If you are a web devloper/designer, this is the best news you’ve seen in a long time:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/06/01/old.microsoft.browser.dying.off.amid.rivals/

To sum up, IE6 has dropped below 5% usage in the U.S.  This is a Good Thing.

IE6 has been the bane of web designers for years now.  It is very old from a technological standpoint.  It is non-standards compliant to an extreme degree.  Unfortunately, it has held on far longer than it should have, due in part (I believe) to Microsoft’s blundering release of Windows Vista.  Vista was so reviled that a large number, perhaps even a majority, of Windows users remained on Windows XP right up until the recent release of Windows 7.  In fact, some statistics seem to indicate that adoption of Windows 7 has been slower than it should be, despite the fact that it is much improved over Vista or indeed any previous Windows release (better mark your calendar, you won’t often see me give MS any credit).  I blame the slow move to Win7 as an unfortunate byproduct of the loss of trust MS suffered after the horrendous Vista release.

Personal reflections and digs at MS aside (I can’t help it, it’s like instinct to me now), anyone designing/developing for the web is probably breathing a tremendous sigh of relief today.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 2:54 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.