Stanton Street did a great job redesigning our website. It is well constructed and easy to navigate. We feel they did a terrific job of capturing the new image and feel of the El Paso Symphony.
Rosemary Flores
Operations Manager
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Are you Still Running Internet Explorer 6? You May Soon Be Missing Out.
July 21, 2009
 Microsoft’s 8th version of Internet Explorer was released on March 20th of this year for manual download. In April it was included in Windows Automatic Updates. So, unless you actively refuse to install it or you don’t subscribe to Windows Updates, you will soon be running Internet Explorer 8.
What’s surprising is that between 15 and 20 percent of people who use Internet Explorer to visit our website still use version 6. For comparison, 50 to 55 percent use version 7 and five to 10 percent use version 8. We expect the usage rates of version 7 and 8 to swap with each other.
As web developers we face a unique challenge when it comes to balancing the most modern features with compatibility across 8 years of browser evolution. Even in its prime of life, Internet Explorer 6 was not like the other browsers. Special coding techniques were required just to make things look right when IE 6 rendered the page.
The group of users who never upgraded from IE6 probably avoided the upgrade for a variety of reasons:
- Corporate restrictions that have IE 6 dependent applications
- Using an illegal copy of Windows, which will not pass the Genuine Authentication tool
- Using an older version of Windows, i.e. 98, ME, 2000, or XP SP1
- Unfamiliar with the Windows Automatic Update system
Things may be changing. More and more sites are announcing that they will no longer support Internet Explorer 6. YouTube made such an announcement recently. While YouTube will not be the critical site that will cause corporate IT departments to upgrade, it is a sign of things to come.
Still, IE 6 may not be going anywhere in quick order. As developers we must keep abreast of the more commonly used browsers and how their implementations of web standards differ across the board. This can become a challenging task that ultimately slows and perhaps unnecessarily complicates development. Which browsers should be supported? How far back should a browser version be supported? The answer to these questions are answered by analyzing visitor traffic like we did above, in conjunction with trends and the varying types of websites and web applications we build for our clients. As of now, IE 6, 7 and 8 all need to be supported and each have their varying interpretations of web standards.
Support for older browsers naturally and gradually fades away because of advances in technologies that are only supported in newer browsers. However, by keeping browsers updated, users can experience the latest and greatest the web has to offer while helping developers get out from under older browsers.
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Stanton Street
