I would love to know how much of the IE6/Windows 2000 usage is in private hands (thus open up to government spying) and how much is corporate/governmental usage.
Showing posts with label Browsers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Browsers. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
IE6 still huge in China
According to IE6 Countdown IE6 is still huge in China with over 25% marketshare. That certainly puts an interesting twist for those concerned about a cyber-war with China. Right now, with all the holes in IE6 security, China is certainly a "target-rich" environment.
I would love to know how much of the IE6/Windows 2000 usage is in private hands (thus open up to government spying) and how much is corporate/governmental usage.
I would love to know how much of the IE6/Windows 2000 usage is in private hands (thus open up to government spying) and how much is corporate/governmental usage.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
IE6 Countdown
Microsoft has a website, IE6 Countdown, dedicated to getting IE6 to drop below 1% of world-wide browser usage. Unfortunately that won't happen until Windows 2000 servers are replaced and corporate and government agencies decide to upgrade.
Still it's an interesting site showing a map of the world and displaying the usage (if known) in each country.
Still it's an interesting site showing a map of the world and displaying the usage (if known) in each country.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Facebook and IE6
As of a few days ago Facebook no longer supports IE6. Hurray
Facebook puts up the following notice to IE6 users:
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
IE 8 is out - first impressions
IE 8 is out. So far I like it. It's fairly responsive. It is fairly compliant to CSS standards but one thing I'm not to fond of is a feature called "Reopen Browsing Session." Its purpose is to allow you to restore browsing sessions but there doesn't seem to be a way to prevent this from happening outside of browsing in "InPrivate" where the browser, from the outset, doesn't record your session.
What if you want to remove your browsing session? Simply removing the offending site from the history does not remove it from the session list. This is a serious privacy flaw.
Why, you may ask would anyone care? The issue is more than pornography and hiding the fact that you were working on personal issues while at work. Privacy is just that. Privacy. It's an end in itself. You do not need to be writing evil, horrible things to not want your diary being read. You do not need to be reading evil, horrible things to not want people to know what you did and when you did it.
Now, if you are at work, and you are not doing what you are being paid to do - that is a different story.
EDIT September 14, 2010
How To Disable “Reopen Last Browsing Session” In Internet Explorer 8 An excellent tutorial to disable "Reopen Browsing Session."
What if you want to remove your browsing session? Simply removing the offending site from the history does not remove it from the session list. This is a serious privacy flaw.
Why, you may ask would anyone care? The issue is more than pornography and hiding the fact that you were working on personal issues while at work. Privacy is just that. Privacy. It's an end in itself. You do not need to be writing evil, horrible things to not want your diary being read. You do not need to be reading evil, horrible things to not want people to know what you did and when you did it.
Now, if you are at work, and you are not doing what you are being paid to do - that is a different story.
EDIT September 14, 2010
How To Disable “Reopen Last Browsing Session” In Internet Explorer 8 An excellent tutorial to disable "Reopen Browsing Session."
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
IE6 and IE6 Blocker
To what extent should we – as designers and site owners – stop supporting IE6? Pursuing through CSS-Tricks I came across the following software IE 6 Blocker which tells users that particular site doesn’t support IE6 and they must upgrade to a new browser. Now, I understand the frustration, but this is ridiculous . (See a previous post regarding the problems with IE 6.)
The first priority of all site owners and IAs is to make the content available to as many people as possible. If people want to use Lynx – well, let them. It is a basic violation of web conventions to tell the user what browser to use; as bad as accessibility and usability violations. I remember when IE first came out and Microsoft was thought of as a monopolistic entity about to consume the world and many sites put up "Netscape Only" splash screens. It was a bad policy then and is bad policy today.
Additionally IE 6 still constitutes about 20% of the market. What sense does it make to eliminate 20% of your users from accessing your site. IE6 will be a force until corporate and government agencies upgrade to a new platform. Only when large sites which cater to corporate clients, like CNN, stop validating for IE6 can I see smaller sites joining on.
The only way I can see dropping support for IE6 making any sense is if your web app requires scripts not available in old browsers. However this is a business decision that should not be made lightly.
A better idea, should you want to drop IE6 support, is to develop to web standards; then check IE6 for any major breakdowns that prevent people from using your site. After the major issues have been cleared do not allocate any extra development time for minor items. At this point it would make sense to flag IE6 users, put a small banner at the top of the page saying that your site is no longer fully supporting IE 6 and ask people to “Upgrade to IE7 as this site may not function perfectly with older versions of IE.”
The first priority of all site owners and IAs is to make the content available to as many people as possible. If people want to use Lynx – well, let them. It is a basic violation of web conventions to tell the user what browser to use; as bad as accessibility and usability violations. I remember when IE first came out and Microsoft was thought of as a monopolistic entity about to consume the world and many sites put up "Netscape Only" splash screens. It was a bad policy then and is bad policy today.
Additionally IE 6 still constitutes about 20% of the market. What sense does it make to eliminate 20% of your users from accessing your site. IE6 will be a force until corporate and government agencies upgrade to a new platform. Only when large sites which cater to corporate clients, like CNN, stop validating for IE6 can I see smaller sites joining on.
The only way I can see dropping support for IE6 making any sense is if your web app requires scripts not available in old browsers. However this is a business decision that should not be made lightly.
A better idea, should you want to drop IE6 support, is to develop to web standards; then check IE6 for any major breakdowns that prevent people from using your site. After the major issues have been cleared do not allocate any extra development time for minor items. At this point it would make sense to flag IE6 users, put a small banner at the top of the page saying that your site is no longer fully supporting IE 6 and ask people to “Upgrade to IE7 as this site may not function perfectly with older versions of IE.”
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Mosaic's 15th Birthday
I suppose it's official. I'm an old-timer now. I was infatuated with the possibility of the internet when there were still only Gopher sites. Archie and Veronica were the cool search tools of the day. As with other "pre-Mosaic" techies this day, 15 years ago today, was when the world changed. Mosaic, the first graphical browser was "officially" released.
I learned HTML that summer, and for me, my life changed.
I learned HTML that summer, and for me, my life changed.
Friday, January 5, 2007
Browser - Backward Compatibility
In designing a site - which browsers should one design for? At what point does a website owner stop sinking funds developing and testing for out-of-date browsers? I don't have a clear cut answer for this. Is it solely market share? No. A browser may have a tiny market share but be web standards compliant. This means that it takes relatively little effort (read money) to make certain that nothing is broken and the site renders well.
It used to be that browsers ignored standards trying to create proprietary standards. Those days are gone forever but the browsers remain and some, such as IE6, are still running strong. This allows us to rephrase the question. At what point should site owners and developers stop validating non-web standard compliant browsers?
It is simply a matter of math. How much are you willing to spend validating a browser for 0.1%, 1%, 10% of your market? I would say that when the browser has declined to under 10% of your site usage that it would make sense to ignore minor visual inconsistencies and focus resources only on issues that prevent visitors from using your site.
EDIT 9/7/2010:
It used to be that browsers ignored standards trying to create proprietary standards. Those days are gone forever but the browsers remain and some, such as IE6, are still running strong. This allows us to rephrase the question. At what point should site owners and developers stop validating non-web standard compliant browsers?
It is simply a matter of math. How much are you willing to spend validating a browser for 0.1%, 1%, 10% of your market? I would say that when the browser has declined to under 10% of your site usage that it would make sense to ignore minor visual inconsistencies and focus resources only on issues that prevent visitors from using your site.
EDIT 9/7/2010:
Sources for Web Statistics
www.w3schools.com/browsers/ www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/
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