Farewell IE6 even Google no longer supports you

February 3, 2010 | by Peter Horsten

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IE6-no-more
YouTube was among the first big brands which decided to stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 and today Google joined the IE6 ban. Like many others Google is using more and more Javascript technology to realize Rich Internet Applications (RIA). The main issue is that JavaScript is not supported in the same way by different browsers and especially preparing a working Internet application for IE6 is a time consuming trial and error challenge.

In order to continue to improve their products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, Google is implementing faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result Google will gradually stop the support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well in 2010.

IE6 users will lose functionality

Soon IE6 users will notice not all functionality will be available to them and others won’t work well. Especially users of Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor have to be prepared. On March 1, 2010 they will have to switch to either a newer Internet Explorer version or another browser.

Why wouldn’t you give either Google Chrome or Firefox a try? Honestly these two browsers perform better than Internet Explorer. Besides, Chrome is better optimized for all the Google Apps. Later in 2010, Google will start to phase out IE6 support for Google Mail and Google Calendar. Then a big user group will feel the change.

using-ie6-bar

IE6 users will be warned

As a IE6 user you will be warned by Google starting from this week, users of IE6 and some other older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites asking them to upgrade their browser.

Other major websites are already warning you by presenting the bar shown above. Summer 2009 a group of start ups started the campaign IE6 No More. By now it’s already supported by some well know portals and companies. I believe this Google move will be a big support for the IE6 No More “movement”. Besides it can cause I will have to review a previous statement. Before I already predicted the browser market wouldn’t change that much in the near time. Today I’m really curious what all these IE6 users will do.

Are you an IE6 user? What are you going to choose? Feel free to leave your opinion below.

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