Archive: 2009-02-20
Nobody likes it, everybody hates it, why won’t IE6 just die?
Web developers hate Internet Explorer 6. It was released in 2001—way back in the free, pre-dystopian days before 9/11—and all but abandoned by Microsoft shortly afterwards. It received a few security fixes, the last of which came in April 2008, but no new functionality. To be fair, back in 2001 it was a far better browser than most of the competition, but its stasis since then has harmed web development. IE6 doesn’t fully support version 2 of CSS (released in 1998!). Its JavaScript engine is slow. It exhibits a number of infuriating layout bugs. None of this would matter if people weren’t still using it, but, alas, a large enough proportion of the masses still clings to it that no commercial enterprise can afford to ignore IE6. Web development is thus hobbled, restricted to the lowest common denominator by the inadequacies of Internet Explorer 6.