IE 6 Update

by auston • 17 years ago

103 31 17 years ago

vang3lis• 17 years ago

a nice one, because it doesn't even suggest any particular alternatives when an update would suffice

While well-intentioned, this phishing-like technique seems at the very least a disingenuous method of getting people to switch. I think there are other ie-update js floating around that get the point across without having to masquerade.

tialys• 17 years ago

I had the same feeling. I work on computers that are infested with spyware from silly things like this. Not to suggest that this is a bad thing, but it's misleading, and might lead users to learn a bad habit.

edd• 17 years ago

Another month, another lets try and kill ie6. Reminds me of the mass attempts that were made to try and get everyone to ie6 in the first place.

RossM• 17 years ago

The IE6 hysteria keeps coming around but it won't change. About now it appears to me that the only users of IE6 arelarge corporations that can't/won't upgrade (feasibility/old internal intranet apps) or those that wouldn't know how to.

In the latter case I think this is a poor way to go about this. I've seen these information-bar mimics before but this one actually suggests you need the update to view the page. Trying to appear as a message from MS itself (which, to those not in the know, this will do) is just trying to trick the user into upgrading. Yes, it's got good intentions but is it ethically correct to almost white-hat-phish someone into this? MS are advising iE6/7 users to upgrade regardless.

edw519• 17 years ago

This kinds of things overlook on critical detail:

50 million people access the internet from work on locked down computers. One would hope they are current, but we know many are not.

Either way, there's nothing your user can do about it, so you can code to him or abandon him. Bitching won't help.

lucumo3• 17 years ago

Where did you get that number?

stavrianos• 17 years ago

even if the number did come sliding out of his ass (not meaning any offense, I really don't know if you've sources or not), I think it's a good guess that there's a non-trivial demographic in that situation

keopi• 17 years ago

I could imagine a lot of people thinking their computers are hacked when IE suddenly changes because of a required update that looked like a usual activeX install.

I'm living in Korea right now, and you need activeX for any kind of school, internet banking, or government website. This would make a lot of them not understand what happened to their computer (not that they are particularly aware to begin with.)

j_baker• 17 years ago

While I really like the idea of getting rid of IE 6, this is simply unethical. While the link may not tell the user anything that's incorrect, it is obviously intended to look like an official message by Microsoft. If this isn't illegal, it should be.

raheemm• 17 years ago

"IE6 is like an illness that won't go away" - so true. :)

lucumo3• 17 years ago

IE6 is the Netscape 4 of our time :-(

thorax• 17 years ago

Anyone have a suggested script like this that isn't so phishy? Tinyarro.ws is absolutely worthless to IE6 users (since it doesn't support unicode in URLs) so we actually would want to encourage IE6 visitors to our homepage to upgrade.

It's easy enough to tell them ourselves, but if there's a common/classy alternative, we'd check it out.

antirez• 17 years ago

The simplest thing we can do against IE6 is: don't support it anymore. Build your sites like if IE6 does not exist and the problem will auto-fix in short time.

axod• 17 years ago

We, uh, we fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.

We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.

Raphomet• 17 years ago

This only works if everyone stops supporting IE6 together.

But if your site doesn't work on IE6, and your competitor's site (of comparable quality) does, you're going to lose traffic to him.

I mean, this is basically the prisoner's dilemma. Nobody wins unless we all win together.

kennyroo• 17 years ago

In my consulting work I see a lot of usage data from sites of all sizes, and there is a correlation between dial-up users and IE6 users.

I assume that dial-up users don't download Microsoft updates because of the download time and the frequency of updates. At this point, it's probably fair to say that IE6 users will only upgrade if they get broadband or replace their computer with one that has a better browser pre-installed. Since money is clearly a factor in both cases, I'm not holding my breath.

Color TV arrived around 1960, and it took 13 years to pass the 50% bar. (Source: http://is.gd/taGM) Clearly, there are some consumers who will only upgrade when something breaks -- probably because they just can't afford to do otherwise.

I actually feel for people who are still using IE6. For whatever reason, it's either impossible or impractical for these people to upgrade.

If you want to design a site that doesn't work with IE6 and you can afford to cut off 10%+ of the general population, just do it and explain (nicely) that the site requires a newer browser. They probably won't upgrade, but you've done your part. No need to resort to trickery.

matt1• 17 years ago

In my experience, if you ask the people who use IE6 why they don't upgrade most of them will respond with something like "What's IE6? Oh you mean Internet Explorer. What's wrong with the one I have?" and then if you finally convince them they they should upgrade you have to explain to them how to do it, which for most people who are still using IE6 can be a big challenge.

My grandmother uses IE6. She says it works and doesn't want to bother with an upgrade. She doesn't care that you app doesn't render properly :)

snprbob86• 17 years ago

    She doesn't care that you app doesn't render properly

I think this is the most important point, but it is made so rarely!

Most people who have IE6 are either too ignorant to care if your site renders incorrectly or know that they are forced to use this browser for some reason. The former group probably isn't using your next gen web 2.0 fancy pants app anyway, and the later group has seen so many broken websites (at work) that they look right past the problems or try again when they get home.

In general, all you need to do is ensure your site WORKS AT ALL in IE6. It doesn't need to look perfect, just not be broken. But honestly, I might just serve them the mobile version with a warning on top...

Shaitan_Apistos• 17 years ago

When do we get to start crusading against IE7?

CalmQuiet• 17 years ago

Somewhat off-topic, but... Is it not a little strange that neither the demo nor the IE-8 Home page does any checking for non-applicable conditions. For example the fact that I'm browsing with Safari(OS X)? [ Whereas visiting Mozilla always seems to know what downloads it ought to offer. ]

duskwuff• 17 years ago

Er, the demo is intentionally shown to all browsers on clicking the "demo" link. Otherwise you'd have to get IE6 running to test it out, which would suck.

chops• 17 years ago

On casual (read: non-business) sites, I just put in some kind of fun little insult. Example: http://dkpfiles.com/pias/pics/f941GOZ66b29i2Q2Z.jpg

This is just too phishy and does instill bad habits in users who (using IE6) already don't have good habits.

rythie• 17 years ago

I think this is unethical and it won't work anyway, the people who still have IE6 have ignored warnings like this for years or don't have control.

I saw someone using XP the other day who didn't know that other browsers existed (other than IE) and Safari was even installed but she didn't know how it got there (I suspect quicktime) or what it was. The IE(7) she had crashed on virtually every link she clicked on due to an old toolbar that probably only worked properly with IE6. The machine was also dead slow due to 512MB memory and loads of task-tray stuff.

Although she already had IE7 I could easily imagine, similar users not being capable of doing upgrades especially on dial up or not wanting to because it might break.

I would have thought the best thing a lot of people could do for the web is actually offer to sort out a few of their non-techy friends computers, which I think would be more effective than a warning message.

csomar• 17 years ago

I think some MS guys made this to help trasit people from IE6 to IE8 (better than they do choose FF or Chrome)!!

jasonkester• 17 years ago

Let's face it: Building web sites is hard.

For some reason every new generation of developers comes out expecting that to change, but it's not going to. There will always be browsers going out of life that you need to support. That's just the way it works.

And yes, there will always be people like this author whining about it and blaming his users for the his problem. That's the wrong way to go.

If you build web applications, you need to suck it up and support all the browsers out there. Yes, it's harder and yes, you need to use a common subset of all the available tools.

It's been this way since 1995. It's not going to change. Please stop complaining about it.

foobar2k• 17 years ago

this is really sneaky. i like it

IanOzsvald• 17 years ago

To see ie6update in action watch this 3 minute screencast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TclHo_F7rsE

I wanted a demo but didn't have IE6 to hand, in the end I installed ies4linux -> Wine -> Jaunty RC and I figured that others might want to see it in action so I sat up until 2.30am making the screencast.

Nick says he'll integrate it into their blog shortly, but in the meantime...

IE 6 Update

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