Recently YouTube has announced it will be phasing out support for the Internet Explorer 6 Browser, about time! For anyone who is still on this out dated browser (And HAS the choice of upgrading) you really need councilling. I don't get why some people constantly ignore there Windows Update screen which by now will probably be screaming at them to update. What can you possibly benefit from using Internet Explorer 6 compared to Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, Chrome and the rest of them. With that small rant over, I was delighted to read on twitter than YouTube was the next website in the line to say good bye to Internet Explorer 6.

YouTube's announcement comes after a long line of other major websites such as Amazon and Digg which have also said they will be not supporting the Internet Explorer 6 browser for much longer. Finally will we be seeing Internet Explorer 6 and it's ignorant users to finally upgrade to the modern standard. Don't get me wrong, a miniority of people that use Internet Explorer 6 have no choice, for example if a organisation is networked generally what happens is one version of a browser is used through the entire organisation, certainly in the workplace and schools, though even my school updated to Internet Explorer 7 so if you still in a organisation that uses Internet Explorer 6 thats harsh. I'd be inclined to either go up to the network manager and get it upgraded or install Firefox on my memory stick and browse off that. Anything to avoid the horror! But if you stuck in that loop, I feel very sorry for you. If you have the freedom to update, shame on you!

But with major websites such as YouTube, Digg, Amazon and more saying they won't be supporting the browser. How long will it be till everyone else decides, enough is enough. For someone who isn't in the website development field, you don't understand how time consuming creating hacks and fixes for older browsers actually is and major respect for anyone who can actually get there website to display 100% correctly in Internet Explorer 6, I can't, I dare say it's due to my Internet Explorer 6 views and actually finding the time to freaking re-write your CSS just for a minority of one browser. Even Google has said to it's users don't use Internet Explorer 6, but to be honest, Google And Microsoft are probably having there own war between each other and thats just propoganda to get you recruited into the Google army. But the day Microsoft officially stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 is the day that most people will rejoice in celebration. I think 2010 is the date for the most recent versions of Internet Explorer 6 on the Windows XP platform, for others it's already ended.

Edit: Microsoft decided to extend the life of Internet Explorer 6 till 2014! Microsoft officially announced this recently. I can't see why, but apparently Microsoft sees some point in doing it. I think support for Windows XP is also ending in 2014 as well (Windows Update Support that is, some XP support has already ended) It's probably planned and tied in with Windows XP, but I don't know. All I know is a currently 8 years old browser is still going to be supported, and by 2014 it will be 13 years old. Unlucky!

Luckily for the 'IE6 Must Die' club Internet Explorer 6 usage has been in a constant decline for a while now, as well as the use of Internet Explorer overall, so the support for Internet Explorer 6 will slowly be dropping but I think there comes a time when someone looks at there code and all the hacks and fixes that are present just to make 8 year old browser display your website correctly and thinks well I think it's time. Though Internet Explorer 6 hasn't been useless, it's a browser which hasn't aged well, yes we know, but website coders got a good deal with Internet Explorer 6, for the people that designed fixes (or hacks) for various problems in Internet Explorer 6 were hailed as heros in the website development scene, without these people many users would of been left stranded, and thanks to Internet Explorer 6 this sparked off alot of tutorials for hacks and fixes which fixed annoying little issues such as the random margins that Internet Explorer 6 seemed to love applying.

Though it's obvious I don't like Internet Explorer 6 and as soon as it's bigger brother Internet Explorer 7 hit the scene I upgraded instantly, we can't deny that Internet Explorer 6 has been in our culture. Without it no one would of been able to show there coding skills and develop hacks and fixes, without it bloggers wouldn't be able to piss and moan at it, without it things would of been alot different! Truth. Secretly the people that rant about it, actually do have a soft spot for it. You know you do. I'll be the bigger man here to admit, Internet Explorer 6 has it's place in history. It made me wonder though, what reasons do people have for keeping on the browser? I decided to weigh the pro's and cons of still being on the Internet Explorer 6

Pro's of keeping on Internet Explorer 6

• Well there isn't any... Besides that usage for it is dropping
• No wait! I got one, in it's time IE6's Quirks mode was cool.

Con's of keeping Internet Explorer 6

• You'll be forever constanly developing hacks and fixes to get your website layouts to work
• png image support, though there are work around but it requires extra work for such as small minority of IE6 users.
• Not very compliant to web standards (Though it a 8 year old browser)
• New website development advances e.g. CSS3 will never work.
• Some newer web-dev scripts probably won't work or will need to modified heavily to work. Including jQuery and Javascript
• The list goes on.....

I honestly tried to be fair and think of some pro's of using Internet Explorer 6, but I really couldn't, I came up with a load of con's but I couldn't find one single pro about it, if you have one please comment after you've read the rest of this article, I'd be very interested to see a postive reason to stay on Internet Explorer 6.

But it looks like in the next couple of years we will be saying good bye to it, and though it's caused developers problems, it's still part of history. We can't forget that. Here's my question to you guys though, do you support Internet Explorer 6? Maybe your someone who believes there still enough Internet Explorer 6 users to provide for. Or are you someone who is considering to dropping support for it much like YouTube, Digg, Amazon and others are planning to do, or are you someone who dropped support a long time ago and hasn't looked at how there website displays in Internet Explorer 6 for years. Whatever your stance is I'd love to know!

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