Internet Explorer 6, which for years was the most popular browser, is set to be completely phased out by some of the internet’s biggest websites, such as Facebook, Google and YouTube.
The web giants are doing this by having a message displayed for users that access their websites with IE6 that basically tells the user that they’re dropping support for their browser and suggests some modern browsers for them to download.
This is creating a stir in the browser market, as all of the top browsers, Firefox, IE8, Safari and Google’s own browser, Chrome; compete for the huge amount of people still using IE6 that are being forced to upgrade their browser.
Websites such as Facebook and Google owned YouTube are suggesting people upgrade to IE8, Chrome or Firefox; in that order. However, Google’s other websites, like Gmail and the Google search engine are providing Chrome as the only upgrade option.
From a web development perspective, the fact that major websites are pushing users to change their browsers is an enormous step forward for the web; as Internet Explorer 6, great as it was back in the day, is an archaic browser for today, and causes headaches for web developers trying to support all of their users. All of today’s modern browsers have much higher standards when it comes to the web, provide a more enjoyable browsing experience and make our job as web developers much easier.
