More over these days the so called Web 2.0 made the internet surfing much more richer experience like us using any of the desktop applications ie interact & getting the results then & there than loading pages after page to seek information or transactions.

Simply we can say, today the level of Internet usage we experience is mind blowing, both in our personal & professional life. And there comes one intermediatory thing which helps us to use this channel very well, and that is the so-called ‘Browser’. Yes, Browsers play more crucial role in our web experiences today and its going to be the central platform thru which we do things on the web. If the browser has the limitation it will sabotage the overall web experience and the website we surf thru will lag the features & functionalities or it may even tear the pages apart. But the good part is almost or all the popular web browsers are free to download and use for both businesses & consumers.

Okay, then if Browser is that critical and its free too.. then why is that most of us are lazy to upgrade to the latest or near latest version in order to get the rich web experience or surf the web efficiently?

Recently we built some web apps and also some Big consumer facing portals with all the rich experience using Web 2.0 technologies to engage the audience not only to surf the site for information but also to do transactions online. But then the limitation factor came from the client, “Oh! We are using only IE6 in our organization and the new site does not perform well within our company itself”. We were amazed and shocked by the response since we wanted to give the end audience (Consumers) very engaging rich online brand experience and on the other side we saw the organization itself internally not ready for it. If we limit based on the organizations then the end audience or the so called Public / Consumers will not get the actual brand experience thru this online channel and that will push them away coming back to this web portal. Is that what we want? Infact, I scrutinize my engineers to be back ward compatible with old browsers so that we accommodate those users as well who visit these portals so that they will not see anything bizarre. They had done their best “not in their coding. But in the research” to prove to me that how IE6 is so antique and in fact it should be completely killed soon. So below are the facts they presented which I jotted down in bullet format to easily understand why not to use IE6 browser anymore.

1. IE 6 browser was launched in August 2001 and its nothing new but a flavor of Netscape 4 (which was launched in 1998).
2. It does not support Advanced CSS and AJAX controls & XHTML. And there are horror stories in the web industry regarding its major display issues, despite everything looking fine in all other browsers; elements randomly disappearing entirely due to the ‘hasLayout’ bug in IE 6.
3. So many organizations like Apple (Mobile me), Google (Gmail) & Facebook are not supporting IE 6 browser in order to give rich user experience in their portals. Instead, those sites convince the customers to upgrade to the latest version such as IE 7/8 or to other browsers.
4. Moreover, as of January 10, 2009, there were 142 vulnerabilities reported in Internet Explorer 6, and in that 22 are un-patched still, some of which are rated moderately critical in severity. That’s why even in 2006, citing its lack of security, PC World Magazine named Internet Explorer 6 on their list of the “25 worst tech products of all time”

This is not an anti-Microsoft tirade, but this is exactly what Microsoft wants as well. When Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, they pushed it out as a recommended security update! That alone tells you how eager they were to get Internet Explorer 6 off the market, and offer end users a more secure Internet experience. They have now released version 8 of Internet Explorer, bringing us two complete version upgrades from the web browser released in 2001.

And that’s the reason when we revamp our interakt website, we couldn’t comply with IE6 and pls use the latest version of any browsers such as IE 7 or 8, Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari etc., to have a good surfing experience of Interaktco.com

Some additional references to read about regd the death march again IE6.

IE6 Death March: http://iedeathmarch.org/

Bring Down IE 6 Campaign: http://www.bringdownie6.com