I’m so glad that Microsoft, the developer of the famed browser, Internet Explorer 6, has finally started a campaign to stop using the said browser. Microsoft recently released Internet Explorer 6 Countdown to make people aware that IE6 is an outdated software, thus it’s not reliable anymore. Many websites in the past had been campaigning to stop the use of the browser primarily because of security holes and its infamous Standards incompatibility.
Microsoft also included some feature comparison between the different versions of Internet Explorer for the users to know. It is quite notable to know that China has the largest share (34.5%) of IE6 users considering its blocking the citizens of major websites worldwide. Next is South Korea in 24.8% which is not surprising since it is one of the countries with most number of internet users in the world. With its current 12% browser usage worldwide, Microsoft aims to decrease it to 1% and encourages users to upgrade to Internet Explorer 9.
I think that this is a good move for Microsoft since web developers have been protesting and complaining how difficult it is to develop a website while considering the quirky-side of one sole browser.Too bad, IE6 wasn’t a free browser before, so it couldn’t use an auto-version-upgrade feature beforehand, the one like Firefox and Chrome uses, otherwise, this campaign wouldn’t be necessary. Let’s just hope that the newer versions of Internet Explorer could address all the grievances that web developers have suffered for an entire decade.