Internet Explorer is a real pain in the ass for me. Why? Because about 40% of people use it (some version of it), which means if i build a site without looking at it in IE, there could potentially be a lot of problems i don’t know about.
Versions 7 & 8 are generally not a problem… it’s Internet Explorer 6 which causes the headaches. Over the last year or so, there have been campaigns to ‘kill’ internet explorer 6, but none have really gone mainstream. The kind of people that use IE6 are the kind of people who bought a computer 10 years ago and haven’t updated ANYTHING on it since.
They’ll click ‘no’ to anything that pops up and have gotten in to the routine of waiting 20 minutes for their computer to boot up. That’ll be followed by 50 applications & windows which open upon start up.
I can understand that… not everyone knows what they’re doing… some people will never understand or ‘get’ computers full stop. However, using your PC for a few years and not updating anything is just the same as buying a car and literally not checking anything like tyres, water, oil, lights for a few years…. Notice a new noise or some smoke appearing? Pretend it’s not there… drive it until it literally stops working, then call a mechanic 
It’s this sort of attitude which keeps IE6 alive and well when really, it should be in a digital grave (along with the entire internet explorer range). IE6 came out in 2001 and lasted until 2006. That means if you’re running IE6, you probably haven’t bothered getting a new PC in the last 4 years (which is perfectly fine), getting a new operating system (you’ll get away with that) or updating your browser (that’s where the line has to be drawn).
For this post, i was trying to put together my own stats on just how many people are using IE6. Because this is a blog & i talk about technology most of the time, only about 4% of you use IE6 because you are fairly up to date and tech savvy. Looking at stats from theleavingcert.com, that rises to over 6% which is a bit closer to the 10.9% figure found on w3schools.com…
Over the last few days, news has emerged of Google getting hacked by the Chinese which in turn sparked them to start a ‘war’ against the chinese government. Ironically, the reason google was hacked was largely down to a vulnerability in Microsoft’s IE6.
Both German and French governments have since issued warnings to their people NOT to use IE6. Perhaps with this sort of mainstream attention, we may finally see the end of IE6 but ultimately, it’s not really IE6 that is the problem…. it’s the person using it. They need to update their attitude along with their browser and they’ll probably do so once their credit card details get swiped 😉
The source for most ie6 is corporate and government sourced browsers. Also there is a high reliance on ie6 in asia. There is a very good reason for this. The last version of windows that can be duplicated at will without restrictions only supports ie6. Hence it leads me to believe the real root of the ie6 curse not going away has its roots in software license fee dodging and software piracy.
I love IE6. I don’t see what the problem is. I’ve tried Firefox, IE7 and 8, Opera, and I always go back to IE6. It’s great. I’m one of that 4%. (O.o)