It appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly. I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 installed on my computer, so I can’t verify this first hand, but illogical it seems not and a simple Twitter search shows multiple people confirming the news. Heck, some are even downright ecstatic over the news.
The online video behemoth is pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome (twice on the same page even, unsurprisingly), Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives.
With the impending move, YouTube follows in the footsteps of that other Web 2.0 poster child, Digg, which recently hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. Digg’s User Experience Architect Mark Trammell at the time wrote that the site is strongly considering removing essential features like digging and commenting for IE6 users. He explained that while IE6 users make up around 5% of site traffic, it only accounts for 1% of diggs, buries, and comments.
YouTube so far hasn’t officially communicated about the desire to drop support for IE6, but it’s conceivable that like Digg it would rather have its developers spend time optimizing the service for newer, better browsers than wasting man hours on the oft-despised Microsoft browser. We recently reported that Internet Explorer is losing market share to FireFox and Safari at a rapid pace.
There is good reason behind this but you also have to take into consideration, I think this is a kind of short-sighted and selfish approach at times and every project has to be treated as a individual case . Sure it’s a royal pain to put in conditional CSS statements and PNG hacks because IE6 doesn’t understand PNG transparency, but do we really think that just leaving out the hacks so that users see the “ugly side of IE6? will convince them to upgrade their browsers? No, it won’t. I’ll tell you what it will do: it will make them head for the back button quicker than you can say “Bill Gates”, and on to a competitor’s site who IS customer/reader focused and who understands that many of these people who are still on IE6 don’t even realize they need to upgrade. They may not even have a choice, as they surf the Internet during their lunch at a company stuck in the dark ages, or they might even know there is a newer version out there, but haven’t the slightest clue as to how to install it.
We did a project with a local council that the department where struggling to see the website in its true format, we checked our code we cross browser check and double checked but to no avail could we replicate what was happening with the screengrabs they where sending us, it was only until we asked them to send a screengrab of the ABOUT box when we discovered they where on IE 5.5 YEP you heard it here IE 5.5, YES A TEN YEAR OLD browser, for a multi million pound council, so who is to blame do we charge the client more because their IT department hadn’t moved on, or do we as a company bite the bullet and do the changes that are needed, yep we bite the bullet, we redesign, we shuffle DIVs into place and we get the job done, cos that’s how we roll, but the lesson learned is ALWAYS FIND OUT WHAT THE CLIENTS BROWSER IS and cost accordingly, or alternatively, pop round to their office and hit the upgrade button when they are not looking!