Today Done21 is proud to announce IE6 Update, a great new tool to encourage your Internet Explorer 6 website visitors to update their browser. Check out http://ie6update.com, and if you end up using IE6 Update, tell us about it on Twitter using the hashtag #ie6update!
Now, some back story…
Internet Explorer 6 is the plague of the Internet. Sure there are other battles, like net neutrality or censorship, but I think it’s safe to say that IE6 has held back innovation more than anything else, because of its slow JavaScript engine, incorrect rendering of web pages, bad security, and more. At the time of this writing, Net Applications says 18% of Internet users still use Internet Explorer 6. Even worse, many sites have a much higher percentage of Internet Explorer 6 visitors.
There have been numerous efforts to put an end to Internet Explorer 6 and we’d like to thank all of them, particularly these:
- Stop IE6
- Bring Down IE 6
- IE6 Death March
- I Dropped IE6
- Many others…
While we applaud any campaign to put an end to IE6, most efforts we’ve seen are very developer centric. And although there have been many other great sites that politely ask users to update, I think developers have made the bold assumption that your average IE6 user is capable of distinguishing between their web browser and the Internet. It’s kind of a hard thing for us tech types to understand, but just take a look at Microsoft’s marketing for Internet Explorer 8:
IE8’s Homepage
Upgrade your Internet
IE8 makes your web better… what?
Download a new Internet!
See what I mean? Microsoft markets its browser as the Internet itself. It’s no wonder its been so hard for developers to explain the situation to their site visitors. We, the web community, have politely asked web surfers to upgrade from IE6. We’ve tried. Everyone has tried. So now it’s time to trick them into upgrading. That’s right, trick IE6 users into moving on. Tricking users is a big taboo, but if we’re talking about tricking users into upgrading from IE6 to a newer browser, we feel that it’s like tricking them into receiving free money.
How can we do this? Well, you know that yellow bar that sometimes appears in Internet Explorer at the top of the browser window? It’s called the Information Bar. It usually displays information about security updates, missing plug-ins, and things of that nature. We decided that the best way to get behind enemy lines would be to fake the Information Bar and offer the user a browser update. Check it out:
To use IE6 Update, all you have to do is go to this website, and then copy and paste the IE6 Update code into your site. It’s that easy.
What do you think about IE6 Update? Let us know, in the comments!
UPDATE: Check out IE6Update on Reddit!
UPDATE 2: IE6Update has garnered a LOT more attention than we ever thought it would. We believe in giving credit where credit is due, so we’d like to give a huge thank you to Jakob Westhoff, the creator of Activebar2. Jakob was the originator of this idea (of mimicing IE’s Information Bar), and had he not put Activebar2 under a Creative Commons license, we would have had a lot more work to do in order to create IE6Update. Thank you, Jakob. You rock! 
136 comments ↓
Sinister, diabolical, devious, sexy, brilliant, and absolutely a good idea. Wait. Not “sexy”, but the other things were true.
Learn from the best: do what Microsoft did.
Why only IE6?
> slow JavaScript engine,
IE7 is no better
> incorrect rendering of web pages,
IE7 is only a bit better, but still bad.
@Fabien IE8 is out. It passed Acid2 and has a faster JavaScript engine:
http://www.microsoft.com/ie8
Which would be great except for those corporate users who are forced to stay with IE 6 for compatibility for internal web apps which have not been upgraded (for whatever reason) to run with different browser versions. I am sure they would love being unable to do their work - and seeing a faster, better browser and then being downgraded again is disheartening as well.
@Jimmie I have personal experience with that exact situation, but someone has to be the one to rock the boat.
Is it the place of a bunch of webmonkeys to cajole users into upgrading their browsers just so they can show off their latest bloated javascript crap?
No. No, it is not.
Sorry you feel that way Eric. We’re just trying to make the web better!
Eric there are far more reasons for web developers wanting users to upgrade to IE6 than Javascript
Eric:
I use little or no javascript on my sites, and the javascript I DO use runs just fine on IE6.
If you had any experience actually trying to develop sites that work properly with IE6, you would be agreeing with us. I can develop a basic layout using Firefox, and it works beautifully on Webkit/Safari, Opera, and IE7 without any additional tweaks. Then I have to go back and add hacks to make IE6 work. EVERY web developer has to do this.
I just put this hack on every site I manage, save a couple of commercial ones, and I plan to ask their permission to do the same to theirs. This is the best idea I have ever seen toward tricking users into upgrading.
And the regular user NEEDS to be tricked into doing this. I have one user I support, who is fairly typical, who thinks that the Internet is called Yahoo, because Yahoo is his home page. So, yeah, we need this.
Yes, I understand that the typical corporate user will not be able to do this. But then again, when all the rest of the world has switched, but the corporate hold-outs have not, the pressure will be on, and they NEED the pressure. It’s time to stop developing applications that target a specific browser.
I’m concerned about the restrictive nature of the GPL license under which this code is distributed. Because of the commercial nature of the site on which I’d like to include IE6 Update, the GPL seems to prohibit me from using it, which seems ultimately counter-productive to progressive-minded commercial developers or corporations.
How about something more flexible, like MIT or BSD?
- Cowboy
I think I will use this, just change the code to point to http://getfirefox.com
Here here Tom Davies! The real solution=Not IE
Changing it to point to something other than the Microsoft website raises further moral questions and is not something I would ever do.
I also doubt that it would “convert” many people, and would be more likely to make visitors lose trust in your website.
By sending people straight to Microsoft, aren’t we overlooking the biggest issue of them all? Microsoft doesn’t offer a newer browser for people that are stuck on Windows XP SP1 or anything older (yes, everyone should be running the newest OS, but many organizations are tied to legacy software and aren’t able to upgrade). To these people, are we intending to say “No internet for you - NEXT!”?
How could I do this in a Wordpress blog?
[...] April 19, 2009 Source: http://almost.done21.com/2009/04/announcing-ie6-update-help-kill-internet-explorer-6/ [...]
Oh no!
IE6 is the best browser out there!
http://www.saveie6.com/
Sign the petition to keep IE6!
[...] you want to know more about IE6Update, you can read their blog post about it Announcing IE6 Update - Help kill Internet Explorer 6 Share and [...]
Why not get rid of IE alltogether? Provide similar functionality that installs Firefox!
Have you seen this?
Edskes Software Silent Setup for Mozilla Firefox
@Tom, @Eman: It’s already been done
Check out this post on how to “Update” users from IE 6 to Firefox.
Being Online Application Developers, we just wish Microsoft would spend more time developing and less time releasing. ie7’s now been replaced by ie8 now we have 3 versions to “work around”.
I think this is a great idea.
excelent!
i’m using it! great! thanks for develop this !!
justin hileman, well done too !
The update failed. I’m using Windows 2000.
I think this is a good idea, but I’d be curious to know if it actually works and what the success rate is.
For those worried about Corporate Users upgrading accidentally due to legacy application requirements, you should already have the workstation(s) locked down to begin with, since it’s just as easy for someone to go to Windows Update.
On the other side, I think the ultimate way to ridding ourselves of IE6 is to not tailor our sites / applications to that community anymore; thus forcing them to upgrade if they want to use your site.
Just my two-cents…I’d personally love to stop designing CSS hacks for IE6.
[...] Announcing IE6 Update - Help kill Internet Explorer 6 - Almost Done A fairly brilliant hack to "encourage" people to upgrade away from IE6. I say, the sooner the better. (tags: internetexplorer ie6 javascript) [...]
This is so WRONG.
It is not your place to dictate to users what browser they should use. And it definitely is not your place to dictate to users an upgrade using an UNDERHAND method that TRICKS them into thinking it’s an official Microsoft upgrade warning.
This is such a FAIL on so many levels, it makes me sick.
@Matt Hill - Thanks for the feedback! We’re not forcing anyone to do anything, but if you feel that passionately about it, you might want to head over to http://saveie6.com and sign their petition.
Whilst I’m all for educating users of the downsides of using ie6, this is just plain stupid.
All these ‘Kill IE6′ sites are a waste of space. They aren’t going to speed anything up. A date for the death of IE6 was set the moment MS decided to dip back in the browser market with IE7.
The battle has already been won, thanks to the FF browser and campaign grabbing a large % of the user market, and also converse between leading developers and Microsoft.
Microsoft set a ‘death-date’ based on an appropriate and responsible amount of time to allow for large companies to upgrade their systems. They took ‘real’ business considerations into account when doing this.
Yes IE6 is crap. Tell people. But thinking you can run into ‘Microsoft’s cave’ and ’slay the IE6 dragon’ with a ‘JavaScript shaped sword’ is naive, and doing so in the form of this TRICK is a disgrace.
“We’re just trying to make the web better!” FFS.
[Shakes Head]
Although I have concerns about tricking users, being in the same arena as scammers, I can’t but help like the idea.
As a small improvement, you could add CSS “cursor: pointer;” to get the little cursor link hand
Here is a more generic approach with a less nefarious implementation:
http://www.pushuptheweb.com/
It tells users of all browsers that they are on older versions… (not just IE users).
Much as I hate the hoops we have to jump through to make IE6 behave, this is wrong-headed in the extreme.
Most users who can upgrade from IE6 already have. The rest are locked down by corporate IT policy, as some enterprise web-based software is still reliant on IE6.
So, for a corporate IE6 user, they’ll be faced with a genuine-looking update bar, then have to put in a call to IT support to find out what’s going on, then be told that they can’t upgrade anyway.
This will actually have a direct cost of people’s time in large corporations. I presume you’ve never worked in IT support, else you’d realise what a monumentally bad idea ie6update is.
@Nick Petit: You may not be forcing people to upgrade, but you ARE forcing a warning that looks as if it’s coming from Microsoft. This is as bad as those adverts that look like dialogue boxes saying “You computer may be infected with a vrius! Do you want to run a scan now?” and then proceed to install a ton of malware.
You state in your AudioBoo response to Paul Boag that it’s OK to be a bit “evil” because Microsoft use underhand methods themselves in advertising the IE8 upgrade. How does your decision to use a fake information bar make you better than them? Pot, kettle, black.
By all means, place some kind of UNOBTRUSIVE note on the website that the user’s browser is out of date, but don’t use underhand tactics to frighten users into upgrading; it’s pure arrogance and just not on.
Have you listened to Aaron Russell’s AudioBoo “When can we stop worrying about IE6?” I think it gives a much more acceptable view of dealing with the issue of IE6 support.
At the end of the day, users are what the web is about. You shouldn’t be doing anything to annoy, frighten, discourage or confuse them. The web is complex enough as it is; we should be making it as simple as possible for people, not throwing obstacles in their way simply because we hate IE6.
Hating IE6 is OUR problem to solve, not the user’s!
I hope this is a late Aprils Fools joke.
@Tim Beadle - I’m a software engineer at another company in addition to Done21, and I also help provide IT support everyday. My response is, the cost to software engineers and web developers far outweighs the costs with IT support.
@Nick Pettit - fine, so you can see the other side of the issue. Doesn’t it just become *wilfully* passing the buck? IT depts will upgrade when they’re ready, not just because some jumped-up web developer says so.
@Tim Beadle - In a direct way yes, but indirectly, it’s the software developers that pay the price. IT departments tend to not update browsers (IE6) because there’s internal software that relies on a particular browser version (or they’re just lazy). In turn, the software developers are the ones making the internal apps.
BTW, we really need to get “responses” coded into the comments here don’t we? This page is getting messy.
A nice idea, and we all certainly want to be rid of IE6, but there’s a problem for the few still using Windows 2000 - they can’t upgrade to IE7 or IE8!
However conveniently, they can upgrade to Firefox 3.
As for the ethics, that’s another debate, but I appreciate the efforts to get people onto better browsers.
I have two issues:
1. Whether it’s a good idea at all, because I think most home users have already upgraded and corporate ones will, as I said, have it done for them when IT says so.
2. Whether it’s a good idea to fake a system message. I say it’s not, because it kills trust and uses the tactics of scammer and spammers.
I’d like to see the back of IE6 as much as the next web developer. I don’t think this is the way to go about it, though.
Where’s the user in all of this? Not at the centre, that’s for sure. They’re being scared, nagged, cajoled, butchered into upgrading.
This is for the convenience of web developers and benefits end users not one jot. No more, no less.
Tim Beadle: “This is for the convenience of web developers and benefits end users not one jot. No more, no less.”
Exactly. It seems some developers are forgetting that their responsibility is to making things work for their users, not to make their own lives easier.
Matt Hill: “It seems some developers are forgetting that their responsibility is to making things work for their users, not to make their own lives easier.”
Bzzt! Wrong!
If you have a website *and* you have to support IE6, you waste tons and tons of time trying to make things work right in IE6. You have a finite amount of time, so time spent dealing with IE6 compatibility is time stolen from site improvements, bug fixes, new content, etc.
In other words, you spend less time making things better for your other users because you have to make things work for the @#$%#@$ IE6 users.
@Dave: If you’re spending “tons and tons of time trying to make things work in IE6″ then you’re doing it wrong.
Hi,
Great script! Any chance you will host a minified version?
I tend to use the below site to minify my JS using YUI:
Nice work!
Ack, url got removed… Google “compressorrater”.
With Edskes Software Silent Setup for Mozilla Firefox - http://edskes.net/firefoxs/ - you can easily let your visitors install Mozilla Firefox.
Edskes Software Silent Setup for Mozilla Firefox is a small multilingual utility which automatically downloads and installs the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, and then immediately opens one or more websites.
It ask no difficult questions and doesn’t show technical information nor error messages and even works under the most restricted user accounts and older Windows versions, so you can quickly use Firefox on any computer and also easily explain how to install Firefox to anyone else.
Since it always works and is so simple to use, you can include it on your website, so you don’t have to code for non-standard compliant browsers anymore.
[...] At BarCamp Orlando, Jim and I gave a presentation on IE6 Update, a new tool we created that helps encourage site visitors to upgrade their browser. IE6 Update is based on an idea from Jakob Westhoff called Activebar2, so a big thank you goes out to Jakob. Thanks, Jakob! If you’re unfamiliar with IE6 Update, you can read our post about it here. [...]
[...] Update Announcing IE6 Update - Help kill Internet Explorer 6 Paul Boag Audio Boo Response The BarCamp presentation that delighted and angered so [...]
Hi!…
How can I translate it to Spanish?
Thanx!. Great application!.
http://wiki.nisi.ro/wordpress/antiie6/
This is an interesting, kinda cool idea. I will use it, I don’t know if it’s going to be the right thing to implement on every project I work on - but I certainly don’t feel like it’s morally wrong to do so.
I am sick to the teeth of having to hack code to get IE6 to render my site(s) as close as ‘possible’ to how they ’should’ render - it is a pain in the @rse to be frank. It’s not as though this is ‘forcing’ anyone to update, and sure - there may be occasions where it’s not possible - government departments full of dead wood (including their browsers) come to mind. Anything that helps speed up the demise of one of Micro$ofts bloated and buggy software apps is all good in my book.
On one of my site (skidvn.com) I totally refuse to serve the content to IE6 users. Just got sick of stupid CSS and JS hacks just for a stupid browser and its (sorry) stupid users.
After installing this my site has become listed as a ‘reported site attack’ site. I removed it today, its not worth the novelty.
Many of these justifications for not supporting IE6 are not only misguided, they’re childish too.
The web is for everyone, and if they choose to browse using an outdated browser, it’s still your responsibility to support them.
IE6 users are anywhere from 17% to 33% of the web audience, depending on where you get your stats — by any standards that’s a MASSIVE number of people — and you’re saying they’re worth ignoring? Or that it’s justified to give them obnoxious scripts, that they probably can’t act on anyway? I’m getting really angry and this unbelievable arrogance.
There aren’t “IE6 users” and “other users”, there are just USERS. If you think it’s OK to ditch IE6 support, then please get off the web. You’re simply not contributing to it being a place of participation for EVERYONE.
Suck it up, do the right thing, and build sites that everyone can use. It’s what you’re paid to do.
@Matt Hill, sorry
but IE6 really is an abomination. Our website does too many things that IE6 simply wasn’t built for (8 YEARS ago).
So, we’ll be using this for sure.
thanks!
Jeffrey Martin
http://www.360cities.net
@Matt Hill
Your comment “its still your responsibility to support them” is misguided. Probably even more so than people that run public web sites that are unusable in IE6.
Its a choice as to what browsers a web site owner (and thus their chosen developer) supports.
Before you get angry may be you should check your own assumptions? Everyone that creates a web site is being paid? Your attempts to persuade people to support IE6 is in anyway less arrogant?
I run a private web site 44% of users are still running IE6 (Google Analytics). This costs my company a non-trivial amount of money to maintain for ZERO benefit to the user. For example if they installed Firefox their experience would be greatly improved and my team’s work would be greatly reduced.
There are lots of reasons why people don’t upgrade from IE6. Many legit and many not. But at the end of the day all of them have solutions if the user (or IT staff) choose to find out what they are / action them.
Tricking people into upgrading made me smile but its not really the best way forward.
Education or making the choice to not support them (ignoring 17-33% of your potential users is a choice) are really the only options I think.
Very nice stuff. When I design a site, I still do it to look as good for IE6, though it is a pain in the ass, some people use it. Still, they must be encouraged to get a newer browser. It’d be nicer if they would be encouraged to download a browser that respects web standards, like good younger firefox.
Translating it to different languages would be a big plus!
@Alex Barnes: I’m not angry, I’m just very, very concerned.
Sure, it’s a choice for developers to no longer support browser X. But how is that decision in any way helpful for the myriad users of IE6 who still use it to surf the web?
I think many developers are not seeing the bigger picture. Let’s use an analogy.
Let’s say that the Web is a road, browsers are the cars, and websites are stops on that road: shops, tourist spots, hotels, libraries, cinemas, etc.
All cars can drive on that road and the drivers can choose to stop at any of the interesting places on the way. None of those people will be prevented from visiting any of the places they choose, simply because of the car they drive.
If a guy is driving a really out of date car, no-one at the cinema or the library says to him “Hey buddy, you gotta get a new car before you can come in here.” The driver might agree that his car is old and he later might get a new car, but right now he wants to see a movie, or rent a book, and his choice of car should not stop him from doing those things.
By not supporting IE6, you’re putting a sign outside your cinema or your library that says “Only drivers with new cars are welcome”.
Disregarding users for YOUR benefit is a prejudice. It’s no better than a Bed & Breakfast from days gone by with a sign outside saying “No Irish, No Blacks.”
The Web is not a place where developers get to choose how a person accesses their site. You can do that in a closed environment if you wish, but not on the public web which is supposed to be available to all. Remember the vision of Sir Tim Berner’s Lee:
How is it arrogant of me to remind people that their responsibility is to their users? The Web isn’t a developer’s digital playground, it’s for EVERYONE, and the current view by many developers suggests an elitist attitude that they are custodians of this space and get to define how people use it. WRONG. What YOU might wish for as a developer (”Kill IE6″) has absolutely nothing to do with what YOUR USERS WANT or NEED.
On another note, I would be interested to know what kind of “non-trivial” sums you’re talking about regarding the costs to support 44% of web users? What does your 44% equate to in terms of actual numbers of people? And how does supporting them equal ZERO benefit? NOT supporting them is ZERO benefit!
Lastly, I agree that education is a good thing. But doing it with a fake system prompt is not the way to go about it.
Dis-moi, tu me paies vista pour que je puisse installer ie8 ? J’ai que windows 2000, là et j’ai pas les sous pour changer d’OS… Ah t’avais pas réfléchi à ça ? Note que ça s’est vu…
Bref, un script de merde à courte vue. Comme si ie7 ou 8 étaient eux-mêmes génialement révolutionnaires comparés à ie6. Foutaises !
It doesnt work, I use ie6 and dont see a thing poping up!!! sheiss
Make the Web better by using Firfox and burning every piece of machinery carrying the IE virus. =)
My friend used to use Internet Explorer 6, i upgraded him. And i got him Fire Fox.
Interesting and entertaining, and I have no real qualms with this. When I develop web sites, IE6 is too often a thorn in my side. I pretty much never aim to make a site pixel-perfect in obsolete versions of IE, just to make the experience acceptable.
NOTE TO AUTHORS: You should be aware that on sites with an element set to reside at the top with absolute positioning, it appears overtop of the banner, which detracts from the charade. (The same problem occurs with http://www.PushUpTheWeb.com, which I tend to prefer, since it doesn’t pretend to charade as an official MS announcement, and it covers other major browsers as well.)
Although I realize some people may not have the choice to upgrade, I’ve known too many people who don’t even know the version (or even the name!) of their web browser. I don’t know the most effective way to motivate those people to upgrade, but I think at least presenting the option (unobtrusively, preferably) is a step in the right direction.
This is soooo against usability. What about Update Notifiers for Pseudo-Webdesigners to remind them to switch over to another job?
Great initiative. I think it would be better not to use div class names so common as ‘content’ because a lot of sites already use that class name. Using unique css classnames will prevent the layout to f*ck up.
The problem with this is it sets a bad precedence.
Users should be able to trust the information that their browser provides to them (especially since the top bar in IE is generally to warn you about a potential threat) and this starts a trend of hi-jacking that information.
How long before someone picks up your idea and uses it to launch viruses or send you off to pr0n sites?
There are better, safer, ways to go about promoting other browsers and helping people move away from IE6.
Matt, your car analogy can be flipped:
1) You can upgrade to a new car for zero cost.
2) One particular make of old car is degrading the driving experience for everyone by ripping up the tarmac, requiring extra money and effort to be spent on fixing roads rather than providing better services for road users.
Consider your road users and don’t allow the old clunker on your roads.
Of course analogies are generally crap when it comes to computing, but you started it.
Not an original idea, but if it gets rid of IE6, fine. You’ve missed the point that a lot of people don’t upgrade because of bandwidth restrictions and linking to the jQuery library is an impediment to spreading your message. It’s a nice library that makes a clever widget, but End6 doesn’t use it as being lightweight is pretty important in an initiative like this.
Any reason you didn’t link to End6 as well?
@End6 - To run IE6 I have to boot my old Windows machine. Any way that I can see End6 in Firefox on the Mac?
Since most (not to say: all) of the initiatives aiming at moving users away from IE6 are not only tech-centric but also uniquely available in english, you may want to use http://www.byebyeinternetexplorer.org, which speaks a language that the basic user can understand, and also provides localization in several languages.
Brilliant!
This is the most non-offensive way of taking IE6 off the web. I’m going to install it on all my sites right away.
Thanks SO much.
Surprisingly similar to my post months ago
http://www.adrianpelletier.com/2009/02/16/how-i-chose-to-say-farewell-to-ie6/
@Brol : ta gueule !!! tu la fermes, t’es qu’une merde de sous merde, tu te crois intelligent ? reste avec ton windows 2000 et ton IE antédiluvien.
si t’as pas de sous, tu aurais dû dépensé ton fric dans l’achat d’une cervelle plutôt qu’un vieux ordi tout pourri !!!
t’es vraiment la caricature du français type : arrogant et con à la fois !
je t’emmerde !!!
This is a great idea, considering the majority of users running IE6 can’t or don’t want to upgrade to IE7+ either because they’re running an unsupported OS or they’re happy with the internet breaking in IE6.
It’s counter productive as every time some one who DOESN’T want to upgrade and visits your site gets this alert will eventually get annoyed and go away, this is just as bad as adding alert(’Fuck Off’); to an onload event.
Eric there are far more reasons for web developers wanting users to upgrade to IE6 than Javascript
We just installed ie6update to our site and love it! Also we are gonna start evangelizing it to all our clients. Great work guys.
http://simplestation.com/locomotion/help-kill-internet-explorer-6/
[...] Microsoft markets its browser as the Internet [...]
@Matt Hill
After reading your analogy about the cars I suddenly remembered that here in the UK you can now trade in your old car, which has to be over a certain age, and therefore… unstable… for a nice brand new car with a great heap of money lopped off in a bid to get rid of the old and outdated, and unsafe motors.
Continuing with your analogy I think this speaks for itself in the browser world too. IE6 has always had the most security issues, because it is the oldest browser and was has not be updated in God knows how long, to prevent newer batches of security issues. Therefore, I think it’s time the old girl was traded in for NO COST, in exchange for a better model, and one that has the added bonus of more up-to-date security patches.
One thing I have always being confused about is how little IE seems to update, especially in comparison to the likes of Firefox and Opera. In fact, every time I open Opera (which isn’t often) there is a new update. Firefox are not on version 3.0.10 of Firefox 3. And why? Mainly because of an increase in security, yet my Windows update hasn’t seem to add any security patches to IE7 for a long time?
Back to the topic in hand. I actually added this to my site. I have developed for IE in a business environment for a lot of years now, and I’m at the stage where I just can’t do it any more. I just don’t see the point. 2001. That’s nearly 9 years. I was still in school then for Gods sake, and I like to think that I have changed A LOT since then. So why can’t a browser? A simple browser. Created by one of the richest companies in the world. It makes no sense whatsoever.
I have actually removed IE6Update now, in favour of pushup (http://www.pushuptheweb.com/) simply because it is a little less intrusive, does not mimic a browser warning and looks nice. It suggests rather than tricks.
I don’t personally see why anyone would be against phasing out IE6 and for those who are against the IE6Update method, then at least SOMETHING (like pushup) is more graceful alternative that passes the same message. And you’d think high-end developers of high-end companies would be able to add a bit of support for a newer browser, wouldn’t you?
[/rant]
I think it’s clear from my arguments that I’m not a fan of IE6, but the fact remains there are people using it who can’t or won’t upgrade. Putting IE6update on a bunch of random websites doesn’t help these people at all.
I favour inclusion over exclusion. So for as long as there are a significant % of people using IE6, I’ll support them. It’s MY JOB and I take pride in what I do.
Goodie. With a little luck this will persuade several thousand Dutch antique software-lovers to upgrade.
Really cool, thanks. Please display the message in the local language the browser is using. Translation for Dutch (nl, nl_NL, nl_BE) would be:
Internet Explorer heeft updates nodig om deze site te bekijken. Klik hier voor een update…
I’m sure other users can provide translations for other languages.
In my regular life I’m not a web developer, but I recently had to develop a website. It was mostly a joy (due to jQuery) until I realized I had to develop it again for IE6.
I decided to refuse content to IE6, with a polite explanation, and links to better browsers. I don’t think IE6 users will ever find out they are IE6 users (with the exception for the 1079 on SaveIE6.com) until you refuse to serve them.
My IE6 visitors see this: http://pleasehelpmepayoffmyhouse.com/noie6
An important improvement would be to show the message only once per session.
@Matt Hill - wait, the web is a road??? i thought it was a series of tubes?!
interesting conversation ya’ll. i’m a designer and i hate IE6. I think this is kinda a cool idea, but after reading all the arguments back and forth i think i’ll still let ie6 users just have a sub-par experience on some of my sites without out using the script and if its that important i’ll do the work to make them as happy as possible.
fact is, someone like my mother-in-law wouldn’t even know what to do when/if she landed on the IE8 page!
Any chance of making the website to show available in a new screen? As it moves the visitors away from the site instantly….
couldn’t find a target or something like that in the source….
As a web designer, I love this, this would make life easier for us….for those who are not, feel our pain and support us anyways. We make better sites when we are happy. Kill IE6, to make the web a better place.
Thanks guys from Done21!!!
This is an awesome bit of kit. Kill Ie6
Kudos to you all, truly brilliant
Thank you. I’ve just implemented it in http://getcoffee.at/ - a site that is mainly used in large corporations. At this time, around 24% of the visitors has ie6. I’ll let you know if and how this number changes!
DOES NOT WORK, using jquery and PNG24 images on ie6? yeah right, better to use simple CSS
I just can’t bring myself to stoop to Microsoft’s level and trick people. If we do this we’re no better than they are.
Hey, I’m all for IE6 dying. But a most corporate users don’t have control over their desktops. Until ORGANIZATIONS move off of IE6, a lot of visitors simply can’t. And ORGANIZATIONS won’t move off of IE6 until their internal apps are tested and fixed for 7 or 8.
If you want to effect change, you’d seek out these organizations and provide tools to help them. Not silly tricks like this.
I really love this Script! Really!
But in my tests with a IE 6.0 SP2 on XP Professional, the bar seems to be pulled 10 to far to the top, so it cant be seen completeley.
I will send Sceenshots on Admin request!
Shouldn’t you change the text in your script to read:
“You are using an old version of the internet. Click here to upgrade to Web 2.0…”
@ Dave
Not a bad idea!
And I really like your solution Adrian!
(http://www.adrianpelletier.com/2009/02/16/how-i-chose-to-say-farewell-to-ie6/)
Apart from making it look like a Microsoft warning what are doing but telling the truth? The browser IS outdated. Updating it WILL provide more functionality. A newer version WILL provide a better user experience.
I’m tired of having to rebuild every site I work on for one browser. We really need to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Maybe when we accomplish the goal of purging IE6 from the planet, we can work on these things:
1) Get people to stop entering “www.somesite.com” as a search query on Google
2) Get people to stop saying “h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-double-u-double-u-double-u-dot-whatever” when telling me a web address
3) Get people to stop calling a slash a “backslash” unless they really mean it (which in a web address they do not). We don’t confuse colons with semi-colons, so what’s the problem with the slashes?
Anyway, great work on ie6update. I’ll be incorporating it into all the client sites I build from now on (or at least until IE6 finally goes to /dev/null forever).
All I can say is good jorb! I wrote about IE6Update on my blog, http://www.techbuoy.com.
Here’s a plugin for Drupal: http://drupal.org/project/ie6update
i think you should make a version that works with prototype after it i would love to use that and want to share your url in the code
Great idea! I’ll start implementing it this weekend on my sites, and even convince my employers to add it to the corporate web sites!
When I checked out this page it looks like all those
!!!! YOU HAVE 4,000,000 VIRUSES !!!! CLICK HERE TO CLEAN THEM UP !!!! pages.
You know, The ones we tell the un-educated users to never click on.
[...] a comment » In their blog post “Announcing IE6 Update – Help kill Internet Explorer 6“, Done21 announced IE6 Update, a tool to encourage Internet Explorer 6 website visitors to [...]
One basic problem to kill IE6 is, that many people in companies (at least here in europe) still use win2000, because it was a relatively stable system. On Win2000 it is not possible to update IE6. So, most people who still use IE6 just can´t update.
To get an idea of how long we have to put up with this nonsense check out http://www.ie6death.com/ Going to be another 5 years of hacking away at IE6. Sounds depressing…
If Microsoft really said they would continue to support ie6 until 2014, then they’re contradicting themselves. If you visit microsoft.com on IE6, or even IE7, then you’re bombarded with all sorts of notifications asking you to update to IE8. They also have an active banner ad campaign for IE8, and are paying top dollar to advertise on popular websites.
In regards to the issue of windows 98 or 2000 users, they (or their company) undoubtedly need to upgrade their computers. “But Windows Vista/Windows 7 is so unstable…” you may say. So switch to a blippin mac!
There are only two jobs one can hold which allow you to be consistently wrong all of the time, and not get fired: the first is that of a meteorologist, and the second - a Microsoft programmer.
Maybe the real solution for those poor corporate drones trapped on their locked down ie6 computers is a banner that says “GET BACK TO WORK, SLACKER.”
Muito boa essa iniciativa.
Eu vou aderir em todos os sites meus e dos meus clietes.
Acho que todo os desenvolvedores deveriam aderir.
Parabens!
It’s a nice idea and well implemented, but I think it’s unethical. I think you have to take into account that most users aren’t computer savvy.
What if they try to install IE8 on a system that can’t support it?
I think tricking users is wrong. Even if Microsoft is branding IE as “the internet”, who cares, it’s not fair. I’ve nothing against displaying a message recommending an upgrade, but being underhand is untrustworthy.
Besides, if something went wrong, it would look like my site broke their computer.
Has anyone seen a significant change in the number of ie6 users visiting their site after installing this?
I personally will never update from IE6 until IE8 gives me the option of keeping the EXACT interface from IE6. Icons, toolbar position, no tabs, everything. It has to be the IE6 gui with the IE8 rendering engine. If Microsoft did this far more of us still using IE6 would update.
If someone call tell me how to mouse over video working on windows 8, which workeded perfect on 6, I agree with changeing to 8. I am no looking to to get back to 6.
One very hacked off person.
Absolutely great idea. Prefer this to the active bits one. Obviously, a bit of subtle message editing is required
Rigged: Don’t upgrade ever, for God’s sake, don’t. Even if they recall your car because it has a brake failure that could cost your life, you’ll probably stay clear of it with your attitude, right? IE6 is probably the single biggest security risk and development roadblock on the Internet today and any measure that makes it disappear is justified and worth to be praised.
I actually do like this one! Brilliant.
[...] http://almost.done21.com/2009/04/announcing-ie6-update-help-kill-interne... Your name: * [...]
This argument has been done to death but here are my two pence:
1) State specifically in my terms that a site will be made to be compatible with modern web browsers (IE8, FF2+, Safari 3+), older browsers depending on code. Charge a premium for any requests of IE6/7 compatibility.
2) Make sure content displays on IE6 etc - appearance isn’t that big of a deal as long as your Grandma can read all the content on the site.
3) Insert a friendly notice advising users that to get the best possible experience (on this site and others) you should try Firefox.
Not supporting IE6 is a lot different than not making your site usable by blind users or requiring a mouse.
After 8 years I think it is safe to say that we shouldn’t give a shit why people are still using IE6 — ignorance, IT department, locked down system.
In all of these “excuses” there is a clear solution to the problem, and coming from an IT background I can say that it would be trivial to keep IE6 for whatever requires it and install a second browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, hell probably even the last Netscape version whatever that was) and make it default.
Microsoft is to blame for all of this — they don’t even support SVG in Internet Explorer 8 and that is just inexcusable.
Who says the world owes IE6 users endless compatibility? If you’re creating a site funded by public money or the very people who need to access it (business clients), then by all means support everything out there. But if you’re providing the rest of the Internet FREE INFORMATION out of your own wallet, so to speak, I think you can safely and ethically determine which browsers to support and which not to. It’s your judgment how important those IE6 users are and what effort you might expend to cater to them.
Businesses that lock down their users to IE6 need to make their own decision as well. Either re-write their proprietary browser applications to support something more modern, or else prohibit their users from accessing the web. Asking the rest of the net to do their work for them is essentially externalizing the cost of their IT work to everyone else. How can anyone claim that’s fair, especially when they were the ones who bought into the Microsoft platform in the first place?
And remember, nothing lasts forever, even if it is supposedly for the ‘common good’. Just ask all those people who still own analog televisions in the US. Only, in this case, the converter box is provided by the TV manufacturer, free of charge. It’s called IE8.
Did it occur to any of the geniuses behind this deplorable hoax that the fraud being perpetrated by your fake information bar; “We decided that the best way to get behind enemy lines would be to fake the Information Bar.” leaves you wide open to criminal charges; not only from Microsoft Corp.; but potentially from anyone whose computer ends up disabled through your misrepresentation?
Several people have made variations on this argument: Forcing people to upgrade to the current version of IE is analogous to posting a sign in a restaurant parking lot “New Cars ONLY”.
I call B.S. For years, the biggest corporate sites didn’t support standards-compliant browsers like Firefox. They didn’t give a damn until Firefox and other IE competitors gained a significant percentage of the market.
ALSO, and perhaps more importantly, upgrading IE is FREE. It’s not like a new car at all, unless you live in a place where the only thing stopping you from trading in your clunker for a new car is laziness.
The biggest issue is corporate environments, which often have intranet apps that rely on IE6.
I think the standard “upgrade” message should read more like this: “Your version of Internet Explorer is out of date and possibly insecure. Contact your administrator, or click here to update…”
If enough IT departments get complaints (esp. from executives in their organizations), they will eventually be forced to upgrade.
What I DO think is UNETHICAL is “tricking” the using into installing Firefox (or Chrome, or whatever) INSTEAD of IE. That’s the equivalent of phishing in order to install a script.
Yeah, there are better browsers than IE8, but at least IE is getting more and more compliant.
You are not going to win any fans of Firefox or any other open source application by tricking people into downloading it.
All this said, can anybody out there explain how we can fix our Wordpress sites so that they don’t blow apart in IE6? I was showing my site to someone the other day and it was really embarrassing when they pulled it up and half the site wasn’t there. Thanks!
Great script, for sites using jQuery.
I would highly recommend building a JS framework agnostic version of this script. I know hand-coded JS can be a pain, but it’d make the script much more usable.
This is great. Only problem that I have noticed is that the text is showing up centered rather than left justified…
How about setting a cookie if the user cancels the information bar so that it doesn’t keep poping up?
The agency I work for has apps hosted by the feds. I can’t get IE8 to work with those sites. I’d have to uninstall IE8 if one of my users stumbled on to this code and upgraded to IE8. The sites seem to work with IE7 and I won’t mind seeing that upgrade but not to IE8. I’ve heard some fed agencies in Oct have certified Vista for use. This is what I deal with.
What about rural people that have very slow internet, the whole town I live in gets only 26.4k on dial-up. Every update takes forever and wastes time power and money. U going to send me a disc with IE 8 ?
Hah! I got it.
Make the message along the lines of “This website requires you update your software to the latest version of Internet Explorer, called “Firefox”.”
Yea? Yea?
fuck u eric!
Maybe the script could sniff whether the person only had Win XP SP1 and send them alternative browser’s site, since they wouldn’t be able to upgrade to IE8?
[...] more presentations from Done21 .Posts en relation :Web citizens trying to kill Internet Explorer 6Announcing IE6 Update – Help kill Internet Explorer 6Microsoft actively urges IE 6 users to upgrade* Aider Microsoft à tuer IE6.Pas de commentaireFil [...]
[...] so bad if it means you’re helping them and the rest of the Internet out? The folks at Done21 certainly don’t think so. “IE6 is like an illness that just won’t go away, but we [...]
This is hilarious. Wouldn’t use it myself - but love the idea. IE6 supporters take note - your days are numbered, but you still linger like some sort of festering boil. I would urge all web devs to build web pages that popup a lightbox on EVERY page for IE6 users with a list of links to various compliant browsers. However, I live in the real world and can’t see it happening.
With regard to being arrogant if you don’t support IE6. I don’t get it. When free software developers no longer develop for Windows 98 they don’t get called arrogant, do they? If some can’t access certain sites coz they have an 8-9 year old browser - tough titty. Do bad bits of outdated FREE software deserve to be supported by web devs? No of course they don’t. And before anybody comes back with “you’re discriminating against users not software”, I’d say stop being so naive. Swap one piece of FREE software for another or run an alternative browser for general browsing while keeping IE6 for legacy apps. Simple.
This is an inspiring idea!
But I don’t like the bloated code which even requires loading jquery which only adds to the bloated code. So I’ve decided to develop my own little script called “IE-Update”. You can check it out in action on my site.
You can also download it and play with it: http://www.felix-riesterer.de/main/download/
I found an issue with the destination link, resolved by removing “default.asp”.
Also it would be nice to have a version that worked in IE5.5.
Hi
I’m a developer….This is a superb decision we need to take before 2009 itself.
IE 6 is now strugling like a baby on the battle field…and Firefox like a Good Fighter
Leave a Comment