Headache for those designing for IE6
An Announcement from Microsoft rolling up support for Windows 2000 and why this is bad news for Web Developers who design for IE6. We, that is the developers and companies who refuse to move away from IE, might soon have to choose which version of IE to develop for and my gut feeling is that even though IE7 will fix some issues, many developers will stick with IE6, meaning no advantage for web developers for some time to come, or should I say the advantages are there for the developers who move away from IE.
Firstly, email me right now, if you don’t know what a web browser is!
Microsoft now have a problem in switching people to XP, because many corporations won’t be quickly upgrading from Win2K because it works so well for them. Windows XP offers very little incentive and many companies will be hanging on to see what happens with Longhorn. This is bad news for web developers, the further spluttering of the dominant operating system upgrade path will filter through to the web industry unless many people move away from Internet Explorer. The IE browser and Windows are linked at the hip so it’s important to note that well over 50% of Microsoft customers will no longer be able to upgrade their default browser. Meaning not only would we have an IE/Mozilla/ two way split we also have an IE/IE/Mozilla spilt to deal with, unless of course Microsoft allow IE7 to filter to Windows 2000, which aint gonna happen!
Why is this bad for web developers? Quite simply new features and new scripting techniques cannot be used because they will fail to show properly in IE6, which would for some time still hold more market share than the new IE7 browser. Think of IE6 as the new Netscape4, they are both crap, not because they are bad but because they have been superseeded by newer browsers! It’s nearly 2006 now.
You’ll have noticed the Windows XP adverts on TV. Please for the love of the web, ditch IE while you have the chance, upgrade to Firefox instead 