Now that even Google is dropping support for Internet Explorer 6, can we all stop worrying about it?
Dear Google Apps admin,
In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.
We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.
Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.
Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.
In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.
Thank you for your continued support!
Sincerely,
The Google Apps team
In all seriousness, I know that several organizations I work with still see significant traffic -- more than 20% -- from Internet Explorer 6. In e-commerce situations, it's a hard sell to say "let's stop supporting this browser," even if the pitch is that your protecting the users' security. How do you pitch it? How do you sell not servicing 20% of the people coming to your online shop or Web site?
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Comments
4 Comments
Have to say, I'm surprised by that 20% number. My site is now about 7-8% IE6. What do you think is keeping those numbers so high? Lots of people with old computers tend to use those sites?
Hey there Kat,
Indeed, I was surprised too. However -- even at 7-8% of visitors -- when the site is a busy e-commerce site that can amount to a sizable and tangible amount of revenue that a publisher may not want to lose without good reason.
Why those number are so high? From the feedback that I read, it was often corporate or government IT departments that had not upgraded yet, or those folks that bought a PC five years ago and haven't once upgraded the software on it.
I can only hope that moves like this by Google, and even some countries governments, will help to bring about the standards that will make our lives easier, and save time and money for the organizations we serve.
Phillip.
Well, yes, we still use IE6 at work. Mine is on VMWare, mind you, but that means we're committed to making things work so that people in our office can use them. Rumour has it we'll be switching to 8 eventually...
It kills me that Microsoft doesn't do a better job on these issues. Having to support three quite technically different browser versions is hard and seems really unnecessary.
"It kills me that Microsoft doesn't do a better job on these issues. Having to support three quite technically different browser versions is hard and seems really unnecessary."
It seems that Microsoft thinks so too:
http://digg.com/microsoft/Microsoft_Says_Good_Riddance_to_IE6