Picture the scene. Lake Garda, probably the most beautiful lake in the world. Along the banks are a number of boats for hire. Boat number six has been out on the lake for a long time, so long in fact that it is starting to rot and fall apart.
The boat owner keeps shouting, in various languages, “come in number six your time is up”, but no one is listening.
Boat number six continues to puff it’s way around the lake with no regard for anyone else.
Spewing out noxious fumes, taking in water through it’s many leaky holes and even causing a potential hazard to anyone else going about their business trying to enjoy the lake. Boat number six and it’s ignorant users carry on despite the damage they are doing to the lakes environment. Even as his boat crashes and crumbles around him the user still expects everyone else to accommodate him regardless of the fact that even the boat manufacturer has long since called time on the doomed vessel.
That boat is Internet Explorer 6.
The release of the latest Upstart Blogger WordPress theme, Moleskine, was delayed yesterday because of the time it took to make it work in Internet Explorer 6. Like many others who have grown tired of swatting Microsoft’s errant fly I am hereby dropping all support for Internet Explorer 6. Future Upstart Blogger WordPress themes, such as the forthcoming Futurosity Reloaded, will work in the most up to date versions of all major browsers. They might work in Internet Explorer 6 and they might not.
Trying to make things work for Internet Explorer 6 is like playing basketball when someone has secretly made the hoops just too small for the ball. You make all the right passes and all the right plays but somehow the ball just won’t go through the hoop.
It’s time is definitely up.
Good job too. I noticed yesterday how many people still use that abortion of a browser to hit my blog. I forgave anyone who was coming in from a third world country, but the rest grrrr…bleh!
What are your stats for this site? I still see 30%+ Internet Explorer 6 users so for me it’s time is definitely not up. In fact, I just had to have some templates redesigned because they used lots of transparent PNGs which didn’t work in IE6. (And I couldn’t use the hacks since those pngs were background-repeated)
IE 8 is supposed to come out soon, and when it does I’m officially dropping support for it.
Some have stated there are cases where people don’t have a choice and/or run old machines. Even the old Netscape is better.
As I’ve been staging my school for the upcoming year, I reimaged all the machines. I always included IE7 and FF3. I’m running into a lot of teachers and administrators who simply don’t want to give up on IE6. For these people, I’m pushing the update via Zen. They’re going to move, like it or not.