# Microsoft wants to kill off IE6



## MitchZer0 (Mar 8, 2011)

IE6 vs. The World, and it's about damn time Microsoft did this.

So, your opinions?


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## Aden (Mar 8, 2011)

My opinions? What can be said that hasn't been ranted to death about a thousand times?
I'm glad it's going. Though I don't spend much effort on IE6 compatibility with my websites beyond the basics.


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## Darkfoxx (Mar 8, 2011)

I have no opinion. I have been using Firefox for longer then I can remember.


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## LizardKing (Mar 8, 2011)

Yeah. It's for the best.

(Fun fact: Once I turned javascript back on it managed 12/100 on the Acid3 test)


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## LLiz (Mar 8, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> Lizardking


 
What's that weird grey thing in your address bar?


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## LizardKing (Mar 8, 2011)

LLiz said:


> What's that weird grey thing in your address bar?


 
Something I installed ages ago and can't quite remember what it's called but I'm pretty sure it's useful.

And it's still too big. Augh.


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## LLiz (Mar 8, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> Something I installed ages ago and can't quite remember what it's called but I'm pretty sure it's useful.
> 
> And it's still too big. Augh.


 
Ahh, yeah, I know those things! They scan your browsing history and suggest things you might like to buy... right?


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## LizardKing (Mar 8, 2011)

LLiz said:


> Ahh, yeah, I know those things! They scan your browsing history and suggest things you might like to buy... right?


 
Oh fuck no. No shit like that.


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## LLiz (Mar 8, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> Oh fuck no. No shit like that.


 
LOL I was only joking! 
Its just surprising when I see something on someone's computer and I have no idea what it is and what it does.


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## Runefox (Mar 8, 2011)

The freaking provincial government is at least using IE7 now. It's about time it went down the tubes. It's 3 revisions behind and a decade old. The web has been held back for long enough.

I'm designing a website for a government agency right now that I'm throwing IE6 support out the window for. It would just take too much to bring it in line - I tried for a while there, but no. Just no. Nothing makes it worth it. They themselves say that nobody they know of (including their userbase) uses IE6 and wholeheartedly agreed. Instead of displaying the site properly, I let it display broken and give a pretty little box politely informing the user to get a modern browser, complete with links.


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## Volkodav (Mar 8, 2011)

who the fuck still uses Internet Explorer?


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## Aden (Mar 8, 2011)

Runefox said:


> I'm designing a website for a government agency right now that I'm throwing IE6 support out the window for. It would just take too much to bring it in line - I tried for a while there, but no. Just no. Nothing makes it worth it. They themselves say that nobody they know of (including their userbase) uses IE6 and wholeheartedly agreed. Instead of displaying the site properly, I let it display broken and give a pretty little box politely informing the user to get a modern browser, complete with links.


 
That's my preferred method (well, I fix the major IE6 bugs first like "staircase" floats). Thank you for helping make the internet a better place c:

\fuck if I'm doing all those png fixes >:T


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## Shiroka (Mar 8, 2011)

Oh dear... finally! We'll finally be able to use CSS to its (mostly) full capacities without fear of alienating a portion of our viewers!!

I mean, if this isn't a good indicator on how backward (and awkward) IE6 is, I don't know what is!


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## Runefox (Mar 8, 2011)

Aden said:


> That's my preferred method (well, I fix the major IE6 bugs first like &quot;staircase&quot; floats). Thank you for helping make the internet a better place c:
> 
> \fuck if I'm doing all those png fixes >:T


 
PNG8+alpha = <3  Screw GIF and its inefficient compression, 256-colour cap and index transparency. Screw JPEG and its inefficiency with low-resolution images. PNG8+alpha is the best thing for web design since sliced bread, and the option to switch up to 16-bit or swap the alpha channel for index transparency if you really want to makes it amazing.

  Though I am a little excited about WebP. Lossy compression that's leagues better than JPEG in IQ and filesize, PLUS alpha. So alpha-transparent banner images no longer need a lossless PNG (which aren't suited for large images).  Oh yeah, and CSS sprites. CSS sprites are also <3


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## K.A.I.S.E.R- X (Mar 8, 2011)

Not surprised. Hell who uses that outdated internet browser besides those who still use an old OS or those who never update :V . I would rather use Safari (lol) then IE any day and that is still bad =/


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## AshleyAshes (Mar 8, 2011)

Clayton said:


> who the fuck still uses Internet Explorer?



45% of the internet does.  Which is the largest portion of the internet.  That's who.


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## Runefox (Mar 8, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> 45% of the internet does.  Which is the largest portion of the internet.  That's who.


 Yeah, I was thinking about pointing that out, though the percentage using IE6 is insignificant.


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## Vo (Mar 8, 2011)

IT departments the world over will rejoice.


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## Aden (Mar 8, 2011)

Jack.is said:


> IT departments the world over will rejoice.


 
Corporate workers whose IT departments didn't want to upgrade and whose computers prevented them from downloading other browsers will rejoice


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## Runefox (Mar 8, 2011)

Aden said:


> Corporate workers whose IT departments didn't want to upgrade and whose computers prevented them from downloading other browsers will rejoice


 Corporate bean-counters, however, will not rejoice, because their proprietary built-for-ie6 web applications will need to be rewritten.

Web developers of the modern world will rejoice.


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## Aden (Mar 8, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Corporate bean-counters, however, will not rejoice, because their proprietary built-for-ie6 web applications will need to be rewritten.


 
bawww

I can't believe how many people in the realty industry (my primary kind of client, it seems) need to utilize sites and utilities that refuse to let you past their 1990s-era splash page if you're not using IE. It's fucking pathetic.


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## net-cat (Mar 9, 2011)

Runefox said:


> I'm designing a website for a government agency right now that I'm throwing IE6 support out the window for. It would just take too much to bring it in line - I tried for a while there, but no. Just no. Nothing makes it worth it. They themselves say that nobody they know of (including their userbase) uses IE6 and wholeheartedly agreed. Instead of displaying the site properly, I let it display broken and give a pretty little box politely informing the user to get a modern browser, complete with links.


The extent of my IE6 compatibility is to use Plain Old Semantic HTML and a JavaScript platform like jQuery or prototype.js. That usually mostly works and I don't even bother testing. The few few XP machines I have (HTPC and a VS2005 environment) are running IE8 and I'm too damn lazy to install a virtual machine just to test IE6.

Of course, now your "polite" upgrade reminder can link back to Microsoft's own webpage about how much IE6 sucks and why you shouldn't be using it.



Jack.is said:


> IT departments the world over will rejoice.


The companies with upper management that want to upgrade (or don't care) have done so already. 

The companies with upper management that doesn't want to upgrade will hold out until the bitter end, waiting until there is a massive security issue that can't be fixed by applying ever more restrictive firewalls and group policies and Microsoft tells them to take their money and shove it up their ass. (Yes, it will happen eventually.)



Runefox said:


> Corporate bean-counters, however, will not rejoice, because their proprietary built-for-ie6 web applications will need to be rewritten.


Naturally. That is usually the reason they hold back their entire company. (Gotta have a standard operating environment for everyone ever from the secretaries to the engineers, ya know?) They usually have some pet application that was hot shit back in 1997 when it was built for IE4 that they just can't bear to part with.



Aden said:


> I can't believe how many people in the realty industry (my primary kind of client, it seems) need to utilize sites and utilities that refuse to let you past their 1990s-era splash page if you're not using IE. It's fucking pathetic.


Don't be silly. Most of them will let you in if you're using Netscape Navigator 4.0 or later, too.


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## Runefox (Mar 9, 2011)

net-cat said:


> Don't be silly. Most of them will let you in if you're using Netscape Navigator 4.0 or later, too.


 Right after you choose "Frames" or "No Frames".


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## LLiz (Mar 9, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Right after you choose "Frames" or "No Frames".


 
Please also make sure that you have cookies enabled.


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## Leafblower29 (Mar 9, 2011)

Maybe MS should just give up on IE.


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## LizardKing (Mar 9, 2011)

Leafblower29 said:


> Maybe MS should just give up on IE.




Stop putting a bloody scrollbar there you stupid thing


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## Aden (Mar 9, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Right after you choose "Frames" or "No Frames".


 
Hey man, check out these awesome 3D spinning cursors you can download!


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## Runefox (Mar 9, 2011)

Aden said:


> Hey man, check out these awesome 3D spinning cursors you can download!


 Dude you should see this awesome 3D starfield Java applet I put on my Geocities website! It's right next to the VRML model of an F-14.


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## Aden (Mar 9, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Dude you should see this awesome 3D starfield Java applet I put on my Geocities website!


 
It blends in so well with your falling snow repeating gif background!


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## LizardKing (Mar 9, 2011)

Aden said:


> It blends in so well with your falling snow repeating gif background!



I found *out* how to do different font styles!

Some of these will perfectly complement the flaming skulls on either side of my title page!


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## Runefox (Mar 9, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> Some of these will perfectly complement the flaming skulls on either side of my title page!


 Don't forget to put up big flashing UNDER CONSTRUCTION signs on pages that aren't finished yet!


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## Riley (Mar 9, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Don't forget to put up big flashing UNDER CONSTRUCTION signs on pages that aren't finished yet!


 But make sure to give the user some nice, low-bitrate music to listen to while they're on the page.

I think I'm actually part of the problem, here; I've still got IE6 installed on my computer.  I used it to download Firefox and never touched it again.  Now it just crashes as soon as I open it.


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## Ozriel (Mar 9, 2011)

Nothing of Value has been lost?


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## net-cat (Mar 9, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Don't forget to put up big flashing UNDER CONSTRUCTION signs on pages that aren't finished yet!


Hell, throw a few in on pages that _are_ finished for good measure!


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## Aden (Mar 9, 2011)

<td><marquee><font size="4" color="red">Stop making fun of IE and bad websites guys!!!! </font></marquee></td>


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## Corto (Mar 9, 2011)

Leafblower29 said:


> Maybe MS should just give up on IE.


 
Uh why? It was already stated in this same thread that just a little under half of the internet userbase use IE. That'd be like McDonalds no longer making fries because fuck all.


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## Runefox (Mar 10, 2011)

net-cat said:


> Hell, throw a few in on pages that _are_ finished for good measure!


 Don't forget to add the Mission Impossible theme to pages that have the UNDER CONSTRUCTION graphics to really convey that sense of danger!



Riley said:


> But make sure to give the user some nice, low-bitrate music to listen to while they're on the page.


 Man, I remember back when I used to play Fighters Anthology, a guy was  talking about the best way to embed the Top Gun anthem into a Geocities  page for their squadron ("guild"), and I suggested MIDI, but he was  like "NAW, the MIDI is totally off, gotta put up the recording", and so  it took at least ten minutes to load the page all the while low-bitrate  music stammered through occasionally while massive BMP images resized  with HTML slowly filtered in line-by-line. Beautiful.


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## net-cat (Mar 10, 2011)

Runefox said:


> Don't forget to add the Mission Impossible theme to pages that have the UNDER CONSTRUCTION graphics to really convey that sense of danger!


Don't forget to add height="1" width="1" autostart="true" to the <embed> tag to spare your viewers the gawdy-looking media player controls that completely wreck the flow of your page.


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## LizardKing (Mar 10, 2011)

Also remember that it's best to have as much content as possible on a single page to save switching between multiple pages, and centred horizontally.

And blue text is always awesome.


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## Aden (Mar 10, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> Also remember that it's best to have as much content as possible on a single page to save switching between multiple pages, and centred horizontally.


 
Agreed. Just use #id links for your navigation. Your users will love it!


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## VoidBat (Mar 10, 2011)

I thought someone already had glued it shut with a load.
Welp, guess I was wrong.


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## net-cat (Mar 10, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> Also remember that it's best to have as much content as possible on a single page to save switching between multiple pages, and centred horizontally.
> 
> And blue text is always awesome.





Aden said:


> Agreed. Just use #id links for your navigation. Your users will love it!


Also remember that fixed-width animated GIF files make a good substitute for <hr>. Blood-dripping or rotating colored lights are fine for personal webpages. However, scrolling gradients are recommended for that extra professional flare.

If you're the obsessive compulsive type that needs to have the text contained within the boundaries of your horizontal dividers, enclosing your content in a table will do the trick.

<table border="0"><tr><td width="1"> {your content here} </td></tr></table>

Note the width="1" attribute. Remember that most modern browsers will automatically fit the table around your widest element, which should be your horizontal divider image. If your content has other tables in it, that's okay. Browsers will happily render nested tables, though you will need to watch their width to make sure it doesn't widen your outer table.

After writing that, I feel the need to purge myself.


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## SnowFox (Mar 10, 2011)

Is it too soon to be displaying nag messages for IE 7 users to upgrade? because I've been doing it for a while, but I'm not sure if it's really justified yet. It's all I could manage to resist making the messages overly sarcastic and condescending.


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## Vo (Mar 10, 2011)

net-cat said:


> Also remember that fixed-width animated GIF files make a good substitute for <hr>. Blood-dripping or rotating colored lights are fine for personal webpages. However, scrolling gradients are recommended for that extra professional flare.
> 
> If you're the obsessive compulsive type that needs to have the text contained within the boundaries of your horizontal dividers, enclosing your content in a table will do the trick.
> 
> ...


 
Don't stop there. Tables are perfect for defining the structure of the entire web page. The more you have nested, the more awesome you are.


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## net-cat (Mar 10, 2011)

SnowFox said:


> Is it too soon to be displaying nag messages for IE 7 users to upgrade? because I've been doing it for a while, but I'm not sure if it's really justified yet. It's all I could manage to resist making the messages overly sarcastic and condescending.


Depends, really.

Doing it "because I don't like IE" is kind of dumb.

Doing it because it's costing you a more resources to maintain IE7 compatibility than you hope to get in return from IE7 users is a much better reason.


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## SnowFox (Mar 10, 2011)

net-cat said:


> Depends, really.
> 
> Doing it "because I don't like IE" is kind of dumb.
> 
> Doing it because it's costing you a more resources to maintain IE7 compatibility than you hope to get in return from IE7 users is a much better reason.


 
I mostly do it because I'm tired of wasting so much time doing things, then spending twice that time again trying to get it to work/display properly in anything <IE8. Also because I no longer have access to any machines with IE 7 on them to test with. I have an IE6 VM which seems to expire every couple of months and I'm too lazy to download more than one version.

If it was my own personal site I'd probably just 403 any IE user-agent for the hell of it :V, but I don't _really_ want to piss too many people off.
So far this month IE 7 is about 15-20% of visitors and IE 6 is <10%

My main reason for asking is if I'm being unreasonable to expect people to have ditched IE 7 by now.


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## Aden (Mar 10, 2011)

SnowFox said:


> I mostly do it because I'm tired of wasting so much time doing things, then spending twice that time again trying to get it to work/display properly in anything <IE8. Also because I no longer have access to any machines with IE 7 on them to test with. I have an IE6 VM which seems to expire every couple of months and I'm too lazy to download more than one version.


 
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php

Either way, I don't seem to have _that_ many problems with IE7 or IE6. Layouts are usually pretty solid across the board (except for that staircase bug in lesser IEs). Biggest problem is god damn IE6 png transparency - which I just don't care about dealing with anymore so I don't c:


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## net-cat (Mar 10, 2011)

The other thing to consider is "functional is good enough."

If all you're serving up is articles and relatively static content, then you've got no business writing a website that isn't at least usable in IE6/IE7. Hell, if you do it right, it be usable in lynx or Mosaic without any additional effort on your part. Granted, under those browsers, it doesn't have look good at all. But as long as the article text and some basic navigation links show up relatively unoccluded somewhere on the page, it "works." At that point, you can toss up a "this will look better if you use a newer browser" message. (When I do that, I usually link to Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera.)

Now, if you're doing fully fledged web apps, _that's_ when the real pain in the ass starts.


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## SnowFox (Mar 10, 2011)

Aden said:


> http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php


kind of useful, but it's just an image :[



Aden said:


> Either way, I don't seem to have _that_ many problems with IE7 or IE6. Layouts are usually pretty solid across the board (except for that staircase bug in lesser IEs). Biggest problem is god damn IE6 png transparency - which I just don't care about dealing with anymore so I don't c:


 
Those are my favorite. I few years back I spent a very long time carefully creating hundreds of png8 images in photoshop so the transparency would work in IE6 without having to use a filter hack. I kind of regret it now.



net-cat said:


> The other thing to consider is "functional is good enough."
> 
> If all you're serving up is articles and relatively static content, then you've got no business writing a website that isn't at least usable in IE6/IE7. Hell, if you do it right, it be usable in lynx or Mosaic without any additional effort on your part. Granted, under those browsers, it doesn't have look good at all. But as long as the article text and some basic navigation links show up relatively unoccluded somewhere on the page, it "works." At that point, you can toss up a "this will look better if you use a newer browser" message. (When I do that, I usually link to Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera.)
> 
> Now, if you're doing fully fledged web apps, _that's_ when the real pain in the ass starts.


 
It's never unusable in IE6/7, it just looks a bit shit and I resorted to writing a separate css menu stylesheet for each IE version. Without the IE hacks I'd say a lot of it looks/works better in lynx than IE 6! 



net-cat said:


> (When I do that, I usually link to Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera.)



yeah same, but I add in safari too just to make IE look that bit more outnumbered.


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## net-cat (Mar 10, 2011)

SnowFox said:


> Those are my favorite. I few years back I spent a very long time carefully creating hundreds of png8 images in photoshop so the transparency would work in IE6 without having to use a filter hack. I kind of regret it now.


Ouch. (Especially since there are ways of scripting that.)


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## SnowFox (Mar 10, 2011)

net-cat said:


> Ouch. (Especially since there are ways of scripting that.)


 
Well yes, but I was working with a total mess of original images of all different sizes and resolutions (and images that had been cut out then saved and re-saved as jpgs D: ) so I was individually cropping and sizing them (or re-cutting them out from their fuzzy jpg backgrounds D: ).

If there's a way of automating something like that please tell me!


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## net-cat (Mar 10, 2011)

The ImageMagick utilities "mogrify" and "convert" can do a lot of things. Change formats, crop, resize, filters, superimpose text, and much more.

That said, that only really helps if you need to do the same thing to each image. Like "reduce each image by 50%" or "crop the bottom 10px off of each picture" or "apply a copyright notice to each picture" or "scale each picture to fit in these dimensions."

For example, whenever I need to upload pictures from my camera to the web, mogrify -resize 25% *.JPG. (I think. It's close to that.)

However, if all the images have to be cropped and/or rotated differently, you're still basically stuck doing it by hand.


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## Runefox (Mar 10, 2011)

SnowFox said:


> It's never unusable in IE6/7, it just looks a bit shit and I resorted to writing a separate css menu stylesheet for each IE version. Without the IE hacks I'd say a lot of it looks/works better in lynx than IE 6!


 That's actually pretty ironic, because looking good in Lynx is a good idea to help visualize how it would look to a screen reader. The more structured and readable in Lynx, the more likely that a screen reader will also find it easy to navigate (though obviously there are many other things that you need to take into account).

I had IE-specific hacks set up at the outset of the project I'm working on now, but between the server not handling the htc MIME-type properly for the IEPNGfix (and my not having access to the server) and the sheer amount of effort involved in continually providing upkeep for a single browser that even our government no longer uses, I dropped it. IE6 support was considered unnecessary from the beginning, anyway. Obviously I'd love to spend a little extra time to make sure that, yeah, it works in everything, but IE7+, every other browser ever and screen reader compatibility is quite enough for them.


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## Mr Meatballs (Mar 12, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> 45% of the internet does.  Which is the largest portion of the internet.  That's who.


 I'm gussing around 40% of those people are people who don't know that internet explorer isn't the only browser in the world.
5% of those have just bought their computer and haven't gotten round to installing firefox/opera/whatever.


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## Runefox (Mar 12, 2011)

Mr Meatballs said:


> I'm gussing around 40% of those people are people who don't know that internet explorer isn't the only browser in the world.
> 5% of those have just bought their computer and haven't gotten round to installing firefox/opera/whatever.


 And there are some, like Ashes, who find Internet Explorer to be the best thing since KY Jelly.

Despite it being horrendously slow even on new hardware and generally being terrible for standards-compliance and security until version 8. 9 should be a lot better, but only if you like your tabs sharing half the browser width with the address bar. (Well, you CAN change that, but it's the default and it isn't obvious)


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## Duality Jack (Mar 12, 2011)

The few users of IE6 are really just those who do not know how to upgrade, and the majority of IE users are businesses and government establishments, only using it as being closed source, with a low-plugin focus, and easy to install is an asset while loading flash and images are not a priority.


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