Tiger Weekly - Serving Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Internet Explorer 6 is dead

By Philip DiStefano

If you're still using Internet Explorer 6 (and hopefully you're not), prepare to either lose functionality on some of your favorite Web sites or upgrade your browser. Internet search giant Google has announced that it will cease support of some of its Web applications on the IE 6 platform as of March 13.

Microsoft has updated their popular browser application to versions 7 and 8, yet IE 6 still holds a very prominent position in the world of web browsers, even though it was originally released in 2001 and is clearly showing its age. The major reason that so many people use IE 6 is simply because it came with their Windows XP operating system. This becomes a problem because the update to IE 7 or IE 8 is optional in Microsoft's Windows Update application.

While not making updates mandatory is good for consumers so that they maintain control over their machines, it is also very important that computer users keep their operating system and other software up to date, as updates provide new functionality and patches for known exploits and vulnerabilities that make your software less safe to use. Despite this, some users do not update their software, and others just like to avoid change.

According to Web analytics firm Net Applications, IE 6 still has a shockingly large market share of about 20%, slightly under IE 8's approximate 22% usage. Internet Explorer 6 received its final major update in May of 2008 and is less secure and functionally inferior to its successors, which makes these numbers quite baffling.

The problem doesn't just rest in the fact that about 20% of the market is using an unsafe browser, but IE 6 is also harder to develop for and doesn't comply with the standards set for today's advanced Web applications. To better understand this concept, think of what the Internet was like in 2001 and what it's like today. Many Web developers already complain about Internet Explorer being harder to develop for than its competitors, but IE 6 seems to be especially troublesome.

If you use IE 6 and want to continue to use all of the features of Google Docs, YouTube, and an increasingly large amount of other sites, you may want to consider upgrading your browser to Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6, Safari 4, Google Chrome or Opera 10. There's a plethora of excellent choices out there, so there's no real reason to continue to use the outdated and unsafe IE 6.

Originally Published: March 3, 2010

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