12 ms·
IE6countdown.com – a wolf in sheep's clothing
- slowpoison 16y agoHas anybody tested that the banner renders find in IE6 ;-)?
- reustle 16y agoMicrosoft agrees with IE6countdown.com - http://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/43753653189885952 http://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/43753653189885952
- mtogo 16y agoThis banner is less ugly and has a choice of multiple browsers: http://www.ie6nomore.com/ http://www.ie6nomore.com/
- sbierwagen 16y agoUpvoted to get useful information above the bickering.
- rbanffy 16y agoThis is why I registered microsoftcountdown.com. It's not the browser the only thing we need to dump - we need to get rid of the whole company.
- recoiledsnake 16y agoAnd replace it with what? Companies that will charge 30% of all the money for content that goes through their devices?
- rbanffy 16y agoFalse dichotomy alert! Getting rid of Microsoft doesn't imply going to Apple. You must realize that there are other entities in this market, frequently offering better products, often for free. Getting rid of a company that despises fair competition, that promotes bogus standards in order to confuse the market instead of doing something it once did adequately: build products its users want, would be quite good for the market. But you get some points for writing an answer. It seems others just opted to downvote what they don't like to read.
- Enlightenment 16y agoYou are delusional to think that Microsoft should recommend another non-IE browser.
- Joeri 16y agoWhat market? It's damn hard finding PC's preinstalled with linux (that have normal sized screens), and it's not easy finding compatible devices for those PC's. Sure, nerds always have choice, but for joe sixpack it's microsoft or apple. There is no other choice.
- rbanffy 16y ago> It's damn hard finding PC's preinstalled with linux I always wonder why things like these happen... > and it's not easy finding compatible devices for those PC's. Funny. Just about everything I plug into my Linux notebooks works flawlessly. Even my non-jailbroken iPod has no problem syncing with it. The 90's called. They want their excuse back. > Sure, nerds always have choice, Sure we do. We, nerds, have choice and we can create choice where there is none. We nerds can jailbreak locked-up tablets, phones and videogames. But we also want to help Joe Sixpack get a better, safer computer, if, for no other reason, to stop the spam zombies. Actually, we do things like these because we are generous. We want everybody to have cool toys.
- cnkt 16y agoLet's say this over and over for years: "Microsoft doesn't want IE6 to die". When Microsoft creates a web site for killing IE6 let's start saying "it's not enough, microsoft has to die too" brilliant.
- ghurlman 16y agoSooo... Microsoft links people to Microsoft's browser. This counts as controversy? Shady behavior? Please.
- mrcharles 16y agoThe issue is less that they link to their own browser, and more that the likely outcome is that it will push the adoption of another nearly obsolete browser.
- jerf 16y agoHey, I don't know if you've noticed the pattern over the past 15 years, but there's always another "obsolete" browser. You can't "win", it's just about the progress. There is no point in the past 15 years where you've been able to just code to the latest beta of your favorite browser and nothing else.
- redthrowaway 16y agoNot much progress going from one non-html5-compliant browser to another. It still means everyone's stuck having to support flash and other proprietary plugins. IE9 at least allows us to move forward with modern standards.
- yuhong 16y agoIt is not just new stuff like HTML5. XHTML 1.0 is already 11 years old and is not supported in IE8, forcing it to be served using the HTML MIME type and parsed as HTML. Often XHTML served this way becomes invalid even if it was originally valid. I wrote an article on Reddit about this.
- generalk 16y agoThat's true, but on the other hand, as TFA points out, IE8 is the latest that a WinXP user can ever get from Microsoft, which is two-years old and practically outdated now. Linking IE6 users to IE8 is progress, sure, but useless given that they could be running Chrome or Firefox, which are actually modern browsers.
- walkon 16y agoTo some extent, it is a good thing that the warning banner is ugly because it will annoy the users, increasing the chances that they'll do something (i.e. upgrade to a newer browser) to get rid of it.
- tommi 16y ago"Given that everyone using IE6 is, at best, running Windows XP, and given that Microsoft have stated that IE9 won't be available for pre-Vista SP2 OSs, the most recent version of Internet Explorer they could ever hope to upgrade to is IE8." unless they upgrade Windows. Which they should.
- mkr-hn 16y agoI've got no real reason to. XP works fine, and it's secure enough. Java isn't installed, and flash is enabled on a case-by-case basis (<3 Flashblock). The odds of me suffering an exploit will go down as hacking efforts shift to the newer versions. This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned. I'll probably have this laptop (and XP) for another year or so. Now, try convincing someone who _doesn't_ know much about computers to upgrade. All these "everyone should upgrade" declarations I keep seeing won't do it.
- jquery 16y ago> This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned. Just curious, how do you know you haven't suffered any attack?
- mkr-hn 16y agoBecause it would have to come through a vector that I haven't completely walled off, and those are exceedingly rare (like the WMF thing ages ago). I keep up on vulnerabilities, and I'd do a paranoia reinstall if I suspected I were affected by one. It would be one of these: * Noscript exploit * Simultaneous Flashblock + Flash exploit * Image-based exploit * Renderer exploit And those are extremely rare. My software stack is also pretty stable, and it's all from trustworthy vendors/projects.
- Pahalial 16y agoYou are clearly the typical XP+IE6 user being targeted by this campaign.
- maukdaddy 16y agoDo geeks always need something to bitch about? Microsoft is at least making an effort to do as most people wish, getting users to upgrade from IE6.
- SwellJoe 16y agoI want them to upgrade to a modern browser. IE8 aint one.
- coderdude 16y agoIE8 is leaps and bounds better than IE6. In IE8 you barely even need to tweak sites to get them to look right. I'd be tickled pink if IE8 was all I had to worry about. IE9 is going to be much better than IE8 -- by leaps and bounds -- but it's still in beta. At least the release candidate is out. Some people are never satisfied and always need something to complain about. I'm sure you'll find something else once IE9 is out (it doesn't work on their 10 year old operating system). Edit: So much idealism in this thread and not enough people being realistic. Here are the facts: -Web developers hate IE. All versions of it. -We live in a world with IE. -Microsoft IS NOT going to suggest that people download Firefox or Chrome. -It IS NOT in their interest to do so. -The next best thing is for them to suggest IE8 and then IE9. -It is in the users' best interest who don't know any better and it is in Web developers' best interest that people are at least using something better than IE6 or IE7 -Windows XP is 10 years old. -The only thing that's going to be holding back users from upgrading to IE9 is refusal to upgrade their decade-old operating system. -It would be like people being mad at Apple because the latest version of Safari isn't compatible with OS9.
- MiguelHudnandez 16y agoIE8 is better than IE6, but if someone is going to upgrade their browser, they should upgrade to the best one available. On windows XP, they can't get IE9, but they can get Chrome, Firefox, or Opera. It'd be like making a trip to a gas station and filling up to half a tank. Because half a tank is better than an empty tank, right? But... while you're going to all that trouble, why not top it off? Of course this strategy is good for Microsoft, but web designers should be doing what's good for the web.
- gavreh 16y agoThe banner is supposed to be ugly - that way people will notice it and not mistake it for part of your beautiful site.
- akamaka 16y agoThey're trying to get XP users to upgrade from IE6 to IE8. This is a problem because IE8 is already obsolete. It would be preferable to encourage people to run pretty much any other browser on XP, because they are all being actively updated with new features. The point, which doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft-bashing: Don't run this banner on your site.
- Helianthus16 16y agomarginal improvement is still improvement. we could just chill out and accept that microsoft has the right to promote its product and we have the right not to put the banner on our sites.
- sjs 16y agoThe problem is that many people who don't know any better and don't read sites like HN will just go and use this banner.
- andrenotgiant 16y agoUgh, we all know 99% of English-speaking users on IE6 are forced to use it at their workplace. That's going to be so annoying. Maybe those IE6 Business-users should get their user-agents changed to: "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) - YES I KNOW IE6 IS OLD, TELL MY BOSS"
- jackmanbob 16y agoIn 10 years of development, I have never worked for a company that required any version of IE.
- nathanwdavis 16y ago> And while you're at it, find a designer friend to create a banner that wont make your users want to poke their eyes out with a stick. I think that's the idea - startle the IE6 user with a logo that is so atrocious that they give in ("Uncle, uncle, OK, I'll do it!!")
- EnderMB 16y agoMy bosses aren't the most tech-savy people on the planet, but even they realise that it costs them more to pay their developers to build with IE6 in mind than to simply supply people with IE6 a unstyled page to use. Developers need to cut the nonsense and just stop supporting IE6 completely. Hell, our sales tripled (three purchases) from IE6 users when we unstyled their pages. In this day and age there is no need to support such out-of-date browsers.
- bilban 16y agoI think that's a good point. You can still have a functional web page working in an older browser. Graceful degradation. I use a modern browser, but I turn off a lot of the functionality - so the web works for me. Accessible websites get a thumbs up from me - you are catering for more than just ie6, by doing so.
- coverband 16y agoWith Win7, using Chrome, the site offers IE9 only, not IE8. I'm quite pleased to be seeing this from MS, no need to be snobby about it and put down IE overall. If it wasn't for the free availability of IE in Windows, we wouldn't be using the web 24 hours of every day.
- rbarooah 16y agoNetscape Navigator was free to consumers, and was the fastest growing software product in history before Microsoft started bundling IE. We'd still be using the web anyway. The free availability of IE bundled with Windows just stifled competition in the browser space, causing stagnation of the web until other companies with deep pockets financed alternatives. (Apple - Webkit and Safari, and Google - Firefox and Chrome) If Microsoft had kept developing IE at the same rate as they did between IE3 and IE6, I doubt anyone would be putting them down.
- acabal 16y agoI already do this on my own site. Visitors on IE6 get a big warning at the bottom telling them they're using a dangerously out-of-date browser, and provides a link to Firefox first, then IE8 second. Even if I can get just one person to use FF instead of IE, the world will be a better place.
- EGreg 16y agoOr you could just put this: http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/ http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/
- Trufa 16y agoThat is sooooo Microsofty of them!
- toephu 16y agowe need to get rid of IE7
- magamiako 16y agoIt's funny how people bicker on here. And of course, everyone asks me for my opinion at work/in public on these matters. Here's my OS usage on a daily basis: -Windows 7 -Windows XP -Windows Vista -Windows Server 2008 -Windows Server 2008R2 -Windows Server 2003 -Windows 2000 Server -Ubuntu Linux And my browser usage: -IE8 -IE9 RC1 -Chrome (latest dev build) -FF4 (latest beta) I use IE8 for testing flaws in the web-apps at work since our developers code against IE8. I have been giving IE9 a shot and like it so far. Chrome is my default and primary browser for the fact that quite a few sites don't like IE9 yet. And I use FF4 for certain sites that refuse to work properly in Chrome, don't work properly in IE9, and I don't feel like firing my VMs up for IE8.
- BasDirks 16y agoI don't design for tech impaired ducks, but if I would I'd refuse to suggest to them an upgrade from one pile of shit to another. Maybe pile of shit 9 will smell less, let's pray.
- abp 16y agoAnd while you're at it, find a designer friend to create a banner that wont make your users want to poke their eyes out with a stick. Yeah, prettiness, that's what IE 6 users really care for.
- marckremers 16y agoHow long until someone plays on this idea and makes one of these warnings that work on any outdated browser, including ie8, and points them to a choice of chrome, opera, firefox etc... has this already been done? I'd so use it on my sites.
- sid_g 16y agoIts come to this. That its almost that a company is sorry that it ever made a piece or software like IE6. When people do insane things for a really long time. The next insane move starts to look really sane...
- defroost 16y agoWhy do Microsoft have such a difficult time, to this day, developing a decent web-browser? With their near infinite financial resources, surely it is no accident that IE has so many issues, uses tons of proprietary code, and doesn't support, for example, the <canvas> tag until IE9. Like a good capitalist you may argue that MS is not in the business of supporting standards, or it is not their job to make the lives of web developers easier. You'll argue that they are a business, and by locking in companies by using proprietary code, MS is being smart. To this I'd say that Google and Apple aren't exactly running charities yet they manage to produce web browsers that a truly first rate.
- DjDarkman 16y agoThere is a better way: simply develop your site without hacking it up to work in IE 6, and users will notice the difference eventually.