Treefrog Interactive Inc.

The End of the Road For IE6

It’s been a long time coming, but, after much deliberation...

Treefrog has finally decided that it will no longer develop web sites that are guaranteed to function on Microsoft’s obsolete web browser, Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).

 

Now, if you’re keeping track of these things, IE6 was released 10 years ago. So, yes, we realize this announcement will probably elicit little more than a big, fat, “So?” from the average internet user. After all, computer technology rises and falls all the time, right? Today’s hottest application is tomorrow’s candidate for an upgrade. What’s so noteworthy about the demise of IE6?

 

A couple of things actually; the first being that IE6 stands as probably the most influential piece of software the internet age has seen so far. It’s had an incredibly long and dominant life cycle. In fact, it’s safe to say much of the design and functionality of what we’ve come to know as “the internet” is based on parameters originally defined by IE6.

 

Secondly, everything in the previous paragraph should not be construed as a good thing. IE6’s core infrastructure was so rife with shortcomings and deficiencies that, if anything, it has actually limited the possibilities of web development over the past decade. So you’ll have to excuse us if we do a little happy dance as this particular web browser fades to black.

 

Life and Times of a Problem Child

Originally launched in August of 2001, IE6 was born into a charmed existence. Its parent, Microsoft, ruled the PC operating system landscape with Windows, and IE6 was installed as the default web browser on millions of PCs as they went out the factory door. In fact, through the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer was being used by almost 90% of active PCs.

 

Unfortunately, web designers and developers began to notice almost immediately that IE6 was appallingly difficult to work with when it came to building web sites. Its penchant for ignoring generally accepted internet standards, not playing well with other applications and possessing numerous gaping security issues quickly became legendary.

 

It also became quickly apparent that incorporating anything beyond the most basic functionality into a web site may (or may not) cause IE6 to crash while someone was viewing the site. And that’s not a good thing when you’re trying to enhance the online marketing presence of a client.

 

It’s also a situation that’s shortchanged web surfers and been beyond frustrating to us web designers and developers. We live to push the envelope in the name of better servicing our clients: Cool design components that enhance the appeal of a client’s site? Sign us up! Implementing awesome functionality improvements through a shiny new application? Where do we plug it in! Oh, it doesn’t work with IE6? Guess we’ll have to look at some other options.

 

The Browser that Refused to Leave

Now, IE6 has since been supplanted by IE7 (2006), IE8 (2009) and IE9 (2011). In the tech sphere, it should be nothing but a historical footnote by this point. Why are we still talking about it? Primarily because IE6’s 2001-2006 reign of terror as the PC world’s go-to web browser was long by software standards — and it also coincided with the wholesale adoption of the internet as an essential tool by many businesses and homes.

 

The fact is, so many computers went into service with IE6 installed, and so many corporate IT policies were built around its idiosyncrasies, that, even as its market share has slowly but steadily dropped over the past five years, IE6 has continued to linger like a bad smell in the web development world.

 

See, when we develop a new web site for a client, we have to factor in the reality that a sizable number end-users will be navigating that site on older browsers that can’t handle the latest and greatest technology advancements. So, we work with the lowest common denominator in mind. And, for the past five years, our bottom-end benchmark has been the bottomest of the bottomingest…IE6.

Fortunately, time and technology march on. All those old PCs haunted by IE6 are steadily being replaced through attrition. Microsoft’s latest IE browsers have proven to be much easier to work with. And a gaggle of innovative, feature-rich upstart browsers with names like Firefox, Chrome and Safari have begun to gain a substantial foothold, opening up bright horizons for web design and functionality.

 

It’s all resulted in the market share for IE6 (finally) dropping to under 2% (and we suspect that 2% may solely be other developers still trying to get their sites to work on IE6!). Microsoft itself has officially stopped supporting the application. And the big boys, Google, YouTube and Facebook, have seen the future and no longer make the effort to guarantee their sites will work on IE6. It’s enough for us to say “enough” and enact a similar corporate policy: Treefrog will now only build sites that are guaranteed to work on IE6 as a special order item. (Pause momentarily for happy dance.)

 

What does an online world without IE6 mean to you as a business marketing online or as a person visiting web sites? It means web developers and designers can finally open the floodgates on features and functions we just couldn’t utilize before. Get ready for sites with an absolutely seamless integration of video, audio and social media. Sites that take interactivity and engagement to a whole new level. The internet’s user experience is about to take huge leap forward.

 

So, yes, it’s finally the end of the road for Internet Explorer 6. If you or someone you know is still using IE6, do the right thing and put it out of its misery. There’s a fresh crop of incredibly capable, easy-to-use, FREE browsers out there to download. Believe us, there’s no one in the development community lamenting the loss of Microsoft’s cantankerous old warhorse. IE6 is dead, long live the internet!