Microsoft is all to blame for this. They abuse their monopoly position to force users into using IE. They are about to get sued in Europe for this very fact, and might even be forced to disconnect IE from their operating system, because so far it has been connected with Windows and cannot be (okay, with much difficulty it can) uninstalled.

The only way to abolish IE6, and IE altogether (because the browser is shit, no matter which version) is to ban microsoft from pre-installing THEIR web browser into their OS’s and to provide a simple, user friendly HTML-based article that informs the user of different webbrowsers and which of them is ideal for them, after which they can choose which of them to install and use as their primary browser.

Think of it as a wizard they have to run to install their browser, which they can later use to unintall and choose a different one as their primary browser.

Luckily IE6 users are hardly the market that most websites have to appeal. To suggest 1 in 4 visitors on your site use IE6 is bizarre, because computer illiterate (the number 2 group in your list) hardly use the internet like most people today. In fact, they are the same group that use powerpoint to create lame presentations involving cats and stupid jokes, and the most daring thing they’ll do with a computer is send an e-mail. I do not care for these people, and thank god most of them are baby-boomers that will be in an (offline) home for the elderly.

Sorry for that last paragraph, mum & dad.

Our developers are writing for Windows only and using activex, .net, active directory, etc. they write systems that only work in IE. Trying to switch to a different browser is limited by the in house apps that the company is depending on and the availability of resources.

It amazed me how many of our in house apps “broke” when we moved to IE7. Thankfully that has been resolved and about 85% of our desktops are now on IE7, but it’s been a HUGE pain.

An open letter to Microsoft. Since you have caused the development community so much time (and therefore money), you should fix the development issue.

A simple program to allow testing, debugging and so forth. Obviously, this will never happen because MS needs to spend more money on failed marketing campaigns to repair an image that is well deserved.

Sorry, IE6 makes me angry.

Unfortunately, the corporate market is huge. Take Devon County Council – they have thousands of users all standardised on locked-down XP/IE6 PCs. Even developers cannot (easily) install IE7. You can understand the reasons: software updates are a huge undertaking and many older web systems need rigorous testing and updating.

Then there are the users who never trust upgrades – whether it’s for Windows, their virus scanner, or whatever. I’ve seen many people who click no/cancel to everything without reading what the box says. I think MS have inadvertently created pop-up box fatigue!

Even Microsoft want IE6 phased out. However, there are lots old PCs out there with XP SP1 or lower (or pirated copies). IE7’s been out for two and a half years and I suspect it’s reached saturation point. We’ll probably get the situation where most IE7 users switch to IE8, but IE6 users carry on regardless – no matter what we do to promote alternatives.

IE6’s market share will naturally drop when people buy new PCs. Unfortunately, Even IE5/5.5 has a 1% market share – Opera only has a little more than that!

There are some high-profile websites that have dropped IE6 support, but the majority could never refuse 1 in 4 visitors. The death of IE6 is some way off yet.