Monday, February 23, 2009

When will IE6 go away?

On Feb 19 Norwegian sites started a campaign against IE6, since then the campaign spread to other countries. Is this enough? IE6 was released in 2001, since then we had IE7 and now we have IE8 RC1. To think 8 years after people are still using IE6, and more than 20% of them no less!
There are some reasons for this however:
  1. Default on Windows XP, the most popular version of Windows today
  2. Corporations who haven't upgraded and have intranet apps that depend on IE6 bugs and quirks
  3. Windows 98 SE, ME and 2000 users
  4. People running it on Wine, as it is -until 1.1.14- the latest version that works
  5. People who fear tabs
  6. Apathy
How will, in the long run, this campaign affect IE6's marketshare is to be seen. Keep in mind this is not a war on IE, it is just a war on IE6, and is blessed by Microsoft.

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