There is some really great news spreading throughout the internet this week. As of March 2010 Google will no longer be supporting Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).
Just to give you a brief history, IE6 has been around for a long long time and it’s full full of bugs. IE6 has been around for almost 10 years and it’s been a nightmare for software developers. I would not be surprised if IE6 single-handedly has cause a billion dollars in wasted productivity.
As as a software engineer I can tell you that I myself have spent countless hours over the past 10 years developing code that specifically worked around Microsoft’s idea of how a browser should run. There are standards for a reason and it boggles everyone’s mind why Microsoft would go out of the way to create a browser that would cause so much anger from the community.
The great news is that IE6 penetration has now gone to 10.2% according to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp and continues to drop. The big news as mentioned above is that Google will be dropping support for IE6 as of March 2010 on all their applications.
This could be partly caused by the cyber attacks on Google just a few weeks ago from China through Internet Explorer security holes. Either way this is great news for developers around the world and hopefully it will finally push IE6 over the cliff and into the history books.
As of 2010, WebCultured will no longer be supporting IE6 unless specifically asked by a client, this is a move to help phase out IE6 out of the general public. For great alternatives goto getfirefox.com, google.com/chrome or if you have a Mac you’re already surfing on Safari!