YouTube Will Be Next To Kiss IE6 Support Goodbye

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/youtube-will-be-next-to-kiss-ie6-support-goodbye/

by transburgh • 17 years ago

132 48 17 years ago

This is the kind of big player that will cause people to upgrade. It's the old saying that if people want dancing bunnies, people will click on anything put in front of them to get those dancing bunnies.

Other apps will still have to support IE6 though, b/c BigCo's IT Department will be happy to stick with the browser that prevents employees from watching YouTube.

Ardit20• 17 years ago

Maybe IT Departments would notice if google.com did the same thing aswell. Would that be monopolistic however?

ErrantX• 17 years ago

Probably. Which is where it gets murky because that might not be a bad thing.

(though they dont have a legit reason for blocking it - there is nothing IE6 doesnt "support" the G search needs)

theklub• 17 years ago

They would lose search market to bing in that case.

mcav• 17 years ago

It'd probably be monopolistic if they blocked IE8, and maybe IE7. But I think IE6 is legitimately old enough, with enough known problems, that it would be justifiable if it ever came up in court.

vaksel• 17 years ago

the revolution has begun

statictype• 17 years ago

This is great. It's going to take big and popular sites like Youtube and Facebook to finally kill of IE6.

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

Except most IE6 installs are in corporate environments, which most likely already block youtube and facebook, so it won't really change anything.

Now if we could get Sun, IBM, and Google to all swear off IE6, maybe some IT departments would grudgingly update to IE7.

beza1e1• 17 years ago

I believe it's a myth that "most" IE6 are corporate environments. The diagrams about IE6 work day-weekend fluctuation wasn't that big.

I expect at least half of the active IE6 users to be users of the category "installed Win XP and doesn't care about updates or browsers". At least I know some people like this.

joshfinnie• 17 years ago

Also, the people who are not upgrading their browsers (mostly because they are not technologically savvy) are not frequenting websites like YouTube and Facebook. My grandfather doesn't know what Facebook is and is definitely still running IE6 (even though I tried to get him onto Firefox)!

KB2• 17 years ago

The largest IE6 population work wise is the US Government and they have little to no intention of upgrading to anything else anytime soon.

I'm currently stuck in the hell of developing web applications for government contracts that are targeted to IE6. For example... No multi css class support in IE6, which kills lots of JS libs. Horrible stuff.

bmelton2• 17 years ago

You MIGHT be right, but I do web application development for government, and I was recently surprised when my new laptop was delivered with IE8 on the standard image.

For this particular agency, EDS is their GSS provider, so if EDS is incorporating IE8 into their ESA image, I wouldn't expect that it's too far off at other agencies they provide general support services for.

Of course, now I've got to make all the apps I've written work in IE6 AND IE8, alongside Firefox, which they're also piloting. I'm pleased at their progress, while staying wary of all the work it's going to bring my way.

pilif• 17 years ago

This is actually a change welcome by most IE6 users.

Well. Not by their users, but by their administrators. We now know that most people still on IE6 are on IE6 because they are forced by corporate policy, corporate policy that most likely forbids You Tube use if there are no filters in place that make consumption impossible in the first place.

If you want to provide a web service to the corporate internet, you are still stuck with the crap that is IE6 (customers of a customer of ours was still using IE 5.5 (on NT4 in the year 2008 - sigh) it took some real convincing to make them accept the fact that the user experience could be degraded).

danw• 17 years ago

I've noticed a few corporates who still need IE6 for some internal web apps also installing firefox recently due to not being able to have two versions of IE installed.

jpcx01• 17 years ago

I always figured the absolute best way to support old IE6 developed intranet apps would be a single site browser tool with embedded IE6. Like fluid for windows.

The problem is Microsofts boneheaded decision to make IE systemwide. Upgrading to IE7 also upgrades all webcontrol instances. So this doesn't seem feasable.

onreact-com• 17 years ago

The best thing about IE6 is that you can crash it with ease by adding a few bytes of CSS code on your website.

billybob2• 17 years ago

I think I speak for web developers everywhere when I say: DIE, IE6, DIE! DIE DIE DIE!!!!!!

billybob2• 17 years ago

I have a dream... of a world where everyone upgrades their browser in a timely way... where security fixes get applied and botnets don't spread... where the millions of developer hours formerly spent on browser hacks are instead used to add features... where advanced CSS selectors can be safely used... I have a dream of a world where one day, rounded corners can be made with a simple declaration and work in all browsers... where proprietary plugins are not needed for video, and tiny vector graphics scale beautifully on the page... where browsers will be judged by the usefulness of their features, not by the OSes they were bundled with..

quellhorst• 17 years ago

Your imaginary place starts out sounding like a Mac User's world then drifts off into Lake Wobegon territory.

Klonoar• 17 years ago

I love how this news is at least a week or so old. Nice job, Techcrunch.

calambrac6• 17 years ago

No Safari link? Given that Chrome is WebKit, you'd think they'd throw a little love back.

pbz• 17 years ago

Safari is pointless on Windows.

calambrac6• 17 years ago

It's an alternate browser that supports modern web standards. How is it any more 'pointless' than Firefox or Chrome?

DrJokepu• 17 years ago

I suppose, given that Safari, while being an excellent browser, on Windows it is not such a great experience and just feels weird, it is reasonable to not list it as an upgrade option for IE6 users. By the nature of the situation, this only happens on Windows.

nailer2• 17 years ago

Huh? WebKit is a portable version of KHTML, with an abstraction layer to handle the QT dependencies. Most of the love would be aimed at the KDE developers.

calambrac6• 17 years ago

You used the word "portable". I used the word "love". Reflect for a second on what those particular terms mean in this particular context.

Give up? Okay: there are no mainstream KHTML browsers available for Windows, except for Safari and Chrome via WebKit, only one of which has a link showing up on YouTube.

jgilliam• 17 years ago

This seems like a move by Google to push faster adoption of HTML 5.

barredo• 17 years ago

IE7 & 8 do not support HTML 5 either

SecurityMatters• 17 years ago

That is a good start. Now, if they will disallow IE7 and IE8, we can get IE users back to a version that does not use ActiveX for plugins. That would be a great security step.

lucifer• 17 years ago

Goodbye or not, I can't believe anyone would kiss IE6.

jasonkester• 17 years ago

It just occurred to me that Blogabond (one of my sites) will be pretty much the LAST site on the internet to drop IE6 support.

It's a travel blog host, which means that it will always have users hitting it from a public machine in rural Laos. Having used that machine, which runs Windows 95 and shares an AOL Free Trial dialup connection with 5 of its brethren in an open-air hut on generator power, I can state with confidence that it is not scheduled for an upgrade any time soon.

You make your bed, you lie in it I guess.

YouTube Will Be Next To Kiss IE6 Support Goodbye

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