I don't want to interrupt the cliche fanboy hatefest, but when IE6 came out way back in 2001, it was by far the most standards compliant browser out there, and

I don't want to interrupt the cliche fanboy hatefest, but when IE6 came out way back in 2001, it was by far the most standards compliant browser out there, and much better than the dying outdated Netscape in terms of feature-completeness. They did not update it for several years while there was little competition. Many of the features taken for granted in modern web development are proprietary Microsoft extensions - InnerHTML and Ajax both come to mind. It's funny you criticise Vista when the reason that you still have to develop for IE6 is because of the huge unprecedented success of XP. IE6 has been the XP browser since it came out. The fact is that if Vista had been a bigger success, an OS that ships with IE7, IE6 would be less of an issue. The "plague" was actually caused by what you praise in the next sentence. They're unlikely to stop supporting IE6 until they stop supporting updates to XP since it's XP's default browser.