Microsoft to Track the Death of Internet Explorer 6
Ask any web designer what is the one thing that has done more damage to the Web than anything else, and you can be pretty sure that with one unified voice they would say Internet Explorer 6.
As the new browser wars continue to heat up, the one thing we can be thankful for, and will slow down the sale of the economy size bottles of aspirins to web developers, is that slowly but surely the use of IE6 is disappearing.
The fun part of this has been Microsoft’s response as IE6 slowly fades away. First they sent flowers when the Aten Design Group held a mock funeral for IE6 and now they are hosting a new site at ie6countdown.com to track the decline of this scourge of the Web.
From the announcement about the new site on the Explore IE blog:
Now that it’s 2011, IE6 is officially a ten-year old browser. According to Net Applications, IE6 still has 12% share worldwide. Our goal is to get this share under 1% worldwide. Why 1%? We realize that there might not a magic number for when web developers and IT pros can drop support for older browsers, but we believe that 1% will allow more sites and IT pros worldwide to make IE6 a low-priority browser – meaning you don’t have to invest as much time in updates or fixes. We recognize that IE6 usage varies depending on where you live, so ie6countdown.com includes the details of IE6 share by country. We will update the site’s stats on a monthly basis and celebrate as countries dip under the 1% mark!
All I can say is thank you and good riddance.
[Cross-posted at Winextra]
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
