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View Full Version : So what does Continued Support for IE6 Mean?


Rubber Duck
15th August 2009, 01:23 PM
If your browser-of-choice is Google Chrome or Opera, don't expect much love from Microsoft's upcoming Office Web Apps, scheduled to appear along with Office 2010 next year.

Last October, when Redmond announced its upcoming suite of browser-based competition to Google Docs and Spreadsheets et al., it said that Office Web Apps would "be compatible with familiar web browsers."

Apparently, Microsoft isn't familiar with Google Chrome or Opera, or, for that matter, Internet Explorer 6 or the Windows version of Apple's Safari. They're not on the official list of supported browsers included in a recent blog posting by the Office Web Apps Team - a posting, ironically enough, entitled "The Office Web Apps Love Your Browser."

Official support for the Office Web Apps limits that love to Internet Explorer 7 and 8; Firefox 3.5 on Windows, Mac, and Linux; and Safari 4 on Mac. And that's it.......

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/11/no_web_app_support_for_chrome_or_opera/

rofsjan
15th August 2009, 06:14 PM
hmm, I had to go back from IE7 to IE6 to fix Outlook problems.

Rubber Duck
15th August 2009, 06:19 PM
hmm, I had to go back from IE7 to IE6 to fix Outlook problems.

Get a life and use Thunderbird!

rofsjan
15th August 2009, 06:26 PM
can one import e-mail messages and accounts from Outlook to Thunderbird easily?

Rubber Duck
15th August 2009, 06:57 PM
can one import e-mail messages and accounts from Outlook to Thunderbird easily?

It did it automatically when I did it but that was several years ago.

I still have to use Outlook at work. It really is shit.

rofsjan
15th August 2009, 07:01 PM
sounds good. I want to get rid of MS programs. thanks for the tip.

thefabfive
15th August 2009, 08:14 PM
You may have to transfer the emails manually, but it's not hard.

domainguru
18th August 2009, 01:04 PM
Get a life and use Thunderbird!

or even gmail. I find gmail way way better than thunderbird, kind of like the upgrade from outlook to thunderbird.

as for why m$ still have to support IE6 (and until 2014), they are probably asking the same question. what a disaster..... probably "seal the deal" for them.

Rubber Duck
21st September 2009, 07:20 PM
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/microsoft-doubles-food-donations-for-ie6-to-ie8-upgrades.ars

Microsoft has extended its Browser for the Better campaign, which helps fight hunger with a donation of eight meals for every completed download of Internet Explorer 8. In order to encourage the demise of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft is doubling donations for people who switch from IE6 to IE8: 16 meals donated to Feeding America's network of 206 local food banks, which supplies food to more than 25 million Americans each year. The download of IE8 must be made from the website (a download from Microsoft.com or anywhere else does not count)....

jacksonm
22nd September 2009, 05:07 AM
All of this has absolutely zero effect on large corporations and governmental agencies. They demanded IE6 and XP for another 5 years, and they got it.

This is not by any means an insignificant number of users, and they will therefore continue to be catered to by large 3rd party websites.

IE6 is here to stay for another 5 years, like it or not.

Rubber Duck
22nd September 2009, 06:42 AM
All of this has absolutely zero effect on large corporations and governmental agencies. They demanded IE6 and XP for another 5 years, and they got it.

This is not by any means an insignificant number of users, and they will therefore continue to be catered to by large 3rd party websites.

IE6 is here to stay for another 5 years, like it or not.

Well, I can see Governments not updating very much. There are going to huge austerity programs in the US and elsewhere. As for the Large Corporations, a lot of them will either go under or be merged into more vibrant organisations. The US will continue to lag on the innovation front. In Russia IE6 will all but disappear very soon.

Anyway, who gives a shit what Governments and Corporations do? I am interested in click throughs from consumers. In that area, IE6 is all but dead already. Schilling can keep his Global Corporate to Corporate networks. They aren't worth anything in terms of PPC.

markits
22nd September 2009, 08:59 AM
The USA based organisations have nothing to do with IDN usages. They only use English.

jacksonm
22nd September 2009, 10:13 AM
There are plenty of large corporations and governments outside of USA, all over Europe, for example, and these are the ones to which I was referring. People who have money to spend do the majority of their private business while at work, believe it or not. :eek: Who would imagine?

You might not think that the European IDN market matters. I'm fine with that. But the fact remains that IE6 is preventing a lot of type-in traffic to my domains that do receive type-in traffic from Firefox users; the numbers would be much higher than what they are if all IE6 users had IE7 instead. But IE6 will stay another 5 years due to corporate and organizational policies. So, I am still married to google due to the need for search traffic.

My guess is that the amount of type-in traffic to my domains would increase by 300-400% if people at work had IE7. But the battle has been lost. Time to stop hoping, accept reality and rely on search for the short to mid term.

blackops
22nd September 2009, 11:35 AM
My guess is that the amount of type-in traffic to my domains would increase by 300-400% if people at work had IE7.

You're probably right, and 'continued support' for IE6 is a real slap in the face to IDN. I think that, in practice, 'though it will be possible to go live (and 'mainstream', to the general public) with your idn sites very soon, if you're targeting, say, a European audience; other audiences, China, for example, then you might want to wait a while.

Yes, of course it looks bad when someone uses IE6 to visit your idn site, only to be greeted with... nothing, which is why dual branding (ascii and idn) is a valuable consideration and maybe even being 'creative' with your idn premise.

e.g. start an social networking site with your idn.. workplaces will ban you anyway!

There is a glimmer of hope 'though as, according to Statcounter, IE6's market share in Europe diminished from 18.37% in Sept '08 to 8.28% in Sept '09. So IE6 is going away quite quickly, of its own accord.

The 'workplace' issue can be massaged over a little, maybe with something in your T&C's about security and the workplace (to help aid your credibility!) but I agree it is still a pain.

phio
22nd September 2009, 11:36 PM
Is there code we can put on our IDN websites that will detect the browser (IE6) and redirect to a ghost/mirror site?

Drewbert
23rd September 2009, 03:13 AM
errr. The whole argument is the people can't get to your website using IE6 because they can't type unicode domains into the browser.

phio
23rd September 2009, 04:54 AM
errr. damn I've been in Lala land for too long.

blastfromthepast
23rd September 2009, 05:19 AM
Well you could redirect IE6 traffic to a relevant ascii domain mirror so that the xn-- wouldn't show.

Drewbert
23rd September 2009, 05:37 AM
Err, no.

The IE6 traffic doesn't show up. That's the whole problem.

phio
23rd September 2009, 07:17 AM
Correct. The last large corporation I worked at we had IE6.

No resolution.

I don't think it would take much for MS to put a fix in and require a service pack level upgrade to IE6 to alleviate the problem. In fact, I'm almost 100 percent certain they have the fix.

Allowing IE6 to continue as it is, without resolving punycode, is ridiculous, discriminatory, and unwarranted.

jacksonm
23rd September 2009, 07:41 AM
I don't think it would take much for MS to put a fix in and require a service pack level upgrade to IE6 to alleviate the problem. In fact, I'm almost 100 percent certain they have the fix.

Allowing IE6 to continue as it is, without resolving punycode, is ridiculous, discriminatory, and unwarranted.


They could patch IE6, sure, but they don't want to encourage it's continued usage anymore than we do. They want everyone to upgrade, but their hands are tied by their large customers.

Additionally, when a product is this old and has been in maintenance phase for many years, you don't suddenly start adding new features to it. It doesn't make business sense, since they don't need to convince anybody to buy or to stay. The large customers are already demanding the old product as it is, and everyone else has already upgraded.

blastfromthepast
23rd September 2009, 08:53 PM
Err, no.

The IE6 traffic doesn't show up. That's the whole problem.

I was thinking of cases when people click on links to xn--. I have actually read on blogs people tell others to "typein" the punycode to reach some of my websites if the domain doen't resolve for them.

jose
29th September 2009, 01:43 AM
Found a nice today's post on that:

http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/15-amazing-anti-ie-resources