Kill IE6 to let CSS3 live
I like to keep track of browser market share, specifically the growth of IE7, so that I can tell when its new CSS features become mainstream enough to start using. This month, I had a bit of a shock.
I’ve based my figures on eight different websites I manage, from personal blogs to international businesses, to try and get a broad range of figures - although they are not, of course, meant to be definitive in any way. I’ve tracked figures back for six months - IE7 was launched in October 2006 - and only included sites with that much historical data.
The figures (click here to see the graph) didn’t surprise me at first. IE7 started at 1.6% in October, had a huge boost to 12.1% in December, and growth has slowed since. Most of its share came at the expense of IE6, which started off with 60.8% and was down to 47.2% by February. But then, in March, IE6’s share increased to 50.6%. I thought I could put this down to an anomaly on one site skewing the results, but in 6 of the 8 sites I monitored, the result was the same - an increase in usage over the last month.
I can’t explain it. It’s like it just refuses to lay down and die.
If we want to move the web forward, we need to encourage people to drop IE6 as soon as possible. As far as I’m concerned, there are very few reasons to still be using it; either you work for a company that deploys software centrally and hasn’t upgraded yet, you’re a developer testing your code, or you don’t really know what a browser is and you’re unaware that other choices are available.
I’m assuming that a reader of this article is a web developer interested in CSS3. If we want to start using all the new opportunities that it creates, we need to kill off legacy browsers that don’t support it. If you’re using IE6 and you have any option whatsoever, switch to a better browser; IE7 at the very least. If you know someone who still uses IE6 and has any option whatsoever, get them upgraded. Evangelise all the options; Firefox, Opera, Flock, whatever; get people switching. Let’s kill this dinosaur off and let the fast mammals evolve to take its place.
I’m currently in the last development stages of a web project. This project has ‘theme’ support, both built-in and user created. I came to the conclusion that I simply don’t have the resources to get all the different themes working in IE6 and below, so I’ve decided to only ever feed IE6 and below one basic theme that I’ll maintain, whereas all other browsers get whatever theme is specified. Die IE6, die!
Every month I ask the statisticians at my company about IE6. Today I had the same shock as you had. On some of the biggest Dutch consumer sites IE6 usage has grown in the last month.
One reason could be that IE7 is most of all different to the end user. That might be scary to not so experienced users.
Another reason might be that you can only install IE7 when you have a legal copy of XP. But I don’t think XP piracy is that big.
The other reason is that you’re using 98/2000 and don’t know what a browser is. I suspect this is a fairly large segment of the population.
I’ve noticed the same thing for my website (a local newspaper)…well, IE6 usage didn’t increase, but it stayed about the same as last month.
I believe these are the reasons people are sticking or switching to IE6:
- The place they access their computer at doesn’t auto-update, or simply won’t update, and they might not even be aware of other browsers
- They are stuck on Windows 98/2000, as per Robin’s comment (though that accounts for less than 15% of my viewers)
- They DID try IE7, but didn’t like the way it looked, so uninstalled
- They tried IE7, but some website didn’t look/work right in it (bad, bad web developer!)
- They tried IE7, didn’t know what happened to the menu bar, panicked, and uninstalled it (which is really pathetic, but I know it happens).
Maybe by 2012 it’ll be really dead. 2010 if we’re lucky.
[...] I’m off on holiday - back towards the end of April. I’ve written a new post for CSS3.info before I go: Kill IE6 to let CSS3 live. [...]
When evangelizing alternatives I think it’s better to tell the person about one or two options that you think would suit him/her. More might just confuse them, and in the end be counter-productive.
Someone who is UI conservative would probably prefer Firefox to IE7. An IE fanatic (yes, they exist) would probably prefer IE7.
I think another way to start using CSS3 more is to give our clients a choice: either a nice site that works exactly the same for everybody or a really beautiful and much cheaper site for the (growing?) majority; which means an accessible but more or less minimalistic site for IE6 users.
I already started propagating this. Unfortunately, not everybody at my own job is convinced yet…
i started providing a prominent link via conditional comments to IE users so they can upgrade easier:
http://delta.ncsu.edu & http://www.csskarma.com
of course, you’ll have to view the sites in IE6 to see the message. it doesn’t work very well, but it’s better than nothing i guess.
Earlier this year I did a fairly major redesign on one of my personal sites, and realized when I had finished that I was already treating IE6 the way I’d been treating Netscape 4 a few years ago. Anything that worked in IE7 and didn’t trash IE6 made it into my final layout. Unfortunately, I can’t really bust loose until IE6 has followed NS4 into obscurity.
It’s disappointing that so many sites are seeing IE6 bounce back. I haven’t seen it myself, but like Fyrd, I saw it hold steady from February to March.
Perhaps it’s time to revive the WaSP’s old browser upgrade campaign?
[...] reading this post on the CSS3 blog, my view points kind of shifted. IE6 users should be upgrading to IE7, or [...]
[...] CSS3 . info - Everything you need to know about CSS3 Y la cantidad de dolores de cabeza que nos ahorrarÃamos. Si por mi fuera …. (tags: ie7 browser microsoft) [...]
Is there an easy way for a user to go back to IE6 once they have upgraded to IE7? An interesting thing to look at in these stats will be, how many new visitors were there?
Might be there was a huge influx of visitors from China and South/South East Asia (the regions were pirated XP and IE6 dominates).
@Surendra Singhi
Unfortunately, yes. IE7 appears as any installed application, and is simply uninstalled the same way you’d uninstall anything, bringing you back to IE6.
It’s only been a month since the last time I upgraded someone from IE4 to IE6 (on Win98), so I have a horrible feeling it’s going to be around for a while…
“It’s like it just refuses to lay down and die.” so true I can’t wait till the day, it goes the way of Mac IE.
I’m surprised you haven’t taken into the account home user pirate installations.
It seems to be very common theme here, that the recovery CDs that come with computers are usually dangerous by the fact they just delete everything off the hard-drive and install a bunch of crapware which usually prevents windows updates from working properly.
As such often people ask the most tech-worthy person they know for help, which installs something like a corporate version of Windows XP.
Being someone who helps people out a lot with computers, too often do I come-across corporate XP installations on home user computers (which usually have normal XP home licenses glued onto the machines). I believe that is one of the main reasons why IE6 is sticking (IE7 anti-piracy features preventing it from being installed).
I personally know people who uninstalled IE7 after Automatic updates installed it, because they didn’t like the new user interface (and you can’t remove some toolbars at all, officially - I managed to remove them through registry hacks, but one final thing needed to persuade this person to leave IE7 on his computer I wasn’t able to do - move the stop and reload buttons to their original position on the left). I was doing my best to prevent them to rollback to IE6, but they just hated IE7’s interface and they don’t care about the updated rendering engine at all… Maybe Microsoft should at least give people option when they decide to completely change everything in the UI, if they want people to like the new versions.
The IE7 user interface is terrible. Nobody cares about rendering speed — it all renders at the same perceivable speed: fast. IE6 is intuitive.
IE7 is so distasteful. Did they market test that freakish thing?
Firefox is of course better than either. Good luck getting Old Business adopting it though.
[...] Explorer 6 is outmoded. It has limited support for the languages that make up the web (particularly CSS), and often [...]
I’ll agree that IE7 wasn’t quite as intuitive, but having used it now since shortly after its release, I’ve discovered that I like it! It just took a little getting used to.
As a developer, though, I also use Firefox and Netscape to make sure I don’t have any problems. I know that we all try to make our sites backward compatible, but isn’t that part of the problem? Maybe we need to pull these people, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.
If folks are really, really serious about eradicating IE6, use XHTML on your web sites and serve them with the proper MIME type: application/xhtml+xml.
And don’t use content negotiation!
If users are forced to use a browser that supports application/xhtml+xml, IE usage will dwindle dramatically.
We gave the readers of our web site two months’ notice before switching to XHTML and application/xhtml+xml. We might have lost a few readers, but we kept most of them, and a lot of people are no longer using Internet Explorer as a result.
The change we seek will only come by forcing people to switch.
lol die!
i don’t hate the css hacks so much but i really wanna kill IE6,maybe because it’s really hard to be killed
MIME type: application/xhtml+xml. Thats the spirit!
We force our users to rollback to IE6 because IE7 is quite simply awful.
A lot of businesses will roll back and keep with IE6, it is a pain for those of us who want web standards to become more common place but the problem with IE7 is that it breaks almost all the time when network or IT administrators access such things as email web access, routers, ssl vpns, firewalls, print servers etc. remotely and as a majority of business users will only be allowed to use what their IT teams use, IE7 will not be very popular until hardware developers start to conform to web standards when writing their control panel software.
Funny…I’m forcing the users in my department to step up to IE7 because of problems with IE6 (even though campus IT department is sticking with IE6). We’re writing a major web-based application that needs the strengths of IE7.
So far, I haven’t run across the problems you mention, Cep. I have, however, crashed IE7 by getting too many tabs open.
Where does the author live?? In Gates pocket?
Open the window and smell the carnage left behind IE7’s wake.
IE is and will continue to be prone to every terrorist/pissed offnationalist in the world.
But IE7 is more vulnerable than all of them.
“Go back to 6″ is the unanimous advice of every tech site I’ve been to in sewing up my own computers wounds.
http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/ie7-microsoft-internet-explorer-7-should-you-install-it
No… I’m not in Billy’s pocket. I just haven’t encountered any of the problems that everyone seems to have with IE7. I’ve been running it since Oct 2006 with no problems. I DON’T use Google toolbars and all of the crap I see people adding to their browsers. I also run with tight browser security.
IE is a target for hackers only because it’s the most used. When everyone moves to Firefox, then it will become the target. If you don’t like IE7, then move everyone to Firefox. At least it is compliant with CSS and it beats the hell out of IE6.
I’ve heard of speed issues with IE7…slow page loads, primarily. Turn off the phishing filter. As far as load time of IE7 is concerned, it’s faster than Firefox on my system, and MUCH faster than Netscape. I use all three (plus Opera) to verify compatibilty of web designs. Firefox’s plug-in tools are very helpful in that regard.
IE6 MUST DIE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!
it is taking my life…BILL I WILL KILL YOU, i’LL enter in your refriferer and when you open it i will kill you with a knife
refriferer = refrigerator sorry ;)
Ummm… perhaps we should point out that the ‘killing’ would be done in a strictly figurative way.
Lets be honest if any of us tried openly to say we are not supporting ie6 in web design. Our bosses would just say ok their’s the door don’t let it catch you in the arse on the way out.
I have had clients ring up for the most clueless browsers of all why does’nt this website work in ie5.5 or on mac ie5. Id like to respond with if you use ie5 you do not deserve to use the internet or basicly you are a moron do not ring me you complete freaking idiot. Instead i say ie5 has so much of the market share 0.1 1.5 depending on stats and the idiot who thinks its fun to browse with it.
I will admit i think Ie6 is a lot better for a user experience than ie7. Ie7 makes me feel sea sick with all its harsh gradients was the gui designer color blind? or just thick? A browser should be unnoticeable a background piece. Not like looking into a toilet after a night out with too much beer and a dodge kebab.
I use Firefox because its great for development it has the best rendering engine and overall i feel safe browsing the web.
I have a more interesting idea for dealing with ie6 user’s write a php script with a user agent.Then use a ip detection list their town and their ip to them. Tell them you have found some dodge porn on their drive and they have delete ie6 for good to get rid of this horribleness.
Socially we can get rid of ie6.
Lets make a anti Ie6 six day every year?
Say October 28 Bill gates birthday. We remove all ie6 style sheets and print out a javascript box. Happy bithday to bill gates his present to the world was Ie7 Upgrade now!!!!
I spend averagely 80% of my time fixing Ie6 problems i would not mind if i was fixing them for a good browser like opera or safari. But ie6 it’s the bane of my life. I dread looking in ie6 after having built for firefox,op,saf etc. Ive though about a euphemism’s for Ie6 an explanation to non techs why i hate it so much. The closest i can get is let’s not talk about this otherwise im gonna scream at you and point the finger and say words like buffoon.
A little rhyme for anyone using Ie6
“Here my plea delete IE”
[...] IE7 overtaking IE6, and Firefox overtaking IE6. Come to think of it, I’d really like to get rid of IE6. Its time has passed, and the web will be better off without it, just as it’s better off [...]
[...] on, let’s put a stake in this relic. It’s [...]
http://www.killie6.com
[...] break (AKA not look right) and the cost of changing it would be too high. Despite numerous calls to let IE6 die, Microsoft continues to ship Windows XP with IE6 installed. With lagging sales of Vista, MS has an [...]