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Internet Explorer Microsoft

IE6 Almost Dead In the US 335

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the premature-graying-in-programmers-reduced dept.
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 More

IE6 Almost Dead In the US

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  • No reason to celebrate now. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dmesg0 ( 1342071 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:36AM (#38584544)
    I'll celebrate when usage of all versions of IE drops below 1 percent.

    • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Shikaku ( 1129753 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:37AM (#38584548)

      I'll celebrate when netcraft confirms it.

    • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Informative)

      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.

      • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:4, Informative)

        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.

      • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Funny)

        by dmesg0 ( 1342071 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:41AM (#38584594)

        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.

        OK, you convinced me, I'll try it immediately. Does it come as .deb or .rpm? Or maybe I should compile it from source?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bigos ( 857389 )
          It's not so simple. Before compiling and packaging, you have to disassemble if first.

        • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Funny)

          by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:53AM (#38584726) Homepage

          No, but it does come with its own OS...

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by roman_mir ( 125474 )

            But I assume this OS can be downloaded from a free software site as source code?

            • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:4, Funny)

              by Metabolife ( 961249 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:53AM (#38585432)

              Yup, just head over to Piratebay. You can download both Windows and the movie Source Code for free.

        • Don't be silly. IE isn't something you install. It's actually one with the operating system.

          Question is, if standards compliance and cutting edge features are so important to OP, why didn't he switch to something better long ago instead of waiting for IE to finally catch up? Maybe he doesn't know how to install software and he only uses what comes with the OS. I'll bet he's a huge Paint and Notepad fan too!

          • Question is, if standards compliance and cutting edge features are so important to OP, why didn't he switch to something better long ago instead of waiting for IE to finally catch up?

            Possibly because potential customers won't form a good opinion of an organization whose web site states: "Your ten-year-old web browser must be upgraded to current web standards. Please install Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or the Google Chrome Frame plug-in for Internet Explorer to continue." For one thing, "please install a plug-in to continue" is a tactic that fake antivirus software has used to social-engineer itself onto users' computers. For another, if it's a B2B site (a business selling to

            • Indeed, I haven't seen that. However, I have seen plenty of websites saying something to the effect of "Your brand new web browser doesn't work with our website. Please use IE to continue."

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by 0123456 ( 636235 )

            Don't be silly. IE isn't something you install. It's actually one with the operating system.

            I installed Windows 3.1 last year and it didn't come with a web browser; finding a copy of IE that would install on it was not easy.

            Some web sites even worked with it...

      • It's standards compliant as long as you get it into standards mode.

      • Well there is the part where it is horrible in it's standards compliance with html 5, which I believe is going to be a huge roadblock to html 5 actually starting widespread usage due to Microsoft's continual high market share. Other then microsoft's bogus tests where they specifically rig it to be 99.9%, every test I have seen has shown IE9 to meet 40-60% of html 5, while chrome and FF 80-100%.

        • Other then microsoft's bogus tests where they specifically rig it to be 99.9%, every test I have seen has shown IE9 to meet 40-60% of html 5, while chrome and FF 80-100%.

          I'm going to have to call [citation needed] on this one. All the reviews I've seen from non-MS sources (e.g. Tom's Hardware browser sweepstakes) indicate that IE9 has good compatibility with modern HTML5 features.

      • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheNinjaroach ( 878876 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:50AM (#38584700)

        IE9 is a completely good browser.

        I wouldn't know. IE9 breaks websites that work in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox and Webkit-based browsers.

        I have the same feelings towards IE9 that I have towards 7 and 8 -- Microsoft's "better" browser is still not good enough.

        • IE9 breaks websites that work in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox and Webkit-based browsers.

          Just a hunch: the websites in question are improperly sniffing IE without excluding IE9 from their IE-specific code. Yes, there are incompatibilities between IE9 and other browsers (just as there are between any given browser and its competitors), but I don't think it's so horribly broken that IE 6-8 do better, without IE 6-8 getting serious hand-holding.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by netsavior ( 627338 )
        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

        • Home. There is no home button

          Alt+Home works fine in every copy of Chrome that I've tried. You mentioned that you have a netbook; it might even be easier to hit Alt+Home than to move the cursor up to the Home button with a trackpad.

        • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jez9999 ( 618189 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:07AM (#38584904) Homepage Journal

          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.

          Message from a guy who usually uses a decent sized monitor with a desktop:

          PLEASE use a browser designed for netbooks instead of telling browser makers to design browsers for your pathetically small screen! Some of us actually appreciate a decently-sized interface.

        • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by webheaded ( 997188 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:07AM (#38584906) Homepage

          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.

          Are you actually being serious right now? 18 pixels? I honestly thought this post was starting off as a funny joke and then you kept going. Seriously just...people like you are infuriating. You find the most ridiculous shit to complain about. I'm serious. This stupid war over the height of the header has gotten ridiculous now.

          Maybe the browser makers should just make a "netbook mode" and stop forcing those of us with large monitors use this tiny ass interface that makes it a pain in the ass to do things. It is the same reason people are pissed off at GNOME. One size does not fit all. A user with a 24" screen running at 1080 does not have the same needs as the guy with a 10" netbook running at 1024x600 or the guy with the Android tablet.

        • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Informative)

          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.

      • Wrong, IE9 sucks (Score:5, Interesting)

        by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:00AM (#38584802) Homepage

        I posted a comment almost identical to yours this year praising IE9, but today IE9 is not a good browser.
        It's an old and crusty browser, because you know web stuff moves THAT fast.

        As usual IE is tightly bound to windows, and yet again particular versions of windows. IE9 supports some HTML5 stuff sure. It also supports canvas, but canvas is useless without requestAnimationFrame. Session history management, asyncronous external Javascript, native Regex form validation

        http://caniuse.com/ [caniuse.com] for the complete list of how embarrassingly old IE9 is.
        So sorry, but your comment is around 9 months out of date.

      • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Funny)

        by equex ( 747231 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:03AM (#38584858) Homepage
        There's nothing to hate about IE9.
        You must be new here.
      • there may be nothing to hate, and IE9 may very well be a good, solid browser. however, microsoft has sullied the waters so badly over the past ~15 years that it's gonna take a whole lot more than one good browser before i get back on that horse. maybe when IE12 drops and 9-12 have all been really good, standards compliant, secure, pretty, etc., then i might consider using a microsoft browser again. meanwhile, FF has a decent track record (not great, but it's been alright and overall i like it), chrome ha

      • Nope (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:13AM (#38584960) Homepage

        Since you got modded up so high, I think you also need to be taken down a notch.

        1. There is no way you'd say IE9 was on par with Chrome if you were a developer or even just peaked under the hood. Javascript performance is pathetic.
        2. "Security features" never amount to actual security. Sounds good in the marketing blurb though.
        3. HTML5 is not a tickbox. It's a collection of features, and IE has the worst support today.
        4. I suggest we pre-emptively hate it, because we're going to get STUCK with it.
      • There is a case I stumbled upon in which IE9 behaves differently than FF/Chrome/Opera, which forces me to warn users that IE doesn't display properly the page. It appears IE9 doesn't interpret properly 'white-space: pre-wrap' (while other browsers do), it unfortunately does collapse newline characters, while it should not, as per w3.org [w3.org]. (of course, prior versions of IE have even more problems.)

      • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:14AM (#38584970)

        Why? IE9 is a completely good browser.

        At the time, Internet Explorer 6 was a good browser too. The problem is that Microsoft have shown that they are willing to abuse their market share in anti-competitive ways. When Internet Explorer 6 had a dominant position in the web browser market, they killed development on the project and held the web back for years. Microsoft can't be trusted with browsers.

        It's also standards compliant and supports HTML5.

        No, it doesn't support HTML 5. Nothing does. HTML 5 isn't finished. At best you can say it has partial, unfinished support for HTML 5. And if Microsoft decide it's in their best interests to hold the web back again, that's what we'll be stuck with until Internet Explorer loses market share.

      • 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.

        I recently had to blow away and reinstall Win7 on one of the test boxes, so I thought I'd see what happens if you go online with IE9 instead of my usual default of Firefox 3.6.x + NoScript. Went to a few web sites and got bombarded with animated ads and flashing doodads like it was Idiocracy. Switched to the first few pr0n sites that popped up in Google (since I was reformatting from scratch and it was in a DMZ reserved for experimentation I wanted to see how bad it could get) and it was like the generic

      • IE 9 is still the worst browser: http://betanews.com/2011/07/22/browser-blowout-which-is-fastest-most-standards-compliant-benchmarks/ [betanews.com]

        So, there's still no reason to use it unless you're a Microsoft fanboy. I've also found it more buggy (i.e., it likes to crash) than the others but that's not covered in the referenced link.

      • Re:No reason to celebrate now. (Score:5, Informative)

        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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bondsbw ( 888959 )

      This is good enough for me. IE 6 was an abomination and was a main representative of Microsoft back in the old days without enough competition to force compliance to the various HTML-related standards. Firefox started a good fight during this very long period, and eventually led to Microsoft creating IE 7, 8, and 9 with much better standards compliance.

      Good riddance.

    • ...and no, that's not an acronym for some Yet Another Language/framework/etc. I mean real fire...as in flame thrower.

    • IE6: I'm not dead!
      MORTICIAN: What?
      MS: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
      IE6: I'm not dead!
      MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
      MS: Yes, he is.
      IE6: I'm not!
      MORTICIAN: He isn't.
      MS: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
      IE6: I'm getting better!
      MS: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
      MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
      IE6: I don't want to go in the cart!
      MS: Oh, don't be such a baby.
      MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
      IE6: I feel fine!
      MS: Oh, do us

    • Pretty funny to watch a company spend a billion dollars to get people to use something ... then another billion to get them to stop using it.

  • A cheer goes up (Score:5, Funny)

    by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:37AM (#38584550) Homepage Journal

    Every web designer celebrates for 10 minutes. Then back to work on the CSS for that pesky div.

  • Can Another IE 6 Happen? (Score:3)

    by assertation ( 1255714 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @10:51AM (#38584704)

    In my opinion the debacle of "IE 6" happened because

    - Microsoft was all about "embrace & extend" to shut out
        competitors

    - Many web designers and even programmers didn't know there was an "internet" beyond IE, Exchange & hotmail

    Is it still possible for another "IE 6" to happen?

    That is a browser that doesn't follow W3 standards, a browser that becomes incompatible with later versions of itself and such a browser that is kept in use by big orgs because zillions of lines of code were written to work with THAT BROWSER only?

    I haven't kept up with IE development, but it seems like Microsoft from IE 7 on has made an effort to get closer to the web development standards everyone else uses.

    Even supervisors resistant to change like at my old org are now aware of the existence and popularity of other browsers beyond just IE.

    I guess the question is are there still web designers and web programmers who code to IE only and organizations that support that........and if so, does it matter, does IE get close enough to standards so it doesn't matter?

    • Is it still possible for another "IE 6" to happen?

      That is a browser that doesn't follow W3 standards, a browser that becomes incompatible with later versions of itself and such a browser that is kept in use by big orgs because zillions of lines of code were written to work with THAT BROWSER only?

      Yup, been happening for a while - there are loads of web apps being written for Mobile Safari which won't work on anything else, as they are tightly bound to the iOS web app framework.

      You can port most of these apps fairly trivially to Androids WebKit, but even then you lose a fair amount of functionality in the process.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tridus ( 79566 )

      Of course another one can happen. IE 6 is just another Netscape 4 in terms of how it handled standards badly, had a lot of its own quirky stuff that people developed for, and then became a shambling zombie refusing to die for years after we wanted it gone.

  • ...they should have had a way to automatically upgrade it the moment they detected any of their websites being visited by IE6, or alternatively, send viruses that way to break into it, and work w/ anti-viral vendors to get browser upgrades to be a part of any fix.

    • they should have had a way to automatically upgrade it the moment they detected any of their websites being visited by IE6

      That may be the most secure way of upgrading a product I've ever encountered.

  • What about internally? (Score:3)

    by jez9999 ( 618189 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:05AM (#38584886) Homepage Journal

    Do these stats pertain just to use of IE6 on the public internet? Is IE6 still being used a lot more on internal intranets?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by RedMage ( 136286 )

      Among my customer base? Yes, it's used internally. A lot of them are IT shops dealing with very old equipment, like 10 year old PC's. Some of them have internal intranet apps that only work on IE6. It will be awhile before those move.

      C

  • The 1% (Score:3)

    by MoronGames ( 632186 ) <cam@henlin.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:06AM (#38584894) Journal
    Yet another reason to rally against them!

  • The Walking Dead (Score:5, Funny)

    by assertation ( 1255714 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @11:07AM (#38584896)

    Something tells me that in February when I "tune in" ( okay, download ) to see what happens with "The Walking Dead" I'm going to see a scene with some people from Rick's group running frantically through a building. At one point they are going to dart into a closed room to escape. It will be a computer lab. There will be animated corpses rotting in the chairs. On screen, in front of them will be IE 6 running.

  • IE 6 reminds me of the old pre-Jurassic Park dinosaur movies. In most of them there is a scene where a big monster is shot, but still keeps moving. Some scientist explains that their nervous systems are still so primitive that they don't know they are dead yet and there is a delay between being shot and falling down.

  • I would like to take yet another obligatory moment to once again point out that people being "stuck" with IE 6 would not have been such a big deal if it had been a proper independent application rather than "integrated" in to the OS.

    People would have been better off designing apps that ran only under Netscape 4! You can run that alongside any newer version and on any newer version of Windows. No such luck with IE (at least not in an officially supported manner)

    And because Microsoft made IE 6 part of XP, now

  • I'll pop the cork when my customers get off IE6. Until then I need to sink development resources into maintaining and testing on IE6, no matter how painful it is.
    Unfortunately my customers' IT departments are slow moving and not motivated in moving quickly off XP and IE6. Most of them are understaffed and underfunded and dealing with PC's that are sometimes more than 10 years old. I suppose they have more pressing problems, given that...

    C
     

  • These days, most webmasters have stopped caring if their sites look good in IE6. It is IE8 that is currently the lowest common denominator of the Web. Microsoft's failure to port their modern browsers to Windows XP means that we are basically stuck not being able to use CSS3 and other advanced HTML features until after 2014.

  • tech world also notes (Score:3)

    by rubycodez ( 864176 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @12:04PM (#38585540)
    the tech world also with fond nostalgia noted the passing of Firefox 5,6,7 in the past few months and the imminent demise of FF 8

  • Bon Voyage Mon Ami (Score:4, Funny)

    by BeforeCoffee ( 519489 ) on Wednesday January 04, 2012 @02:05PM (#38586938)

    It's probably Stockholm Syndrome, but I'm ... I'm actually feeling sad about this! I spent a ton of time on my site [clubcompy.com] hacking in IE6 support. Just last month I got my compy characters to FINALLY layout correctly in all cases on IE6. Ok, I can't resist a little war story ... In the past, the right hand column of character DIV's had a vertical offset of like 5 pixels. Why? WHY DID IT LAYOUT LIKE THAT?! There's no reason, no known peekaboo bug or whatever that I could figure was the cause ... it was just IE6 getting its digs in. It's like it had planned bugs that only I would see.

    Memory un-management, DOM-splosions, layout goofs, CSS head scratchers - it was like trying to carry water with a bucket that has a bunch of rebel army bullet holes in it. One thing I could always count on, IE6's JavaScript implementation was juuust good enough. Me and Resig always had a way to squeak out of the jungle alive.

      IE6: I beat you. I beat you silly countless times. I won! But, I never thought you'd actually die from the beating. It seems you finally have given up the ghost. R.I.P., ancient warrior. As you rot in the 8th circle of hell, I want you to know that while I cursed you and your creators as foul on a daily basis, I secretly enjoyed our time together.

    Dave

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