As I mentioned in a previous post, Microsoft has now begun a serious effort to kill off Internet Explorer 6. No issues there, this elderly (+10 years) browser is not secure, and comes nowhere near supporting modern standards.
About 3 weeks ago, Microsoft announced that they would start updating old browsers as part of silent automatic update vice Windows Update. Many Windows users understand the difference, for Windows Update a small balloon appears in the bottom of the screen announcing that updates are available. The User must agree to take the update, and many people just don’t want to be bothered, so they ignore the advisory or close it. This is where Microsoft traditionally put the browser updates, which makes it one of the reasons that there are so many vintage versions of IE out there. With Automatic Update, for most systems when the User shuts down an alert appears that says “do not turn off your computer, installing update 1 of 14″ or some such. Bottom line, with Automatic Update, you are “accepting” all of the updates Microsoft is giving you, and they don’t tell you what those updates are. That said, I like Automatic Update, and heartily endorse it for all Windows users. Automatic Update is where you get the security updates that help keep your system safe. If you are running Windows without it today, thrust me, you NEED to turn it on.
So, back to our saga, Microsoft will start including a browser update in Automatic Update. If you have XP, you will get IE8, if you have Vista or Windows 7, you’ll get IE9. You’ll turn your computer off one night, the next day you have a new browser. This will certainly drive down usage of IE6 at high speed, maybe even eliminate it in some areas. Hooray! Web Developers everywhere are calling it the greatest thing since we learned Godzilla could fly. No longer will we have to support IE6! Huzzah! (Huzzah?)
As a user of IE, you might not have the same perspective.
Firefox and Chrome users are used to getting forced updates periodically, it’s just part of the experience. The difference is, these smaller upgrades make change happen gradually. Users barely notice it the difference in their Chrome/Firefox browsers. Not so with the IE change, now we’re potentially talking about turning off an XP system running IE6 one night, and coming back to IE8 the next day, an upgrade of two full versions. While Microsoft assures us that Preferences will be preserved, that’s only part of the package. What about all of those toolbars that made browsing easier? Gone. Helper objects? Gone. The User will barely know what they are looking at, let alone know how to get anything done. It’s going to be brutal. The User will not be happy.
But wait. Microsoft has an answer for this also. The rollout will be gradual, and will start in Brazil and Australia. Great idea, do it first in two backward third-world countries populated by savages, far enough away from Redmond they probably can’t go there in large numbers and start burning down buildings.
Um, Third World? Savages? Turns out that there are 194 million people in Brazil. According to internetworldstats.com, about 67 million use the Internet. Seems those Savages are rather well hooked up. The fascinating site ie6countdown.com claims that usage of IE6 is around 1.4% in Brazil, so that gets us roughly 94,000 people who are going to get converted from IE6. For Australia we’ve got 17 million Internet Users, with IE6 usage also at 1.4%. So about 23,000 people will suddenly make the switch.
Gosh Steve, that’s only about 110,000 people, give or take, who will go through this agony, not a lot in Internet terms. But what if all of them call YOUR Tech Support line at the same time? And this is, after all,only the beginning. We’ve got a few more countries to go.
Bottom line, while I support the effort to eliminate IE6, I think the guys in Redmond will need to do more thinking about this. It’s not going to go well. Not like this.