3 ms·

Stop IE6 campaign - A campaign devoted to wiping IE6 off the web

45 points by peter123 18y ago

netcan 18y ago
How long before IE6 dies of natural causes? Predictions?
- fauigerzigerk 18y ago
  That probably depends on your definition of dying. Usage will drop asymptotically I suppose.
  - netcan 18y ago
    fuzzy definition. But get to the point where it gets little or no support from most developers.
mstefff 18y ago
Well you can consider Streetread ( http://www.streetread.com http://www.streetread.com ) a member. Try accessing the homepage w/ IE 6... Big supporter of this..
- Jem 18y ago
  And how is a page like that any different to the hundreds of websites that used to display "sorry, your browser is incompatible" to Firefox/Opera users? I thought we'd moved away from this blind alienation years ago.
  - Zak 18y ago
    Using this thing in tolerant mode just displays a note for the user. I think it's perfectly reasonable to not test with IE6 and to display a warning to the effect of "Your browser is very old and known to be buggy. This website might not work right.".
  - jmah 18y ago
    And how is a page like that any different to the hundreds of websites that used to display "sorry, your browser is incompatible" to Firefox/Opera users? That was a pessimistic approach --- those sites were assuming that the page wouldn't act properly in anything other than (say) IE --- whereas this script is optimistic, assuming it will work, except in this specific case (IE6).
    - Jem 18y ago
      Good point. I'd (personally) still rather tentatively support IE6. I know for a fact that most of my work clients are running IE6 though, so I have little choice in the matter.
litewulf 18y ago
Unfortunately, 25% of the users of my site use IE of some kind, and about half that is IE6. These are people who will either ignore me if I ask them to get a new browser or will never come back. Look guys, there are reasons that people don't upgrade, some good some bad. The other day a friend's 386 died, and with it all these Lotus 123 documents, now, do I berate them for using obsolete software or attempt to get them back on their feet? (And yes, it is annoying to support IE6 and I have burned development time doing so. Mostly its "kind of okay" though, since I haven't run into anything too serious.)
- bdfh42 18y ago
  I was asked to provide a little support to a neighbour the other day - nothing serious but I did notice the Windows 98 machine was running some pretty old software. The owner made his case that the machine did everything he needed just how he liked it so he was going to keep his machine locked down and unchanged. Hard to argue against that as it is exactly the sort of line a great many corporates take - get it working then leave it alone. Why bring this "Luddite" up? Well he is an active participant in a number of web communities plus does a fair bit of web shopping - he is certainly not the sort of user I would want to exclude from my sites. He will "upgrade" one day when his current PC dies but that could be a while yet.
  - alecco 18y ago
    Not so hard to argue: Because it is antisocial. In the case of your neighbour with that careless attitude, there is a good chance his computer is part of a botnet or at least infected with some virus. Therefore a source of spam and even denial of service attacks. I'm sure a lot of people felt the same a hundred years ago with old schoolers refusing to keep their horses away and just leaving manure all over the place. I'm sure car owners hated them the most. (Just to add a colourful simil.)
    - litewulf 18y ago
      Well, often times, browser choice is out of your control. Anyway, my view is that this kind of attacks the problem from the wrong end. (Ideally people would have up to date software because it just happened for them.) I think telling people their software is deficient just hurts the cause because it makes them angry at the web and not the browser. (PS: I've worked at places standardized on Ubuntu Dapper. Its so old that getting Firefox 2 was a hack, and forget about Firefox 3... so the other end is similar, though perhaps not as deleterious to webmasters.)
Jem 18y ago
Campaigns like this always seem to miss the biggest problem: some of the most common users of IE6 and even IE5 are browsing through corporate or educational networks where upgrading would be a nightmare or nigh-on impossible for the techies. I don't use IE6, I don't like IE6, I even run an IE "hatelisting" - but the reality is that IE6 is not going anywhere any time soon.
- greyman 18y ago
  Yes. And then there are also less experienced people who never upgraded any program, don't know how to do it, or even don't understand the concept of "upgrading".
  - jwilliams 18y ago
    That's why cross-grading to Firefox or similar can be a good idea. They can always fall back to IE6 if they encounter a problem. The other issue is that many corporates/educational simply don't support or let you install another browser.
    - bmj 18y ago
      The other issue is that many corporates/educational simply don't support or let you install another browser. This is the single biggest issue, methinks. Even at my company (> 100 people), the majority of non-technical employees do not have the ability to install software on their machines. Our IT department allows technical users to do whatever we need to do, with the caveat that we have to clean up our own messes. That said, the base Windoze installation here includes IE7.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
mattmaroon 18y ago
I fail to see how this sort of thing will make a difference. IE 6 may suck, but the people who choose it (mostly corporate IT departments) have very valid reasons. Their intranets and other such programs were designed for IE6. Upgrading would cost them money, since they'd likely have to de-hackify them, and there would be no benefit. In fact, their hope is probably that their workers don't spend their days surfing the rest of the web, so why would they want to make that a more pleasant experience? It would make little or no sense for many of them to upgrade, and so they won't, no matter how many websites plead with them to.
edw519 18y ago
As much as I hate IE6, this goes against everything I believe in businesswise. Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is". I support IE6 because that's where the users are. Sometimes in business, the predator does what he has to do to eat and the prey whines about the state of the world. This is a perfect example. If you're not nimble and capable enough to meet your customers on their terms, maybe you are prey.
- walterk 18y ago
  This is a prisoner's dilemma. Individually, it makes sense to support IE6, because "that's where the users are." Collectively, however, it exacts major costs in terms of support and user experience.
  - edw519 18y ago
    it exacts major costs in terms of support and user experience Ah, then maybe the question should be, "How can we support IE6 without exacting major costs in terms of support and user experience?" You may be surprised how good you really can get once you start thinking outside the quadrilateral.
    - dcurtis 18y ago
      Catering to the lowest type of anything in business is always a recipe for bad user experience. Also, I seem to remember you telling me that you use a computer with a resolution of 800x600. If you also use IE6, then you are, in fact, the lowest technical user on the internet that companies try to support. And that slows progress and means you're part of the problem.
      - edw519 18y ago
        always? Here we go again, dcurtis. If I remember right, we never reached a resolution (oops) in that discussion and we probably won't now. (By the way, I did enjoy that conversation.) Yes, I use 800 x 600. I can't see anything larger than that. Period. I already graduated to 19" monitors everywhere and I still need 800 x 600. And many of the 100 million or so people in my age group are in the same boat. If I have to scroll horizontally, then I don't come back to that site. (Interestingly, I have never had that problem here at hn; maybe pg is on to something - delivering to his users the way they want to see it.) Over 90% of the people I work with are stuck in cubicles at work on IE, half of them on IE6. They can't change. Their administrators have them locked down. It's not their fault. You may choose to abandon these people (sometimes by subtly declaring that they're not part of your demographic); I don't. You may think that I slow progress and am "part of the problem". My customers say otherwise. AFAIC, their vote has priority over yours. That's the whole point.
jcromartie 18y ago
People who run IE6 are like people who drive SUVs. They don't really care what anybody else has to put up with (gas prices, environmental impact, physical danger... or development costs, code quality, and spyware).
apu 18y ago
Regardless of the merits of this campaign, I'm curious if any web campaigns have ever had any effect in the real world?
- Hexstream 18y ago
  It's a ray of Hope in a world of Darkness.
billroberts 18y ago
We don't support IE6 on our web app, just IE7, Firefox2/3, Safari 3 (and Chrome works fine). We didn't give up on IE6 lightly, but we use a lot of javascript and getting it to work correctly on IE6 would have taken a lot of time, that we decided to spend on making the app better for the more modern browsers. We realise we're losing some potential customers, but have to balance that against having a better product for the browsers we do support. As we currently appeal to a mainly early-adopter crowd, then it's not a big deal for us: only a small proportion of our site visitors use IE6 (FF is the most popular). Hopefully once we go a but more mainstream, even the big corporations will have got round to upgrading!
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
ideamonk 18y ago
In http://www.stopie6.org/spread-t http://www.stopie6.org/spread-t he-word , it would be better if you change src for img tags to absolute urls and not relative ones... that will make it easier for banners to appear on my/(anyone's else's) pages/blogs. i.e. change ###img src="120_60.gif" alt="Stop IE6 campaign logo" width="120" height="60"### to ###img src="http://www.stopie6.org http://www.stopie6.org /img/badges/120_60.gif" alt="Stop IE6 campaign logo" width="120" height="60"### :)
ideamonk 18y ago
I hate IE too. Its way too slow
gruseom 18y ago
We just got a contract that will fund several months of development for our startup - maybe close to a year. The client uses IE6. You think I'm going to tell them they have to upgrade?
dc2k08 18y ago
i'm just worried that once they find out there are other browsers it wont be long until they discover adblock. then it'll be bye, bye internet :)
jayliew 18y ago
I humbly believe that evolution/capitalistic markets would wipe IE6 out for the haters, no banners necessary. If IE6 actually succeeds on merit (which I agree with the crowd is very unlikely), then you know what? They earned it. To that end, I say, let it try prove itself - if it can.

45 points by peter123 18y ago

netcan 18y ago

How long before IE6 dies of natural causes? Predictions?

fauigerzigerk 18y ago
That probably depends on your definition of dying. Usage will drop asymptotically I suppose.
- netcan 18y ago
  fuzzy definition. But get to the point where it gets little or no support from most developers.

mstefff 18y ago

Well you can consider Streetread ( http://www.streetread.com http://www.streetread.com ) a member. Try accessing the homepage w/ IE 6... Big supporter of this..

Jem 18y ago
And how is a page like that any different to the hundreds of websites that used to display "sorry, your browser is incompatible" to Firefox/Opera users? I thought we'd moved away from this blind alienation years ago.
- Zak 18y ago
  Using this thing in tolerant mode just displays a note for the user. I think it's perfectly reasonable to not test with IE6 and to display a warning to the effect of "Your browser is very old and known to be buggy. This website might not work right.".
- jmah 18y ago
  And how is a page like that any different to the hundreds of websites that used to display "sorry, your browser is incompatible" to Firefox/Opera users? That was a pessimistic approach --- those sites were assuming that the page wouldn't act properly in anything other than (say) IE --- whereas this script is optimistic, assuming it will work, except in this specific case (IE6).
  - Jem 18y ago
    Good point. I'd (personally) still rather tentatively support IE6. I know for a fact that most of my work clients are running IE6 though, so I have little choice in the matter.

litewulf 18y ago

Unfortunately, 25% of the users of my site use IE of some kind, and about half that is IE6. These are people who will either ignore me if I ask them to get a new browser or will never come back. Look guys, there are reasons that people don't upgrade, some good some bad. The other day a friend's 386 died, and with it all these Lotus 123 documents, now, do I berate them for using obsolete software or attempt to get them back on their feet? (And yes, it is annoying to support IE6 and I have burned development time doing so. Mostly its "kind of okay" though, since I haven't run into anything too serious.)

bdfh42 18y ago
I was asked to provide a little support to a neighbour the other day - nothing serious but I did notice the Windows 98 machine was running some pretty old software. The owner made his case that the machine did everything he needed just how he liked it so he was going to keep his machine locked down and unchanged. Hard to argue against that as it is exactly the sort of line a great many corporates take - get it working then leave it alone. Why bring this "Luddite" up? Well he is an active participant in a number of web communities plus does a fair bit of web shopping - he is certainly not the sort of user I would want to exclude from my sites. He will "upgrade" one day when his current PC dies but that could be a while yet.
- alecco 18y ago
  Not so hard to argue: Because it is antisocial. In the case of your neighbour with that careless attitude, there is a good chance his computer is part of a botnet or at least infected with some virus. Therefore a source of spam and even denial of service attacks. I'm sure a lot of people felt the same a hundred years ago with old schoolers refusing to keep their horses away and just leaving manure all over the place. I'm sure car owners hated them the most. (Just to add a colourful simil.)
  - litewulf 18y ago
    Well, often times, browser choice is out of your control. Anyway, my view is that this kind of attacks the problem from the wrong end. (Ideally people would have up to date software because it just happened for them.) I think telling people their software is deficient just hurts the cause because it makes them angry at the web and not the browser. (PS: I've worked at places standardized on Ubuntu Dapper. Its so old that getting Firefox 2 was a hack, and forget about Firefox 3... so the other end is similar, though perhaps not as deleterious to webmasters.)

Jem 18y ago

Campaigns like this always seem to miss the biggest problem: some of the most common users of IE6 and even IE5 are browsing through corporate or educational networks where upgrading would be a nightmare or nigh-on impossible for the techies. I don't use IE6, I don't like IE6, I even run an IE "hatelisting" - but the reality is that IE6 is not going anywhere any time soon.

greyman 18y ago
Yes. And then there are also less experienced people who never upgraded any program, don't know how to do it, or even don't understand the concept of "upgrading".
- jwilliams 18y ago
  That's why cross-grading to Firefox or similar can be a good idea. They can always fall back to IE6 if they encounter a problem. The other issue is that many corporates/educational simply don't support or let you install another browser.
  - bmj 18y ago
    The other issue is that many corporates/educational simply don't support or let you install another browser. This is the single biggest issue, methinks. Even at my company (> 100 people), the majority of non-technical employees do not have the ability to install software on their machines. Our IT department allows technical users to do whatever we need to do, with the caveat that we have to clean up our own messes. That said, the base Windoze installation here includes IE7.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]

mattmaroon 18y ago

I fail to see how this sort of thing will make a difference. IE 6 may suck, but the people who choose it (mostly corporate IT departments) have very valid reasons. Their intranets and other such programs were designed for IE6. Upgrading would cost them money, since they'd likely have to de-hackify them, and there would be no benefit. In fact, their hope is probably that their workers don't spend their days surfing the rest of the web, so why would they want to make that a more pleasant experience? It would make little or no sense for many of them to upgrade, and so they won't, no matter how many websites plead with them to.

edw519 18y ago

As much as I hate IE6, this goes against everything I believe in businesswise. Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is". I support IE6 because that's where the users are. Sometimes in business, the predator does what he has to do to eat and the prey whines about the state of the world. This is a perfect example. If you're not nimble and capable enough to meet your customers on their terms, maybe you are prey.

walterk 18y ago
This is a prisoner's dilemma. Individually, it makes sense to support IE6, because "that's where the users are." Collectively, however, it exacts major costs in terms of support and user experience.
- edw519 18y ago
  it exacts major costs in terms of support and user experience Ah, then maybe the question should be, "How can we support IE6 without exacting major costs in terms of support and user experience?" You may be surprised how good you really can get once you start thinking outside the quadrilateral.
  - dcurtis 18y ago
    Catering to the lowest type of anything in business is always a recipe for bad user experience. Also, I seem to remember you telling me that you use a computer with a resolution of 800x600. If you also use IE6, then you are, in fact, the lowest technical user on the internet that companies try to support. And that slows progress and means you're part of the problem.
    - edw519 18y ago
      always? Here we go again, dcurtis. If I remember right, we never reached a resolution (oops) in that discussion and we probably won't now. (By the way, I did enjoy that conversation.) Yes, I use 800 x 600. I can't see anything larger than that. Period. I already graduated to 19" monitors everywhere and I still need 800 x 600. And many of the 100 million or so people in my age group are in the same boat. If I have to scroll horizontally, then I don't come back to that site. (Interestingly, I have never had that problem here at hn; maybe pg is on to something - delivering to his users the way they want to see it.) Over 90% of the people I work with are stuck in cubicles at work on IE, half of them on IE6. They can't change. Their administrators have them locked down. It's not their fault. You may choose to abandon these people (sometimes by subtly declaring that they're not part of your demographic); I don't. You may think that I slow progress and am "part of the problem". My customers say otherwise. AFAIC, their vote has priority over yours. That's the whole point.

jcromartie 18y ago

People who run IE6 are like people who drive SUVs. They don't really care what anybody else has to put up with (gas prices, environmental impact, physical danger... or development costs, code quality, and spyware).

apu 18y ago

Regardless of the merits of this campaign, I'm curious if any web campaigns have ever had any effect in the real world?

Hexstream 18y ago
It's a ray of Hope in a world of Darkness.

billroberts 18y ago

We don't support IE6 on our web app, just IE7, Firefox2/3, Safari 3 (and Chrome works fine). We didn't give up on IE6 lightly, but we use a lot of javascript and getting it to work correctly on IE6 would have taken a lot of time, that we decided to spend on making the app better for the more modern browsers. We realise we're losing some potential customers, but have to balance that against having a better product for the browsers we do support. As we currently appeal to a mainly early-adopter crowd, then it's not a big deal for us: only a small proportion of our site visitors use IE6 (FF is the most popular). Hopefully once we go a but more mainstream, even the big corporations will have got round to upgrading!

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

ideamonk 18y ago

In http://www.stopie6.org/spread-t http://www.stopie6.org/spread-t he-word , it would be better if you change src for img tags to absolute urls and not relative ones... that will make it easier for banners to appear on my/(anyone's else's) pages/blogs. i.e. change ###img src="120_60.gif" alt="Stop IE6 campaign logo" width="120" height="60"### to ###img src="http://www.stopie6.org http://www.stopie6.org /img/badges/120_60.gif" alt="Stop IE6 campaign logo" width="120" height="60"### :)

ideamonk 18y ago

I hate IE too. Its way too slow

gruseom 18y ago

We just got a contract that will fund several months of development for our startup - maybe close to a year. The client uses IE6. You think I'm going to tell them they have to upgrade?

dc2k08 18y ago

i'm just worried that once they find out there are other browsers it wont be long until they discover adblock. then it'll be bye, bye internet :)

jayliew 18y ago

I humbly believe that evolution/capitalistic markets would wipe IE6 out for the haters, no banners necessary. If IE6 actually succeeds on merit (which I agree with the crowd is very unlikely), then you know what? They earned it. To that end, I say, let it try prove itself - if it can.