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Is Internet Explorer 6 Approaching Its Doomsday?

After Google Docs will reduce support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) browser, it seems that the IE6 is finally on its way off from the web. IE6 was the default browser shipped with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Today, it has been upgraded by latest versions of Internet Explorer, but still the software giant supports IE6 in Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP SP3. It is reported that Internet Explorer 6.0 has 18 percent market share among browsers. Last year, the company said that it will support IE6 until 2014.

IE6 criticism

The most common criticism of IE6 is the speed at which fixes are released after discovery of the security problems. Also, people criticize the browser for being susceptible to malicious attacks, viruses and malware. Further, various firms questioned about the browser’s design and its instability. In addition, it did not support CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) version 2, which makes it difficult for web developers to ensure compatibility with the browser.

IE6 lacks support for alpha transparency in PNG images, and also compatibility with modern web standards, therefore much larger websites like YouTube and Digg had announced that they would curtail IE6 support. Recently, Google has also announced that it will drop support for Microsoft’s nearly nine-year-old IE6 browser starting on March 1.

Microsoft’s stand

Microsoft itself, despite admitting many IE6 flaws, said that it will support IE6 until Windows XP SP3 support is removed, which means IE6 will be available until 2014, 13 years after its release. Microsoft added that the job is difficult as the browser is still used by some enterprises. IE6 also accounts for half the browsers used in China, as per the latest research report.

Various ‘Kill IE6′ campaigns

In a recent development, an online petition in Britain signed by almost 3,700 signatures was sent to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to drop Microsoft’s IE6. The reason cited for the petition is the vulnerability of IE6 to virus attacks and hacking. It is expected that if U.K. government drop IE6 support, most of Europe will follow and that will create some pressure on the U.S. to do so.

On Twitter, “IE Must Die” petition has also accumulated more than 14,000 signatures. Last month, the Germany and subsequently the France each advised their citizens to move away from IE6 and upgrade their PCs with latest web browsers.

Another good campaign came from .Net Magazine, called as BringIE6down, and said for users to raise awareness about the outdated browser. Also, there is IE6nomore campaign, which is supported by Weebly, Reddit, Justin.TV, WhitePages, Posterous and TwitLuv.

Discussion

It is true that the nine year old web browser is not safe to use, but it still holds more than 18% market. However, various PC analysts and developers suggest that people should switch to modern web browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, Safari 4 or Mozilla Firefox 3.6. Meanwhile, the web browser is drawing more criticism than praises for Microsoft, and a lot of bad publicity from all corners of the web.

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