As far as I can tell there's no reason to get rid of IE6 unless you're going to also eliminate IE 7 and 8. Aside from CSS differences they are largely equivalent. Even IE9 doesn't support websockets or even half the HTML5 features of any other modern browser so for a modern web app you still need to drop IE support anyways.
One less browser to tweak and test. If you look at the numbers, IE7 is going away fast. That leaves IE8 and IE9.
I think writing for a cross section of IE9, and the more modern browsers (FF,Chrome, Opera), and some specialized code for IE8 where necessary, is a big improvement.
While IE7 (or IE8 for that matter) is clearly very far from being perfect, it's massively superior to IE6. Not just "CSS differences". I mean IE7 fixed bugs like select elements being always on top or the URL fragment (the #hash part) being submitted to the HTTP server as part of the URL. These issues are major pains in the back. Supporting IE7 is an awful lot easier than supporting IE6.
The things you have mentioned are rather trivial in the overall picture and really not a good enough reason to support IE7 but not IE6. The JavaScript engines are nearly identical and the broad set of technologies are the same.
For example, I consider not supporting SVG 10 years after standarization a major probleam. And only IE9 addressed that issue.
Also, JavaScript performance has improved in the newer versions of IE. I just ran into a situation where some DOM manipulation using jQuery was taking 35 seconds to complete in IE6, but took less than a second in IE8.
I ended up spending about four hours coming up with a bunch of optimizations that made it perform acceptably in IE6. I suppose you could argue that optimized code is a good thing, but personally I would have rather have spend that time working on something else.
> "Get the W3C standard changed to fit IE6" (listed as a goal of the site)
Please correct me if I got it wrong, but it seems HTML 5 is a bit similar -- ``let's make a list of features our sponsors support''. Only the sponsor base is wider.
I don't see the point for this site. It's just misleading people into believing that ie is good. What is the point? So that the elite few can chuckle at the sarcasm? Waste of bandwidth.
SaveIE6.com was put together as an April Fool’s joke by the uptime monitoring service Pingdom. Due to the tremendous interest it has received we have decided to keep this site up and running. Thanks everyone for the great feedback and for enjoying the irony!
I guess they just didn't remove the conflicting text in their footer.
"SaveIE6.com was put together as an April Fool’s joke by the uptime monitoring service Pingdom. Due to the tremendous interest it has received we have decided to keep this site up and running. Thanks everyone for the great feedback and for enjoying the irony!"
Perhaps it's because I'm British (we Brits can be a little particular about humour, especially irony), but I don't think a joke like that should explicitly identify itself as such.
77 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadSomething tells me 2K names captured across an entire year will not convince MS to change course with their own http://ie6countdown.com/
Something tells me no ones trying to get anyone to change their minds.
Just seeing someone refer to IE6 as "tabbed", albeit single-tabbed, made me realize how far we've come.
I think writing for a cross section of IE9, and the more modern browsers (FF,Chrome, Opera), and some specialized code for IE8 where necessary, is a big improvement.
While IE7 (or IE8 for that matter) is clearly very far from being perfect, it's massively superior to IE6. Not just "CSS differences". I mean IE7 fixed bugs like select elements being always on top or the URL fragment (the #hash part) being submitted to the HTTP server as part of the URL. These issues are major pains in the back. Supporting IE7 is an awful lot easier than supporting IE6.
For example, I consider not supporting SVG 10 years after standarization a major probleam. And only IE9 addressed that issue.
I ended up spending about four hours coming up with a bunch of optimizations that made it perform acceptably in IE6. I suppose you could argue that optimized code is a good thing, but personally I would have rather have spend that time working on something else.
This is just silly thing people can think of.
"Get the W3C standard changed to fit IE6" (listed as a goal of the site)
"Places Internet icon on desktop (blue e)" (listed as an IE6 feature)
"No need to install (it’s there already)" (another feature)
"Highly secure (has received lots of security updates)"
Tablerow, heh.
Please correct me if I got it wrong, but it seems HTML 5 is a bit similar -- ``let's make a list of features our sponsors support''. Only the sponsor base is wider.
it's running a lot longer than it was meant to be. Just like IE6
I guess they just didn't remove the conflicting text in their footer.
"SaveIE6.com was put together as an April Fool’s joke by the uptime monitoring service Pingdom. Due to the tremendous interest it has received we have decided to keep this site up and running. Thanks everyone for the great feedback and for enjoying the irony!"
Perhaps it's because I'm British (we Brits can be a little particular about humour, especially irony), but I don't think a joke like that should explicitly identify itself as such.
Ideally, you'd be right. The problem is that so many people also don't think a joke should explicitly identify itself by being funny.