Google to drop support for IE6

[Austin]

Google have decided to drop the support for IE6 from March 1, 2010 ... for Google apps.

Modern browsers for modern applications

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 2:00 PM

​The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. So to help ensure your business can use the latest, most advanced web apps, we encourage you to update your browsers as soon as possible. There are many choices:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+

Mozilla Firefox 3.0+

Google Chrome 4.0+

Safari 3.0+

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products -- as well as new Docs and Sites features -- won’t work properly in older browsers.

2010 is going to be a great year for Google Apps and we want to ensure that everyone can make the most of what we are developing. Please take the time to switch your organization to the most up-to-date browsers available.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Senior Product Manager


http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/20 ... tions.html

In another article at Techcrunch you can read that it will continue to include Gmail and Caledar

Google Twists Knife In IE6, Pulls Support From Docs And Sites

by Leena Rao on January 29

This has not been the greatest start to the year for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Days after news of the latest security flaw in Internet Explorer, Google is adding fuel to the fire by phasing out support for IE6 for two of its Google Apps products, Docs and Sites (which recently got an aesthetic upgrade).

For both the consumer and enterprise versions of Google Docs and Sites, the only browsers that will be fully compatible are Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+, Mozilla Firefox 3.0+, Google Chrome 4.0+ and Safari 3.0+. The phase out will take place beginning March 1. While you’ll still be able to access Docs and Sites from IE6, you will have restricted functionality and many features won’t work, making the applications for the most part useless. We hear that Google will be phasing out IE6 support for the remainder of Google’s major products, including Gmail and Calendar, over the coming year. This isn’t Google’s first move to phases out IE6 functionality for its products. Last July, the search giant began phasing out YouTube support for the Microsoft browser. For users of IE6, the online video site began pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives. A similar prompt will now take place on Docs and Sites for users who are browsing from IE6.

For the most part, the tech community, including web developers and designers, tend to have a profound dislike of Internet Explorer 6. Obviously, the browse has many issues, including low performance and major security flaws. Even Microsoft itself, is recommending that all its customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of the browser which has better security in place. The main reason why IE6 is still being used at all is because of corporate IT departments across the globe needing to make upgrade decisions. Unfortunately, a number of these companies still have to use the browser because they have systems in place built specifically to run with it. To add insult to injury, IE6 continues to lose market share in the browser world.

And Google isn’t the only technology company that is looking to close off support for IE6. Digg has hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. I have a feeling that as Google joins the web in gathering pitchforks around IE6, more companies will flock to join the movement.

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Great news!!
There's an ongoing discussion all over, how to support IE6 or not in websites, forums etc. There's a few topics about it over att phpBB.com as well. Known as before - Microsoft will drop IE6 in July this summer - ("end-of-life-support"), but now with Google officially doing this is great - a major company that takes the stand against it and says "we've had enough". That will make more people aware of it - and more sites will definitly follow and skip their support too.

Digg has hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too.

Just imagine how many hours we will get back, without the need of tweeking sites (for IE6) to infinity


Next "kill": IE7

[Jackal]

Lets face it IE6 was a piece of no css support combined with the fact it ignored standards leaving pages looking deformed even when they were coded right. IE6 has been a developers nightmare for a long long while and its about time the big companies started dropping support for it. This will hopefully force the browser to become extinct making life easier for everyone.

[Austin]

...and neither does IE7. Not much of css support there.

I think IE8 passes the Acid2test today, but no fancy numbers in Acid3
And IE9, wich is in progress - has 32/100 in the test when I looked last time.


With all the security flaws they've had before in mind, I don't understand why they keep develope IE as it is today. Each new version is remade one from the other - meaning they always bring along some scrappy code from their previous versions.

What I think they should do - is to ditch the browser completely, and start over from scratch. Either write a completely new engine, or do like Chrome - take the webkit enginge and create/customise a great GUI around it. Making the browser a stand alone app. In that way they can leave allt the "don'ts" and "forbids" that they keep on embedding in their browser. And hopefully leave out the Active-X thing too.

(For example - you can't show another domains webpage using the tag: <object> - You need an iframe for that ... and frames are gone in XHTML)


IE are so futuristic, aren't they?

[Jackal]

this being why I use Firefox as my main browser, I refuse to use IE unless I need to test something on it. In fact I try to avoid Windows as a whole if I can, As we speak I am installing Ubuntu on this system so I can ditch my Windows installation yet again

[Austin]

Same here, but I use Safari as my main browser. I have Firefox 2.x/3.x - and another one called Camino to alter with. With IE... only have IE7 in my Virtual PC. But mainlny, to check up on something in IE I use browsershots.org for that. (...or with help from someone with a PC who has it)