposed using Word doc files as the webpage standard. Do you think they wouldn't have done it if they were the only browser? Netscape got impatient with slow moving web standards and made up their own. Somewhat arrogant, but not nefarious.

  • Re:A cheer goes up (Score:4, Informative)

    by macaddict ( 91085 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:58AM (#38585486)

    CSS is about separating content from design. That's the point. Go to CSS Zen Garden ( http://csszengarden.com/ [csszengarden.com] ) to see what that means. Every example on that web site uses the exact same content. Only the CSS is changed.

    It is not a "developer" vs. "designer" situation. It just makes practical sense for development and maintenance of a site. If you use tables for layout, your site has become extremely difficult to update if you want to make major changes to the layout, especially with large, multi-page sites. With CSS, you change your stylesheet and it's done, site wide (see the CSS Zen Garden examples). The developer can concentrate on content and function, and leave the layout to the designers.

  • by man_of_mr_e ( 217855 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @12:00PM (#38585502)

    Dude, lay off the paranoia. IE6 is 10 years old. It predates every other browser in use today, other than Opera.

    To say that Microsoft deliberately made it incompatible with browsers that didn't exist when it was written is a bit crazy.

    IE6 was the most standards compliant browser there was when it existed, even more so than Opera. WAY more so than Netscape. And Mozilla was nowhere close to a finished product.

    No, it was not perfect, and no, it didn't fully support the existing standards, but then neither did anyone else. IE6 is just old, it was not a plot to destroy standards compatibility.

  • by Flammon ( 4726 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @12:01PM (#38585516) Journal

    Troll? Strawman? I don't know. Either way, completely wrong.

    IE9 is a completely good browser.

    Users said the same thing about IE6, so you're obviously not a web developer.

    It's on par with Chrome, but in fact it offers even more features and security than Firefox does currently, like sandboxing. It's also standards compliant and supports HTML5.

      IE9 is nowhere near Chrome or Firefox. You should be modded down for misinformation.

    In terms of features, here's a quick comparison.
    IE9 vs Firefox 9
    http://caniuse.com/#compare=y&b1=ie+9&b2=firefox+9 [caniuse.com]

    IE9 vs Chrome 16
    http://caniuse.com/#compare=y&b1=ie+9&b2=chrome+16 [caniuse.com]

    IE9's performance is also way behind - It barely wins on Sunspider and then loses badly on Kraken and V8 being up to 400% slower. Their 64bit build is even worse and the author didn't bother posting the results because they're so bad.

    http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/the-big-browser-benchmark-chrome-1615-vs-opera-11-vs-ie9-vs-firefox-98-vs-safari-5/17367 [zdnet.com]

    There's nothing to hate about IE9.

    Sure there are. Besides not being as fast and not supporting standards as well as the others, it also only runs on Windows Vista and Windows 7. You're out of luck if you're running Windows XP, Linux or OS X. IE9 also has a new but buggy rendering engine. Here's one that I ran into a few days ago. http://www.ncf.ca/ncf/support/ie9_issue/index.html [www.ncf.ca]. Here's another http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6392826/mobile-table-crashes-ie9 [stackoverflow.com]. There are more of these types of bugs in IE than all the other browsers combined. I still hate IE.

  • by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @12:48PM (#38586070) Journal

    IE6 was the most standards compliant browser there was when it existed, even more so than Opera

    [Citation Seriously Friggin' Needed]

  • by omfgnosis ( 963606 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @02:38PM (#38587310)

    IE9 is the only browser I regularly use that does not render a very few websites correctly...

    Safari (my primary browser) renders a very few websites incorrectly too. So does Firefox, Chrome, IE 9. Of course, I develop websites for a living and have to test in all of these (as well as IE 7/8 usually), so I'm more likely to encounter incompatibilities than an end user. But they all definitely have mutual discrepancies.

    usually because of some obscure setting deep down that is trying to protect me ...and it takes more searching that I often care to do to turn it off ...

    Maybe, I can't really say because I don't know what you've encountered. My experience has been that IE9 struggles the most with sites that have custom code for IE 6-8 and don't properly exclude IE9 from the custom code.

    Firefox, Opera, Chrome do not seem to have the same issues ... ?

    That's awesome for you. I don't know what to say, except that every discussion of every browser has people making similar claims.

If all else fails, lower your standards.

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