Why So Much Use of Internet Explorer 6?

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Bruce Keener

My laptop died yesterday. Not the end of the world, because I only used it to do online banking with Microsoft Money and to see how my site looked in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). I can do the banking easy enough on the Windows partition on my iMac, but will have to give up looking at how my site looks in IE6, because I use IE7 on the iMac’s Windows partition.

So, I wondered to myself, “who cares anyway, since nobody uses IE6 anymore?” Well, turns out that several people still do use IE6. In looking at my browser stats, from Google Webmaster Tools, I noticed the following:

Keener Living Browser Stats

Out of the 35% that use Internet Explorer, 26% use IE6! That amazed me. So, unfortunately I need continue to pay attention to how the site looks in IE6.

Please note that I very much wanted to say to hell with IE6, because it is an outdated browser that does not properly render sites unless the designers of those sites have gone to extraordinary measures to ensure compatibility with it. IE6 is not a standards-compliant browser … not even close.

But, because it was the leading browser for a long while, most designers spent hours coding in little tricks to accommodate its viewing quirks. Literally thousands upon thousands of person-hours have been spent on this, which ticks me off because I hate waste. And it is wasteful to have to spend time to fix something that should not have been a problem in the first place. (Microsoft should have made the browser standards-compliant.)

It’s not the leading browser anymore, and most designers would like to be able to not have to fool with it. Countless hours could be saved if users of it would just upgrade to IE7, so that IE6 goes out of existence. But, apparently it won’t happen soon. And this is a huge shame, because wasteful spending makes even less sense in the current economy than it ever has.

It does have me curious, though, why everyone has not just upgraded to IE7, since it is a free upgrade. I’d really like to hear from some of you on this.

For all the IE6 users, why not consider upgrading to IE7 or Chrome? You’ll actually be doing yourself a favor, as well doing a favor for the rest of the world.

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  • mike

    Many may be using their business PC’s and are still at IE6 and some companies don’t like it if you upgrade the existing software yourself. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with IE7 but some people simply don’t make any modifications to the software they’re given even if it’s outdated. Sometimes it drives me nuts when using someone else’s PC and I have to look for frequently used commands in Excel that I have set as a button to press on my PC while others spend time looking for the same commands over and over using the pull down menu.

    The only reason mine changed is because I got a new laptop and IE7 was loaded on it. I would NEVER go back to IE6 because of the tabs that you can open on IE7 as well as on the other browsers.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Good points, Mike, about the business-use of IE6 and about people not changing without having a real reason to do so.

  • Rod Jones

    Hi Bruce,
    I tried IE7 – but it required me to learn new tricks, and as an ‘old dog’ that ain’t so easy. So when my machine had to be reformatted shortly after the installation of IE7 I resisted the urge to continue with IE7. I get regular reminders that it [IE7] is available, and its free – but i just can’t commit.

    As an aside, have you discussed the ‘Pickle Jar Theory’ and PALM anywhere?

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Hi Rod.
    Since I’m an old dog, too, I can kinda identify with what you are saying. By the way, as far as I know, my site designs will always support IE6 … the current one certainly does, and I’m not really looking for another one.

    I haven’t discussed this in the context of Palm before, I don’t think. After writing almost 700 posts on this blog, I may be forgetting one, but I don’t think I have discussed Palm in this context. I think the real problem with Palm is that the company killed itself. Had they been open to trying to better the Windows Mobile platform, or at least equal some of its goodness (such as handwriting recognition), they could have survived. But, that’s a whole story by itself.

    I am not an advocate of change just for the sake of change. I do like to experiment a good bit, maybe too much, but I believe change for the sake of change is not a good philosophy in general. I can see that I had not thought that aspect through in my rant on IE6: for most of its users, there is no incentive or reason to change, so why should they? (I make a small case for change, because of the wasted time it costs designers, but non-designers could probably care less about that.) So, it’s good to be reminded that change should be thought through, rather than just jumped on.

    Mike and Rod, both: thanks for the input guys.

  • http://info@convenient-wills.co.uk Rod Jones

    Hi Bruce,

    Sorry, I did not make my earlier post very clear.

    You may recall you posted my notes on using a PALM –

    http://www.keenerliving.com/2008/07/08/a-creative-way-of-managing-tasks-palm/#comments

    refers. My latter part of my post above was not enquiring about IE6/7 but just enquiring if you had ever commented on ‘the Pickle Jar Theory’ and applied it to your everyday working methods. I’d be interested to know your thoughts.

    Sorry for the confusion.

    • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

      Hi Rod. Sorry I did not make the connection.
      I never tried your method myself, although mentally I could see value in it … as we’ve all noted here, we are creatures who are a bit resistant to change and my methods were working fine for me. A friend of mine was very interested in adapting your methodology to his Pocket PC, but I never heard back from on his success in doing so.

      Again, I appreciate the article. It was well-written and very in-depth and presented a creative solution to time management, especially for Palm users.

  • John

    I use the IE 8 beta which works just fine with your site BTW ;)

    My company still uses IE6 as well.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Hi John,
    Thanks for letting me know my site works fine with IE8 … good to know!

    Also thanks for confirming that some corporations (probably lots) are still using IE6.

  • john a

    I just had to look up… “who uses IE6?”

    I can’t believe that I am still building a CSS3 site now with IE6 in mind.

    A couple of points/questions.
    Do search crawlers or automated programs who “view” sites come up as IE6? This could be skewing the viewership quite a bit. I think there was a program, webp0sitiong0ld, which might be an example of this? It is a bot, but declares itself as IE6?

    Can the web community come up with a dropdead date? Something like Dec 21st, 2012? No one will be allowed to use IE6 anymore?

    • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

      Hi john,

      Thanks for the comments.

      The bots do not identify as IE6, and do not trigger the js that counts visits. Most of the IE6 views are from viewers at corporations, US and international, that do not want to upgrade any parts of their systems due to IT expenses. Seems unbelievable, but it’s true. A lot of spammers still use IE6, but most have gone to IE7.

      Unfortunately the sort of cooperation you suggest just will not happen. IE6 will only die when all developers decide they no longer support it, and make those decisions based on a need to move to CSS3 and HTML 5. It’ll happen in bits and pieces, but it will happen.

      Thanks
      Bruce