First and foremost, we would like to say thank you to the organizers of BarCamp Orlando. Everyone involved put in a lot of hard work, and they did a tremendous job. This event and others like it epitomize the strength of the Orlando tech community. Thank you and great job everyone! 
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.
The following is a video of our BarCamp Orlando presentation. The video (and amusing commentary) were graciously provided by the Pizza Expert, Craig of VOIS.com and Rev2.org. Thanks Craig!
If you just want to see the slides, check them out here:
Towards the end of our presentation we opened up the floor to discussion, because we felt that the tool was a bit morally gray in its methodologies and we wanted to listen to the opinions of our peers. The conversation was much more lively than we anticipated and attendees were very passionate about which side they were on.
The debate that started during our BarCamp presentation quickly spilled onto Twitter, shot to the top of Reddit, and both delighted and angered many. Some were unsure of how they felt.
To everyone that does not appreciate what we’ve done, we hear your voice. While we probably won’t ever agree IE6 Update, we understand and deeply respect your viewpoint. Although Jim and I never expected this level of passionate discussion, we knew from the start that we were entering a morally grey area, and the decisions that went into the creation of IE6 Update were considered very carefully. We care very deeply about the web community and its citizens, and we want to make it a better place. Whether or not you agree with our methods, it is this type of dialogue that leads to progress.
This post is quite long enough already, but very soon I’d like to share some interesting developments around IE6 Update, including a version that points to Firefox, a Wordpress plugin (thanks Japh!), and a screencast from ProCasts.
How do you feel about IE6 Update? Tell us in the comments!
16 comments ↓
Great post, Nick! Thanks for the mention
I’m actually working on a new version now which exposes the various options you guy made available, as options within WordPress too. So those who only wanted to change minor things about the script, will be able to that way too
Looking forward to hearing about further “interesting developments”!
I really love it. The only concern I have got is that you really should put the script somewhere more secure because:
http://twitter.com/designorant/status/1565621342
Also, it would be good to allow users to disable it permanently (cookie?). I can imagine some really frustrated IE6 users that do not want or cannot upgrade their browsers out there.
It is a great idea, we just need to make it a bit more user friendly, I think.
Hi Nick, I’ve already stated my thoughts on ie6update via twitter (I loved it), not so much for what is does but for the fact the debate has re-kicked off and we should hopefully see a load of different offerings come about because of ie6update and that’s good for everyone. I’ll go on to say;
For a while now I’ve been using a similar bar at the top of my sites purely stating that if you’re viewing on ie6 you wont be getting the full experience and that you should update. You can check that out on the URL provided.
I’d never thought to do it this way though and I think it can be done with a little less trickery. Trying to educate users was/is usually a loosing battle, at least this way they get to a Microsoft page, can read the IE8 information and decide for themselves rather than be preached too.
I’d also like to note, that unless specifically asked for by a client, I stopped supporting ie6 at the beginning of 2008.
@Japh Thanks a lot for your support and work you have done on the wordpress plugin that has been heavily requested. You rock!
@Michael Ordon We recommend people download and host the code for themselves, but if they choose to trust our hosted version, we support that.
@Yay Paul The debate is our favorite outcome of the ie6update project. Getting people excited about advancing the browser is the best thing we can do to advance the web. If someone thinks that ie6update is “absolutely the wrong way to do it”, I challenge them to find a “right way” (that is effective). This was our best idea, now it’s someone else’s turn to top it.
@Jim: It’s not about finding a “right way” of getting people to upgrade. They either will or they won’t, depending on a whole bunch of factors that you, as a third party, have no control over.
Education, fake Information Bars, hate campaigns — it doesn’t really matter what tactics are used, average users just don’t care about this stuff and you’re fighting a battle that doesn’t even need to be fought.
People will naturally move to newer browsers once they upgrade their PCs or their IT departments finally make that change. Using something like IE6update (with a misleading message) is obnoxious and counter-productive.
The only thing IE6update is for is to make DEVELOPERS lives easier; it only pays lip service to the idea of helping USERS. IE6update is no different to putting a label on your site that says “Best viewed with IE4″ or whatever. The Web Standards movement showed why that was a dumb approach.
How many times does it need to be said: The web is not about what’s good for DEVELOPERS, it’s about what’s good for USERS.
I have a counter argument blog post about all this but unfortunately cant post it right now, since my host is down. Will provide I link when it’s back up.
[...] Update Announcing IE6 Update - Help kill Internet Explorer 6 Paul Boag Audio Boo Response The BarCamp presentation that delighted and angered so many Progression or [...]
The trackback above links the blog post I mentioned earlier. Here’s a tr.im shortened link too:
http://tr.im/jksO
Although I’m pretty sure I already know where you guys stand on this, I’d be very keen to hear your responses to my argument. Thanks in advance.
I’m beginning to get the impression you guys are courting attention rather than sitting on either side of the fence, but that’s fair enough!
I’m with Matt Hill on this, and I hope you don’t mind the cheeky link back:
http://aneuri.net/1240319048/progression-or-elitism
Hi Nick, here’s a link to the screencast I made for you fine chaps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TclHo_F7rsE&feature=channel_page
Feel very free to embed it in your blog, it is CC:Attribution licensed so anyone can do as they see fit with it.
Cheers,
Ian.
@Aneurin I would be lying if I said the attention is not welcome, because we appreciate it very much. However, even though we thought IE6Update was morally grey, we never thought it was flat out WRONG like so many people seem to believe. We believe in having an open dialogue, so as a result of the controversy, we want to gather as many opinions as possible so that we don’t make any snap judgments.
Your link back is not cheeky, and is much appreciated. Blog comments and tweets aren’t always the best medium in which to fully articulate such a complex topic, so we’re glad others have taken the time to write blog posts detailing their thoughts.
@Ian Ozsvald - Thank you so much Ian! We’ll be featuring your screencast very soon.
[...] If you haven’t seen IE6 Update, check it out at ie6update.com, or read the blog posts here and here. [...]
Just to point out the last question. Right now not everyone knows about web browser and the web as two different thing, but we must also remember that the web is still relatively very new.
If we were to find out someone who doesn’t know that the TV and the data that goes into it are two separate thing it’d be surprising. Maybe that’s not a real good analogy.
My point is that once the web is around for long enough, like maybe how long car has been around, it’ll be common sense that web browser != web, so the fear of browsers unawareness would be much subtle. Because most of the time people mention unaware user, it’s usually the older crowd. I believe in a couple of generation this will be common sense.
[...] Jim Hoskins, Nick Pettit’s co-founder added, “BarCamp Orlando 2010 is awesome. There is a huge variety of topics this year and the speakers are great!” (Jim and Nick also own one21 and were the break-out stars of last year’s BarCamp Orlando after their talk, “Help Kill Internet Explorer 6.0“) [...]
[...] Jim Hoskins, Nick Pettit’s co-founder added, “BarCamp Orlando 2010 is awesome. There is a huge variety of topics this year and the speakers are great!” (Jim and Nick also own : Done21 and were the break-out stars of last year’s BarCamp Orlando after their talk, “Help Kill Internet Explorer 6.0“) [...]
I like to comment on this article by adding that web standards are greatly important. For example what is currently happening between Apple and Adobe.
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