Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
eWEEK.com
Search
eWEEK.com
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • IT Management

    Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Support Continues, Despite Calls for Phase-Out

    By
    NICHOLAS KOLAKOWSKI
    -
    August 12, 2009
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      The online community has been debating whether sites should continue to support Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6, with some IT administrators and security experts publicly asking whether now is the time to think about shutting down the 8-year-old browser.

      The newest flurry of debate erupted after Digg, a content-sharing Website, suggested in July that it could stop supporting IE 6 “soon.” While this decision was prompted by practical factors, namely the amount of time that Digg’s engineers spent supporting IE 6-related site activity, it led the administrators to issue a survey on why 10 percent of its users continued to use the aged browser.

      The survey suggested that, of the Digg community using IE 6, most declined to upgrade either because they had no administrator access on their PCs or else because “someone at work says I can’t.”

      Other online sites and groups picked up the thread; for example, Twibbon started a small “IE 6 Must Die” chain. YouTube has also asked IE 6 users to upgrade.

      Despite the online back-and-forth, Microsoft seems determined to continue to support the browser until April 2014-perhaps a smart move on the company’s part, considering that IE 6 shipped along with Windows XP, and a lot of users seem unwilling to give up XP for another operating system.

      “We committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product,” Dean Hachamovitch, a member of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team, wrote in an Aug. 10 post on Microsoft’s official Internet Explorer blog. “As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC.”

      Hachamovitch added, “Looking back at the post on Digg, it’s not just IT professionals. Some of the ‘regular people’ surveyed there were not interested in upgrading.”

      Despite some users’ reluctance to part with IE 6, there has been a slow but steady migration to Internet Explorer 8.

      Microsoft’s share of the browser market fell in 2008. According to StatCounter, the global market share of IE 7 fell from 43.45 percent in May 2009 to 33.75 percent in June and 30.61 percent in July. IE 6 fell from 11.47 percent in May to 8.74 percent at the beginning of July.

      During that period, IE 8 climbed from 8.5 percent in May to 15.4 percent in July. Mozilla Firefox 3.0’s portion of the market had reached 27.73 percent by July, while other browsers-including Firefox 2.0, Apple Safari and Google Chrome-saw their market shares at somewhere between 0.04 and 2 percent.

      Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner, told eWEEK at the time of the StatCounter report that “both” the adoption of IE 8 and the rise of “alternative browsers” such as Firefox were leading to the decline in IE 6 and IE 7 usage. For certain sites and online communities, it seems that the decline can’t happen fast enough.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      CHRIS PREIMESBERGER - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      CHRIS PREIMESBERGER - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      EWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      ZEUS KERRAVALA - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      WAYNE RASH - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Info

      © 2020 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×