Are you still using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6? Then hopefully this post can convince you to move to Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, for the sake of the web designers and for the sake of the world.
Microsoft wants to push Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade to their latest browser version even further by donating to “Feeding America” for every Internet Explorer 8 download through the BrowserForTheBetter website!
For every download to Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft will donate 8 meals to Feeding America and if you are upgrading from IE6 to IE8, Microsoft will double the donation.
Internet Explorer 6 is so old now and it has given lots of headaches to web designers & developers because:
- IE6 is insecure.
- IE6 doesn’t fully support new web features such as RSS, AJAX, etc.
- IE6 lacks PNG Transparency support.
- IE6 has lots of CSS issues.
- IE6 is filled with crashes.
If you have designed a website at least once, you must have felt the headache when every browser seems to render/display your site differently (assuming you weren’t designing a very basic website). It’s even more painful to try to make it IE6 compatible and it hinders you from making your website shine just the way you want it to be.
My church’s site looks so bad at IE6 (because it uses some cool animated effects) that I needed to display a warning if it detects an IE6 user coming to the site 
I’ve also checked that this blog looks a bit messed up (especially the sidebar) when viewed by IE6.
What makes it worse, there seems to be a great number of people using IE6 coming to this blog (and to yours too). Here is a screenshot on this blog’s traffic last month based on the version of Internet Explorer used:
1,959 out of around 27,000 visitors were actually still using Internet Explorer 6, a quite significant amount of users!
So if you are one of them and if you are reading this post, please upgrade your Internet Explorer to Internet Explorer 8 right now!
To upgrade your Internet Explorer to Internet Explorer 8 while donating for a good cause, please head off to BrowserForTheBetter.com
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I have been wanting IE 6 gone for some time. My blog doesn’t look great in IE6, although it is still readable. I guess Microsoft doesn’t want its old browser hanging around much longer, either.
Around 7.3% (2,834) of my visitors used IE 6 to visit my site, so it is still a good chunk of my visitors.
Already update my IE browser to IE8 but never use it. Don’t like the display and loading time. It takes too long.
I say we try and kill the beast. Exploit one of IE6’s vulnerabilities to force an install of IE8.
Personally, I will be asking people to upgrade from IE6 to firefox 3.5.
When I read the title I thought this was a joke. But I’m glad Microsoft is being so humanitarian. (Sort of.)
I think in my Firefox and Chrome world I forget IE even exists save for occasional reminders like this. Probably trying to block it from memory.
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I DETEST IE6. I actually hid this little banner on my site. Any user with IE6 sees a message saying “You must install an update in order to view this site correctly” (which is completely true, actually). It LOOKS like an active-x control, which is particularly funny…
And I get a few users running IE 5.5 *sigh*. Thats just…. Sad.
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I think I might ask you for that little banner to be used on one of my site
Good post.
People should think of upgrading to 8 or at least 7.
I am sure most of the users that are coming under 6.0 are not from their from home PC but from their office PC.
most of the offices are reluctant to upgrade to higher version.
Am i right?
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Unless if they don’t understand much about technology and just can’t be bothered updating something that they know already “works”
why don’t Microsoft just stop supporting it? Anyway, my latest post sees the funny side of it
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This is nice to hear..I too have written good number of post advising not use IE and the reasons behind it…
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I’m sorry Michael but as long as people are still using XP and before there is always going to be people using IE 6, in some cases there is no way to update, and it is so popular people will just have to design for it.
PS, i send you an email.
Yup I got it, thanks.
Yeah unless Microsoft force an update to a clean XP installation, which is going to create a controversial
You have through the rest of September, which is National Hunger Action Month, to download and install IE 8 from http://www.browserforthebetter.com, so tell your friends to get IE 8! And remember you have to download AND install IE 8 in order for the donations to count! Thanks for spreading the word!
– Jake
MSFT Internet Explorer Outreach Team
Thanks for coming by, Jake. I hope that many people will support the IE8 movement!
Most cyber cafe in india use I.E. 5 , 6. because these are slow and don’t have tab browsing and save using too much bandwidth. Their are millions of people using those I.E. still.
I am downloading it now.
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I am surprised to hear that there are many persons still using IE6????? whats going on …. Its the IE8 gen dude … wake up ditch that IE6 into the dust bin and upgrade.
At least for the sake of Our nation.
BTW jake_ie8team I will definitely spread the word to all of my frnds, neighbours, relatives and even in my university ….. the word is
” download and install IE 8 from http://www.browserforthebetter.com “
LOLS, I feel what you feel too. Keeping the IE6 is the worst thing since I have to make sure my websites are compatible with them by creating a seperate CSS file for it.. IE 6 sucks and I thought Microsoft can create a something that would say upgrading to a higher version is required…
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and that’s coming from a software developer (I’m not a designer) but I know the pain of designing/tweaking a few sites
I’m not a fan of explorer and I have never been. I’ll take Firefox or Opera any day. That being said, this is getting ridiculous. Update your browser already and see the web like you’re supposed to. I’m convinced!
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IE 6 is very old and outdated version of browser.But it is still alive in the lap of some techies and not techies.
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More or less I hate it because my site looks broken in it
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I don’t even use IE. It’s simply a waste of time to use a most popular hackable and crackable browser.
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