Are we doing enough to help IE6 die?
As a long time developer of Internet servers, services and sites, I have spent a lot of time over the years fiddling with code to make things work on IE which worked lovely in other browsers without any modifications.
I think every developer has probably seen this graphic or one similar at some time or another.
The sad fact is that it is not getting any easier to create the high performance web 2.0 applications so they work in a web 0.5 browser.
Whilst some people have started petitions to get the government to move on from IE6 and other people are spending time and effort educating people they know who still use it, perhaps we can do more.
I have just implemented the Shockingly Big IE6 Warning plugin on my blogs. It is nothing new and has been around for some time now, however it is my little bit towards helping the world get over IE6. What are you doing for your bit?
February 3rd 2010 Applications
Further evidence that it pays to include social media in any attempts to promote your sites.
In an off the wall experiment conducted on real time search results from google, it took less than 13 seconds from a post being made to it showing up in google search results.
Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, have been named by Google as Special Partners meaning posts on these sites get shunted into google results much faster than in other cases.
The old dinosaur of IE6 has taken another step closer to its final demise
On Friday Google announced that from 1st of March 2010 it will no longer support IE6 and from that date, users of older browsers (IE6 included) may find that key functionality in Google Docs and Google Sites will no longer work properly. Other parts of Google will also stop working as changes are made without the excessive amount of effort required to make web2.0 sites work in a web 0.5 browser.
Google go on to recommend upgrading to one of the following:-
I would go further and recommend that you install the most current version of your chosen browser as IE 7 is already outdated with IE 8 being the current version of Internet explorer.
With Google now running as much as 13% of all active internet sites either directly or on behalf of one of the various services Google provides, this is going to make it very difficult for people to put off upgrading for much longer.
Sarah
February 2nd 2010 Applications
