RSSMicrosoft may not kill IE6 until at least 2014
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 11, 2009, 11:08 AM
Of the three most recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, the one used by more individuals and businesses worldwide, according to recent analytics, is the oldest: IE6, which is notorious for interpreting Web pages in the manner that seemed most convenient to Microsoft at the time. Many Web sites anxious to support newer and more efficient rendering standards remain reluctant to drop support for IE6 rendering entirely, simply because it may still be in use by as much as one-third of the Web-browsing public.
Now that the movement by Web architects to engineer a collective dumping of IE6 has generated its own Web site, the move is on to spur Microsoft itself to join in. After all, the success of IE8 could depend on businesses' willingness to dump IE6. But in a plea to Web architects to understand the difficulties those businesses face in dumping any old software and adopting any new ones (and avoiding Firefox in the process), Microsoft IE8 product manager Dean Hachamovitch wrote for his team's blog that Microsoft simply cannot drop support for IE6 while support for the operating system that delivered it -- Windows XP -- continues.
"The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product," Hachamovitch wrote. "We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have. As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC."
Hachamovitch linked to a page that showed Microsoft's typical "Mainstream" product support lifecycle extending five years beyond that product's original introduction, with "Extended" (paid) support extending an additional five years beyond that. However, last April, Microsoft specifically extended the "Extended" support program for XP until 2014, after finally terminating its Mainstream support cycle long after it had originally intended.
The very sudden rise in popularity of the netbook form factor, coupled with the fact that XP is the latest shipping version of Windows that many netbooks can even run, has triggered a situation where Microsoft simply can't kill XP. As a result, it appears, with IE6 irrevocably tied to XP, the company's hands may be tied with regards to the old Web browser. If Microsoft can't kill IE6, some businesses in the private and public sectors are asking, why should they be tasked with the job?
In his blog post, Hachamovitch linked to a fascinating transcript of a quadrennial policy review meeting of the US State Dept. last July 10, led by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy. In that transcript, an unidentified State Dept. employee steps up to the microphone and asks the secretaries why the Dept. can't use Firefox. Perhaps not the expert on Web browsers, Sec. Clinton deferred the question to USM Kennedy, who responded that the problem has to do with costs. But Firefox is free, said the employee. "Nothing is free," Kennedy responded.
After the laughter in the room (according to the transcript) subsided, Kennedy continued, "Yes, you're correct; it's free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you're running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs and other devices, you're caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can't do everything at once."
Sec. Clinton herself then weighed in on the subject, borrowing an image -- though not the entire metaphor -- from Yahoo: "When you go to the store and you buy, let's say, peanut butter and you don't realize you've got two jars already at the back of the shelf…I mean, that sounds simplistic, but help us save money on stuff that we shouldn't be wasting money on, and give us the chance to manage our resources to do more things like Firefox, okay?"
Betanews has asked Microsoft for further clarification on the company's intentions for Web browser support, which may be forthcoming.
2:00 pm EDT August 11, 2009 · A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that Dean Hachamovitch's comment was interpreted correctly: "Microsoft will support IE6 until 2014 because Windows XP support was extended," we were told.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that IE5 (specifically IE 5.01 Service Pack 4) is still officially "supported" because it shipped with Windows 2000, and Windows 2000 remains under Extended Support until July 13, 2010.
A public patch for IE5 was released as recently as July 28, 2009 for KB972260 (MS09-034). I have no idea who would have downloaded it, because every die-hard Windows 2000 user I know is running IE6 or non-IE browsers, but you've got to remember that the worldwide audience for Windows is in the neighborhood of a BILLION so anytime you try to generalize about the needs and requirements of Windows users, even if your perspective covers 99.9% of the population, you're still overlooking a MILLION people. People have their reasons for clinging to IE6, and you've got to hand it to Microsoft: when they commit to long term support, they really mean it.
For comparison, Red Hat Linux 6.2 (based on kernel 2.2.14-5.0) was released about 2 months later than Windows 2000, but there is absolutely zero official support available today for this release. In theory, you'd enjoy a wealth of community support. In reality, the only way you could get a new patch for this release is to write it yourself -- in other words, you're now a "community" of one.
Ubuntu Linux has LTS releases for "Long Term Support" except Canonical defines "long term" as 3 years for the desktop edition and 5 years for the server. Their first LTS release was on June 1, 2006 so the longest commitment they've actually demonstrated so far is less than 4 years. Microsoft retired Windows 95 after actually providing support for 6 years and 4 months. They dropped Windows 98 after providing 8 full years of official support. And Windows NT 4.0 was laid to rest only after Microsoft delivered support for 8 years and 5 months.
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|Disastrous news indeed. The sooner IE6 is got rid of the better. All this does is prolong non-compliance of internet standards and it dertainly does nothing to push IT to upgrade the browser for their company. Very bad news.
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|Evolution will work, as always. The minute a competitive advantage is given to companies that use other browsers, is the minute IE6 will vanish.
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|Companies don't need until 2014 to do a simple task like upgrade their web browsers. It doesn't take years to modify web pages to work in a new web browser, more like a few short months. Oh well, I guess some companies are just plain lazy.
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|Because during a recession companies have lots of frivelous money to spend on "fixing" a website, don't they.
I can understand why businesses don't do it, but Microsoft really could have done.
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|When Microsoft previously made an announcement that they were stopping security updates for IE6 the company I work at panicked. They upgraded to IE7 on all of their computers and found out that web sites didn't display properly and IE7 would mysteriously close for no reason. Even if a company doesn't plan on rolling out a new version of IE in the near future they still need to do testing in the lab as soon as the web browser is released to the public.
Microsoft is under no obligation to support a particular piece of software forever, even for its business customers.
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|Why can't websites simply promote "Upgrade to IE8 for this site to work correctly", I know it could mean losing a few people at first, but if everyone did this, the message would be clear. Arguably there are some businesses who can't upgrade, but most of the websites they need are probably internal. If they aren't, there is a compatibility mode in IE8 that should help them.
In the end, its a decision for each website whether to dump support for it. I totally understand MS's position.
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|Heard of NoMoreIE6.com? It encourages Web page authors to do exactly what you suggest. Some sites (Facebook, Gmail, and others) have been doing something similar for a while.
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|When it drops below 5-6%, I'll pull the plug, FTW.
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|"A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that Dean Hachamovitch's comment was interpreted correctly: 'Microsoft will support IE6 until 2014 because Windows XP support was extended,' we were told."
And that is exactly why this is not actually news. Why would anyone expect differently?
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|I think the only thing Microsoft could/should have done is force IE7 to install if the previous version was IE6, starting with XP SP3. This would have forced many companies to hold back on installing XP SP3, but I believe SP2 will no longer have any support in May of next year so that timeframe would have been reasonable IMO.
This also could have broken many IE6 only addons that were installed on SP2 machines, so I guess in the end that is why MS decided not to do it.
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|What they *could* do is release XP SE like they did with 98 which upgraded the browser version and a few other things.
Just remove all previous XPs from shelves and only sell SE.
Alas, it seems they've forgotten that it's possible to do this as it's been a whole 11 years.
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|They'd still have to support Windows XP until the end of extended support. That date is 2014, and releasing an "XP SE" would not change that in any way (except, perhaps, prevent it from getting extended...again...maybe).
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|Yes, well it's all too late now. Once they announced the extended support it was too late.
I'm sure it could have been spun as a free upgrade or something.
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|You tell me that now that I migrated my IE installation to 8.0 from 6.0. :P
Not that I use it much... I use Firefox 99,9% of the time.
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|You can't kill IE6, but you can stop making web sites compatible with IE6. Microsoft has NOTHING to do with that. Even if they ARE, they aren't bound by anything (at least i don't remember seeing that written anywhere) to keep supporting IE6 on ALL their sites (except for the essential ones, such as windowsupdate).
Once IE6 (that is, web sites in IE6) stops working for users, users will upgrade.
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|Is this news? What does "killing" even mean? (They can't just force people to stop using it.) IE 6 was part of Windows XP, and Windows XP will continue to be patched until the end of its extended support phase, as happens with all MS products since they established these timelines. This is far better than the alternative of not patching IE 6 at all and leaving it wide-open with security holes (if we can pretend that this is somehow different from the current situation, anyway :)).
They've already pushed IE 7 through Windows Update unless you (or your company) specifically denied it, and it was included as a high-priority update right up there with security patches. This the closes thing MS could do to "killing" IE 6 (i.e., they've already done it!). The rest is up to the user.
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|The problem is, users are lazy and many are stupid. Is it not in their best interest to start denying the use of the most insecure browser extant?
As for Windows XP on netbooks, all that needs to be done is doing a slipstream of IE7 onto the image file for them. Not difficult at all.
From a 'caring about the customer' alone standpoint, it would be in MS's best interest to strongly discourage continued use.
No matter the number of Windows 7 evangelists, XP will have strong market presence until 2014, perhaps longer, if Microsoft doesn't pull its collective head out.
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|Yeah...watch the response from the Apple/Linux evangelists as Microsoft forces IE7/8 into the "critical" updates.
You know they cannot win. "They're forcing people to use IE7/8?? It's just to increase the market-share of that version!" .... or more likely something even dumber than that.
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|I think MS is going to have a pretty easy job to kill off XP, and then IE6 within a year or two, after Oct. 22. I am running 7 on all my 3 netbooks, works great.
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|" Don't drop IE6! http://boo.fm/b53954 " i agree with this guy, instead of dropping support for IE6, try and support all browsers... but just give the older browsers basic features they do support
let old browsers die gracefully
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|That is usually the goal. However, sometimes it's difficult because IE kind of supports a standard or "supports" it but implements it in a non-standard way, and thus supporting the majority of browsers that actually do it the right way conflicts with supporting old and broken browsers like IE 6 without doing version-sniffing. And this, unfortunately, frequently also involves writing at least two copies of the CSS and/or HTML, which is a pain ... and all the more reason to push for usage of better browsers.
The "dump IE 6" website to which this article refers, by the way, is simply one that shows you how to place more or less a "you should upgrade your browser" banner at the top of your page for users of IE 6 (and, perhaps, other browsers). Nothing more--it doesn't stop you from viewing the page, it only informs you.
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|OMFG! Kill this old piece off s**t now! Saying this as a webdeveloper for 10+ years. I actually switches career to admin because it's a pain in the a** continuing supporting this dinosaur. IE6 is pre 9/11, pre Windows XP, pre everything! Learn how to develop real webpages supporting W3C standards instead of being a Microsoft IE6 fluffer.
If you can't make websites work in IE8, Opera, and Firefox, then you're not a webdeveloper. IE6 is just a plain waste of time.
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|* Should be spelled as switched :)
Now almost two OS'es later (Windows Vista and soon Windows 7) how do you even get IE6? Install Windows XP and actively refuse to update automatically? Holy ****! Cue old bugs and security issues. IE7 also wasn't great, but at least it better than IE6. So why not just jump straight to IE8 and fix old rubbish code doing so?
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