Facebook and IE6

As of a few days ago Facebook no longer supports IE6. Hurray

Facebook puts up the following notice to IE6 users:

Did you know that your browser is out of date?

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported. To get the best possible experience using our website we recommend that you upgrade to a newer web browser such as: Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer 8. The upgrade is free. If you're using a PC at work you should contact your IT administrator.

IE6 has been on the Facebook chopping block for about a year. See Facebook Doesn't Really Support IE6

What this mean for site owners, web developers, IAs, and the like is that one more nail is being put into the IE6 coffin. I'm not a Microsoft hater but IE6 is a terrible browser and testing for its non-standard idiosyncrasies takes an awful lot of time (money).

Of course, until big corporations do a system wide upgrade IE6 will continue to be a thorn in our side. Large corporation don't care if their employees can't use Facebook. It may even be considered to be a reason to forstall upgrades. :-) Nonetheless when major corporations, such as Facebook, stop supporting IE6 the writing is on the wall. IE6 is going the way of NN4+

As a side note, as far as my sites are concerned, IE6 is about 15% of the total usage. That's too high a percentage to ignore.

Amazon Pulls 1984 Off Users' Kindles

Oh how predictable this was.

"In a story just dripping with irony, Amazon Kindle owners awoke this morning to discover that 1984 and Animal Farm had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for, and thought they owned. Apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by George Orwell from people's Kindles and credited their accounts for the price. Amazon customer service may or may not have responded to queries by stating, 'We've always been at war with Eastasia.'"

Amazon Pulls Purchased E-Book Copies of 1984 and Animal Farm

The move was an accident but it shows what may be a future problem. I don't like the fact that data that I put on my machine may be altered or deleted at whim. Data must be protected. Once the data is installed on your device it should be IMPOSSIBLE for the publisher (and ideally anyone else) to remove or alter it.