The browser that won’t die
When Microsoft was king of the browser world, it paid little attention to the notion of standards for the HTML and CSS coding that is the basis for Web pages. Microsoft thought that by imposing its own way of doing things it could lock users into a closed Microsoft-only system. Consequently, Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is full of idiosyncratic, standards-breaking behavior. It is, in fact, the bane of webmasters (as I can attest from personal experience). Web sites had to be designed specifically to take into account the oddball behavior of IE6 and a variety of hacks had to be employed by Web page designers. Firefox and other browsers, while not perfect, tried much harder to conform to the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium. As Firefox gained market share, Microsoft finally began to pay more attention to standards and after IE6, its browsers became much more compliant. Unfortunately, Microsoft partially succeeded in its goal to force use of IE6 and many companies built proprietary intranets based on IE6 behavior.
Microsoft’s old disdain for standards has come back to bite it, however. IE8 is the closest thing to a standards-compliant browser that Microsoft has come up with but its compliance means that many older sites that were designed to work with IE6 are now broken when viewed in IE8. Enterprises that invested in internal systems based on IE6 are understandably reluctant to switch to a browser that may not work on all sites.
That, together with the still large presence of Windows XP (which originally came with IE6), means that considerable numbers of computers continue to employ IE6. Microsoft wishes they would switch to IE8 as Preston Gralla discusses at Computerworld:
Microsoft is not amused by the mass of people who refuse to give up the eight-year-old browser. Amy Barzdukas, Microsoft’s general manager for Internet Explorer told the BBC, “Friends do not let friends use IE6.”
There are a number of reasons Microsoft isn’t happy with the IE 6 holdouts. First is that they might be easily swayed to Firefox. IE 6, after all, is so ancient that it doesn’t even use tabs. It’s clearly inferior to any modern browser. Put it next to Firefox, and anyone would want to switch. IE 8, by way of comparison, stacks up well to the most recent versions of Firefox.
In addition, Microsoft has built features into the latest version of IE 8, such as Web slices, that are translatable into increased traffic to Microsoft or Microsoft partners, which in turn translates into cash. The more people that stay with IE 6, the less revenue for Microsoft.
Beyond that, developers have gotten so sick of having to maintain their sites for IE 6, that they may eventually simply stop supporting it. That could clearly be disastrous for Microsoft. In fact, developers are so fed up with IE 6 that a group of developers have formed a group called ie6nomore as a way to try and get people to leave the ancient browser behind.
IE6 remains the most popular Microsoft browser. September statistics show IE6 has 24% market share.
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