Is Internet Explorer 6 dead yet?
The Internet Explorer 6 web browser, or IE6 for short, has been obsolete since 2006, yet many users and companies are still using the broken web browser, either because they don’t know that it is obsolete or they merely choose not to perform the 5 minute upgrade to IE 7 or IE 8.
Here is a recent article from the popular Mashable.com website chronicling the most recent issues regarding the IE6 debacle.
http://mashable.com/2009/08/18/ie6-offenders/
There is a new website, http://ie6offenders.com/ , which publicly lists all persons and companies known to still be using the obsolete IE6 web browser. This website is intended to promote the rightful end of IE6. The IE6 problem is such a stumbling block for the advancement of the Internet that the web design community has been forced to resort to public humiliation in order to persuade people and companies to upgrade their web browsers.
Most modern websites will not display properly in IE6. The reason for this is because IE6 was released in 2000, making it almost 10 years old. Internet technologies have experienced a multitude of evolutions and re-evolutions during that timespan, rendering IE6 all but useless. Web designers have had to produce laborious hacks and backwards compatibility programming in order to insure that websites can still be viewed adequately in IE6.
The current web browsers that are included in standard web design testing are Firefox, Internet Explorer 7/8, and Safari 3+. Many web design companies have dropped support for IE6 and will no longer perform backwards compatiability hacks in their web design development.
