It’s been a couple of years since the height of the “kill IE6″ web campaigns, and it took that long to hold a funeral that finally seals its fate.
Of course, the IE6 Funeral is an arbitrary event held by the Aten Design Group last March 4, and this doesn’t really eradicate the browser on computers that can’t upgrade.
Over at TechCrunch, commenter Jeff Carlson jokes: “So if someone uses IE6 to browse the web tomorrow, will their web browser be a Zomb-ie6 browser?” You could say that. After all, IE6 is way past its expiration date, sucking the brains out of web designers and developers with its buggy, unstable, insecure features from an ugly past.
Even Microsoft acknowledges it’s time for IE6 to go, as it actually sent over flowers and this note:
Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft
On March 13, Google will end IE6 support on YouTube, following the March 1 pull-out for Google Docs and Google Sites. Gmail and Google Calendar are next on the list, slated by the end of the year.
Combined with the European government security warnings to upgrade browsers, could Google’s systematic phase-out be the final nail in the IE6 coffin, or is this slow death going to take at least another year?
I really hope this is it.
The Apple stories just don’t stop coming, do they? Here’s yet another provocative issue concerning the company, but this time with web development: the iPhone is the new Internet Explorer 6, according to Peter Paul Koch.
The iPhone has become an obsession. If we don’t pay attention, we’ll have a mobile web that only works on the iPhone. And then we’ll have the real mobile web that wasn’t made by us and doesn’t give a shit about web standards and best practices.
Worse, it seems web developers are happy with this state of affairs. It seems web developers are congratulating themselves on excluding 85% of the smartphone users. They certainly never bother to check their sites in S60 WebKit, the largest smartphone browser in the world.
Fucking dimwits.
We’re doing exactly the same as ten years ago. We now say “iPhone” instead of “IE6,” but otherwise nothing’s changed.
No, wait, there’s one more change: the iPhone has far less mobile market share now than IE6 had desktop share back then.
The once most advanced browser is now the most hated, and the same fate could happen with the iPhone and its mobile web browser. However, given that they were made by two very different companies—the oft-hated Microsoft and the much-adored Apple—it’s hard to imagine the revolutionary smartphone gaining a stigma someday. An interesting achievement if that does somehow happen, but what an unfortunate future that would be.
Still, I have two points to make. First: I’m glad that a reputable voice is finally calling out this obsession with creating custom-tailored websites for the iPhone, when it’s supposed to have the most advanced browser, displaying pages as they normally would on a regular computer. Chances are you don’t have to. That’s what the multitouch zoom gesture is for, so that the screen size wouldn’t be such a hindrance.
Second: hype, here we go again. PPK draws back the curtain and tells us that there are other devices far more popular than the iPhone, yet the buzz about mobile web development is strongest with iPhone apps and iPhone app-like websites. It goes against the very idea of web standards, of making websites work in as many platforms as possible, not just what gains the most attention and is considered cool. (As an aside: what can be said about implementing CSS3 properties via browser-specific extensions? Is it the same thing?)
Finally, a minor third point: Koch isn’t addressing every mobile web developer in his article, just the ones that are so caught up in this iPhone-loving bubble that it’d be a shame when they mislead impressionable developers branching out to the mobile arena.
And a far worse shame if because of the hype we somehow get stuck in the rut that is IE6 all over again.
Web standardistas lament the outdated HTML and CSS support by IE6, but the biggest reason you should drop the browser stat is security, security, security. And if the following evidence from Google, the governments of Germany and France, and Microsoft itself do not convince you, I’m not sure there’s much else that will:
- The Chinese cyber attacks on Google (and at least 20 other large companies) got through because the exploited code worked only in IE6, on Windows 2000 and XP.
- The German and French governments have both asked its citizens to upgrade their IE6 browsers to prevent attacks happening to them.
- Microsoft released a security advisory warning against attacks specifically against Internet Explorer 6.
Mashable includes the three items above in its list, but the last one is the most compelling:
This will not be the last massive IE6 security breach: This flaw was unknown before Google’s groundbreaking China announcement. And it’s not the first flaw ever found with the browser — there are at least 142 vulnerabilities in IE6, 22 of which are not yet patched. Would you use armor that had 142 weak spots?
Internet Explorer 6 is a run-down browser with very little support for exploits. It’s more costly for businesses to leave it lying around like a ticking time bomb than exert effort to upgrade their systems.
The good news is, we’re getting bigger institutions stepping up against IE6. Let’s hope their spheres of influence really are that effective. You can’t get much bigger than European governments, Microsoft, or Google.
To commemorate the closing of internet dinosaur and free web hosting service Geocities today, October 26, geeky web comic XKCD “redesigned” its site to match the horrible aesthetic (or lack thereof) rampant during the ’90s. Low-fi images (including the requisite “under construction” sign), web-safe colors, <table>s, <blink>, <marquee>, a hit counter, and a “best viewed in Netscape Navigator” disclaimer—it’s all in there. I think the only thing missing is an actual comic about Geocities itself.
Is it safe to say we are finally rid of those horrible-looking and horribly-functioning things now that Geocities is gone? We will always have that side of the spectrum. But it’s a good reminder of how far we’ve come:
- IE6 is now the most outdated browser instead of the most modern. (That doesn’t make its continued existence a good thing though.)
- If you disable images and stylesheets, webpages will make sense.
- Descriptive hyperlinks matter (mostly to curry favor with Google, but still).
- Despite Yahoo!’s terrifying propensity to run its acquisitions to the ground (worried about Flickr and Delicious yet?), it’s easier and cheaper than ever to run your own website.
Still, the timeless adage remains: back up and be prepared! You never know when life will go Geocities on you.
I don’t think that Simler will be a Facebook or Twitter killer, but there are several features that interest me enough to not stop thinking about it. (That’s gotta be a good sign right? Knowing how that went for Twitter?)
- Instead of reading and discussing topics with your friends because they are your friends, Simler lets you find the topics (tags) that interest you, so you can consume and create content under them. You could say it’s a reformatted message board or chatroom, so is it really a new thing?
- The tagging concept keeps me on the fence as well. I like the idea of trying to define yourself with these keywords, but the novelty wears off when you realize it’s not much different from the way we list interests in virtual profiles and slambooks. And what does it mean when I add the IE6 tag to my profile? It definitely does not mean I like using it! What about the “Awkward Silence” tag? Eventually it will become a race to see who comes up with the wittiest name.
- I’m not sure it will actually scale. Will there be a way to organize the tags a user collects as time passes? Surely some people’s egos will find anything less than a thousand tags to be insufficient to describe their interesting selves. Then again, the Twitter era answer to that is: when there’s an API, there’s a way.
Simler poses interesting questions regarding how we pursue our interests on the Web. Do you join groups because your friends are in it? the cool kids are in it? or because you’re interested in the discussions? Are you tired of the insipid updates filling up their live streams? Should you take a more active role in choosing the content you see? Is the level of control for doing so enough?
IE6 Must Die, the title of Mashable’s latest post, hit the Twitter trending topics (it’s the new “Digg frontpage”) a few days ago. It’s really a good thing raise awareness for the browser we’ve been dying to get rid of for years now. But as much we should appreciate every little bit towards this goal, we should pay more attention as to why IE6 isn’t dead yet.
This Digg Blog post, Much Ado About IE6, sheds a good amount of light into that. Those who use IE6 to access Digg were also invited to answer a short, three-question survey that would hopefully reveal why they’re still using the outdated browser.
The results are thus: (a) More respondents used IE6 at work: a whopping 90% compared to 56% at home. (b) When asked why they don’t use another browser, majority say they can’t: either they don’t have sufficient computer access or workplace rights to do so, or the computer they’re using can’t handle modern browsers.
Granted, Digg is not a mainstream source of statistics. The amount of IE6 visitors are only at 10%, and more importantly, this social voting/bookmarking site has a strong geek slant. We can still learn from this unofficial study. As Mark Trammell concludes in the blog post:
Giving them a message saying, “Hey! Upgrade!” in this case is not only pointless; it’s sadistic.
How about we stop focusing on those who refuse to upgrade and try to help those who are simply unable to? All the campaign sites against IE6 don’t amount to much until they figure that out.
Just like the future of web typography means teaming up with the big-name font foundries to come up with a real solution to font embedding on web pages, eliminating IE6 would require reaching out to big businesses and convincing them to do large-scale upgrades in the workplace. On the Web, that’s already begun: we have the likes of Google and Facebook urging people to upgrade as they are dropping support for IE6.
But for non-technology companies, who’s going to reach out to them? Microsoft? W3C? WaSP? Assuming we found someone who will do the dirty deed, can they be convinced to drop a significant chunk of their market? Assuming the dirty doers manage that, can that significant chunk of their market be also convinced to stop accessing their sites using IE6, when in all probability they can’t? Should they be ignored?
The vicious cycle continues. (So much for freedom.)
In yet another interesting turn of events, two of the biggest issues when it comes to web design and development make way for the newer, better versions of themselves.
Goodbye, IE6!
Asa Dotzler of Mozilla reports that IE6 usage has now been overtaken by IE8, based on the browser tracking data from Net Applications. This happened as recently as June 2009.
Of course, specific demographics on your respective websites will vary, but this trend is a sign of things to come. And we’re not talking about years anymore, but months.
I’d have to commend Internet Explorer team on their great marketing efforts to improve the IE8 adoption rate. Even if Microsoft’s latest browser is up to snuff compared to the likes of Firefox, WebKit (Safari/Chrome), and Opera—see these comparison charts for HTML5—it’s a big step.
This is it, guys. Freedom.
Goodbye, XHTML2!
Slashdot reports that the XHTML2 Working Group charter is expiring by the end of 2009, and it will not be renewed. The W3C has also decided to pour more resources into the HTML5 working group.
Those who weren’t paying attention to this seeming sibling rivalry between XHTML2 and HTML5 can now rest easy. Though I’m not sure if XHTML2 ever stood a chance given how all the web gurus were backing HTML5 as early as last year. Google is on board, too. And everybody else is starting cash in on its growing popularity.
The good thing about XTHML was that it enforced well-formed markup, with strict provisions for lowercase code, quoted attributes, and trailing slashes for empty elements. Thankfully HTML5 this coding convention too, and can be served as a serialized XML document dubbed XHTML5.
At least we wouldn’t be forced to choose between the two anymore. Competition is good, but not here. We need standards.
Unwanted competition eliminated
How convenient is it that we have two less things to worry about now? Very, but now that they’re gone, it’s time to make up for lost time:
- Microformats. (This is the easiest to jump into.)
- Fluid layouts.
@font-face and custom web fonts: this time it’s not just the browser makers that web designers and developers are up against, but the type foundries. TypeKit and Kernest are attempting to bridge that gap.- CSS nested declarations, variables, and operations: LESS
- CSS if statements: Modernizr
- Animated PNGs.
Exciting times, people!
Andy Clarke of For A Beautiful Web has presented a stylesheet for the web browser we haven’t been able to push off the provebial cliff: Internet Explorer 6.
When I asked myself why people visit my sites, and the ones that I make for other people, the answer was always “for the content”. Content that is almost always written words and that means type.
That is why I’m now advocating to my clients (and to you), that where feasible, not to waste hours in time and a client’s money on lengthy workarounds in an unnecessary attempt at cross-browser perfection. Instead, you and I should provide simple but effectively designed HTML elements. This means just great typography for headings, paragraphs, quotations, lists, tables and forms and no styling of layout.
But this idea is not new; this Universal IE6 CSS file contains just enough rules for a practically unstyled but easy to navigate website. You’re basically giving websites loaded in a low-fi browser a low-fi experience. Examples here, here, and here.
Despite its waning popularity, we seem to have amassed a whole buffet of solutions to the shortcomings of IE6, ranging from the hostile upgrade messages and campaigns to the subtle conditional stylesheets and scripts.
I can just imagine someone creating one of those personality quizzes out of this whole debacle: which IE6 compatibility fix are you? There’s an idea.
But really, dealing with IE6 and somesuch boils down to principle and circumstance. Can your clients and your conscience accept barely recognizable version of their sites in twentysomething percent of their audience? Is your sanity more precious than squishing mysterious bugs? Or do you feel like throwing some humor in?
Let me know if someone’s actually made a personality quiz about this; I’d love to take it.
Eric Meyer has started poring over the WaSP community’s suggestions for CSS3 with a series of posts on his weblog—3 so far in less than a week. The original feedback compiled by Fantasai is a monstrous read in itself, but all these are worth perusing if you care remotely about the future of web design.
It’s comforting to have one of the gurus like him to really go over this. Although he didn’t promise to address every single point on the list, what I’m seeing so far is extremely comprehensive. More importantly, we have a strong figurehead that’s rolling up his sleeves and setting up these blog posts as the stage for discussion with people who are not necessarily involved with the W3C and other stakeholders like the browser vendors.
Between debating over specific CSS features (e.g., containing floats, center positioning, selector blocks) and looking at the bigger picture…
Maybe CSS isn’t the place for this. Maybe there needs to be a new layout language that can be defined and implemented without regard to the constraints of the existing CSS syntax rules, without worrying about backwards compatibility. Maybe that way we can not only get strong layout but also arbitrary shapes, thus leaving behind the rectangular prison that’s defined the web for almost two decades.
I don’t have a concrete idea to propose here, because it’s not up to us any more. A solution was worked out over the course of several years and then found wanting by the implementors. Really, it’s up to the implementors to figure it out now. I personally would like to just lock the browser teams from Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and Apple in a room and not let them out until they’ve defined something that works and they’ve all agreed to implement soonest. I might even supply food and water.
…we have to keep talking and stay restless but hopeful. We may not be able to give the final word on the next version of HTML and CSS and the web browsers, but we can talk about what could go into them while the W3C listens.
IE6 is declining. HTML5 is gaining traction. JavaScript libraries and CSS frameworks abstract the process of squashing browser bugs and incompatibilities. And progressive enhancement reassures us that we don’t have to serve up exactly the same features in ancient browsers.
And maybe we can stop acting like the current technologies are our handicap and take the plunge. Okay, maybe splashing water all over might not be a good idea at once. Try dipping your toes. Try your left leg. Try wading. The key is to at least try.
Some chunks of good browser-related news at the turn of the new year: Firefox browser usage is more than 20% now, while Internet Explorer, especially IE6, is declining—forcibly and otherwise!
Firefox market shares are rise, IE shares decline
Browser market share from October to December 2008
For the first time ever, Net Applications is reporting that Mozilla Firefox market shares passed 20% while Microsoft Internet Explorer dropped below 70%. Four major factors are said to explain Firefox growth, from the US elections to longer weekends/holidays, and higher unemployment—all US-centric factors.
Browser version market share December 2008
Here’s a chart by browser version. IE7 remains the dominant browser in the market, while IE6 is still at number 2, having almost the same percentage as all Firefox versions combined. But it has declined from the 21-22% range in the last quarter of 2008.
Google Chrome barely leaves a dent at 1%, but surpasses Opera at 0.7%.
Google urges IE6 users to upgrade
Get faster Gmail notice in IE6 (image courtesy of Ars Technica)
According to TG Daily, Google’s Gmail is now sporting a message specifically for IE6 users to upgrade and “get faster Gmail”.
The link leads to a page that promotes Chrome and Firefox 3. “Browsers are getting faster and better at running web applications like Google Mail that use browser technology to its limits,” the page reads. “In order to get the best experience possible and make Google Mail run an average of twice as fast, we suggest that you upgrade your browser to one of the fastest Google Mail supported browsers that work on Windows.” The page offers direct download links for Firefox 3 and Chrome. IE7 and Apple’s Safari are listed as supported Gmail browsers.
Several modern browsers are listed in the linked page, and unfortunately Opera is no longer qualified on that list. At least Google is trying to be fair by mentioning competitors to its own browser, Chrome. More importantly, at least it realizes that the browser share for such an old and run-down browser are alarmingly high. Looks like it’s getting costly to maintain backwards compatibility for JavaScript-intensive web applications like Gmail.
This is not the first time that a large company is forcing its hand. Apple’s MobileMe recommends only 2 browsers: Safari, which it owns, and Firefox.
There is hope!
With the combination of natural factors and some nudging from the big, influential companies like Google and Apple, the obsolete browser that is IE6 might just retire sooner than we expect, sooner than never.
Between Apple computers gaining popularity and Google remaining just as powerful, their influence on which becomes the default browser in controlled environments will be needed to level the playing field, ultimately pushing the capabilities of web browsers forward.
