Still not convinced that Microsoft is serious about getting Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade? I’ve not seen too many companies that actually create a site dedicated to moving users off of their product but that’s what Microsoft is doing with the IE6 Countdown site.
It’s a great initiative that helps people better understand where the highest usage of IE6 is along with information to help users upgrade to a better, more modern version of Internet Explorer. The site also provides a code snippet that you can include in your site that will prompt IE6 users to upgrade.
From the looks of it, China and South Korea have the largest amount of IE6 users worldwide although the U.S. at 2.9% is still pretty high. We need to get this figure down to about 1% at which point the usage will be so small that we can focus on modern browsers.
Also, if you have friends who are corporate users and they feel stuck, be sure to tell them about the resources outlined here.
It’s great MS is finally acknowledging us devs. We have two government clients that still run IE6 because they have internal software and networks they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into that is only compatible with IE6. We’ll be stuck with IE6 for a while yet I feel.
I dropped free support of IE6 last summer. Now it’s an optional ‘up’grade, for a certain % of the project total. That % depends on the type of work.
I’m looking forward to dropping IE7 soon as well. From what I’ve seen, there are less IE7 users than IE6!
I actually think that’s a great approach. How easy/hard has it been to sell services in that fashion?
No one has taken me up on the offer. Which was my intent. The point of that extra charge is, I don’t want to do that work. =)
And the easiest way to have a client not make you do something is to charge them extra for it. It just makes them think “Do I really care enough to pay for it?” And if that answer is yes, I just have to make it worth my time and sanity. But if you offer them something for free of course they’ll take it.
So has that decreased the amount of work available for you?
Not at all. Normally I spec out the target browsers in a proposal, with IE as 7+. If/When the prospect asks about IE6 I explain the situation and reason for it costing more. It’s never been an argument, I find people to be pretty reasonable.
My concern is pushing XP users to IE 8, which is nearly 2 years old and light years behind IE 9. While better than IE 6, it seems like this isn’t really the right approach, especially for those who seldom update.
For me it’s better than the alternative, which is IE6.
I agree. On the other hand, progress is progress my friend. IE9 should start to pick up steam now that the final has been launched and it begins shipping with new PCs by default.