I’m switching back to IE6 and why you should too

ie6I’m finally fed up with all the standards based, open source browser, google chrome-whatchamacallit, firefox, safari bs crap.  I don’t want choice in browsers anymore.  Especially since my ERP apps works better in IE than in any of the other crappy browsers out there. So, today, I’m switching back to the browser who made the internet what it is today… Internet “f***ing” Explorer 6.0 SP1, baby!

I was once a user of those other browsers, but today, I’m back to using the king of all browsers, IE6.  Screw all the bigots out there who keep tearing down IE’s glory.  I used to be one… and feel awful about it.  Today, I take everything I ever said about IE back.  It’s the only browser that should ever exist.

Join me in the SaveIE6 campaign!  Take back the browser!

AboutRich Manalang

a.k.a.: manalang

16 comments

  1. Rich, I know that your decision is an unpopular one, and it's hard to come out and make such an announcement on the first day of the month, but I applaud you for making your stand and proclaiming that we should adopt Internet Explorer 6 as our web browser. Although it wasn't explicitly mentioned, I'm sure that Jake is in complete agreement with you on this.

    What people tend to forget is that, despite all of our praise for standards compliance, the greatest progress is made by those who do NOT comply to the accepted standard. For example, what would have happened if the Macintosh had shipped with a command line interface, just because other operating systems of the day did so?

    But perhaps a move to IE6 isn't the complete answer to the bewildering world that we face. I know that this hits close to home, but take the Oracle database product, which keeps on piling improvement after improvement on the basic product. Perhaps a different strategy is in order, and perhaps the next release of the Oracle database should return to the feature set championed by dBASE. Jettison all of this superfluous stuff and store text, I say!

    Think management will go for it?

  2. Right on, John. I totally agree. If it were my decision, I'd change Oracle's strategy to focus on dBASE. And if IE ran in the command line, I'd be all for CLI based OS's as well.

  3. I wholeheartedly support the move back to IE6. We're taking back the 'tubes. I think you'll find it's a whole lot faster to open/close windows than to open/close tabs.

  4. Hmmmmm, if it wasn't the 1st of April, I might have fallen for it…
    Performance is precisely where IE fails abysmally.

  5. I'd also strongly recommend that the DOS 3.1 version of MultiMate be established as the global word processing software standard for all Oracle employees. Rock on!

  6. Really? You don't really think we (AppsLab) advocate the use of anything Windows-only do you? IE fails in many areas, including the ability to show the 'tubes as designed.

  7. “IE fails in many areas, including the ability to show the 'tubes as designed.”
    But given that the majority of web surfing is done with IE, isn't that a failure of the designers. If the remit is 'publish this information to the world at large', excluding the majority of the target audience is a bit like having universal sufferage…except for women, blacks and poor people.

  8. Wow, that's a stretch in the metaphor department.

    Why shouldn't IE (6 specifically) be chastised for its poor support for egalitarian standards? Not vice versa, i.e. I'm somehow at fault for pointing out the failings of IE.

    Further, just b/c IE (in general) happens to be the browser most people use to view the 'tubes, isn't it, in fact, a disfavor that they aren't able to see it as designed?

    So, you're arguing that we should cater to IE (specifically 6, but 7 too) simply b/c it just so happens to be the browser that most people use? Not by choice, mind you, but by default because it's what comes with their O/S?

    Seems to me that choice and voting are pretty much analogs. So, if anything, IE takes away most people's “vote” for a better browsing experience.

    So, in your metaphor, it would be a bit like voting for everyone, with one candidate.

  9. I've got no problem with complaining about IE6 (or 7 or 8 or firefox). But if the purpose of the site was to reach a general audience and that site fails to render properly in IE, then the fault lies with the designer/programmer of the site. The website hasn't achieved its goal.

    So complain that making a site workable in IE makes the development time longer and costs more. I'll even concede 'runs too slowly'. But if it looks ugly, that is the designer's choice (or compromise).

    “So, you're arguing that we should cater to IE (specifically 6, but 7 too) simply b/c it just so happens to be the browser that most people use?” Yes, if you are interested in interacting with that audience. If you don't care about them, then feel free to alienate them. Don't expect them to change their browser to one you happen to prefer. A lot, in corporate environments, won't have a choice in the matter.

  10. You make an easy argument. It's easy to say every site should support every browser equally, and if it doesn't, it's the fault of the developers.

    Not so in practice because you assume an infinite amount of resources are available.

    I disagree about where fault lies here. Yes, designers and developers should account for as many browsers as possible, but at a certain point, you run into difficult decisions of how to invest? Do I spruce up for IE6, or do I work on general bugs and new features for everyone else?

    In the consumer world, having IE6 is the fault of the user because MSFT has been pushing IE7 as an update since 2006. If you run Windows, you should be taking the updates, right? We both know IE7 is better at supporting standards than IE6, still not fully compliant but better.

    IE6's market share has been shrinking, although not as quickly as you'd think, considering it's been around since 2001. So, back to the investment decision, why would I invest effort into a browser that is losing market share, is 7+ years old and requires a significant amount of specialized coding?

    Enterprises are a different animal b/c as you say, what browser to run is not always the user's choice. Fortunately for us, we have that choice.

    We have 2 developers, and we stopped doing IE6-specific development b/c we can't afford it. We handle this with a message that helps the user find alternate browsers.

  11. G, while I am (was???) required to have IE6 on one of the computers I use, and thus am sympathetic to your point, any developer has the right to choose which platforms they will or will not support, based upon whatever criteria appeal to the developer.

    The issue is not just a development issue (i.e. the time to code things that will work on a particular platform), but also the testing time required to make sure that things actually work on that platform, and all of the other platforms that the developer chooses to support. There are dozens upon dozens of web browsers out there, including the 1990s Oracle web browser that Jake has stashed away somewhere, and no developer is capable of supporting all of them and running every one of them through a test cycle.

    For better or worse, the AppsLab team and many others are now choosing to leave IE6 outside of the realm of supported web browsers. While I don't agree with that choice, I certainly understand it.

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