YouTube To Kill IE6 Support On March 13 282
Joel writes "Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website: 'Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers.'"
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about goddamned time (Score:1, Insightful)
One has to wonder (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's about goddamned time (Score:0, Insightful)
Stupid mods, read first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_ [wikipedia.org]"niggardly"
Hooray! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:w00t! (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as html5 is patent-free, ok. Otherwise it is clearly unacceptable.
Re:One has to wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, IE6 is a decade old. In internet years, that's about four or five generations old. It's time to drag corporations* into the modern age, even if they're kicking and screaming the entire way.
*After all, we know it's only corporations that still use IE6 because nobody in their right mind _chooses_ to remain with IE6 on their personal computers.
Re:One has to wonder (Score:1, Insightful)
Whether any whackjob would call it abuse or not, it raises the question: would anyone notice?
Bing has relatively few users. Likewise, old FF versions have relatively few users. And there's further selection bias against the intersection of those two small groups.
Nobody has made the horrifically stupid and fiduciarily irresponsible decision to pay extra in order to create intranet web apps that require users to use an old version of Firefox. The situation for IE6 is fundamentally different than every other browser in the history and breadth of the web. IE is one of Microsoft's lock-'em-into-a-legacy solutions, and a lot of incompetent planners happened to fall for that one.
We can only hope that someone learned the painfully obvious lesson. Of course, not everyone did. My own state government is spending tax dollars to develop NEW systems that are dependent on proprietary Microsoft locks, and it's pretty sad that no one is able to stop them.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
RIP IE6
Burn in HELL, IE6!!
Re:Finally (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, it looks like any impact will be extremely minimal, at least in the very short term. The only way we'll ever be rid of this thrice cursed browser is when enough company execs can't get their daily fill of kitten jumping into box videos and start asking their IT guys why.
IIRC, support for IE6 will be phased from most (if not all) Google services including Google Apps, Gmail, etc. So there's still a good chance. Also, this now gives an excuse for a lot of people, preferably including other big players, to do the same, which will hopefully happen sooner than later.
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
For most companies if Google does it then it is good enough for your company too.
I have wanted to do AJAX based apps for a Long time, however I got a lot of push back. When Google Maps came out I could say that Google is using it. And it gave me a green light to improve my Web Applications.
That same with IE 6 now that Google isn't supporting it, you can make a case that you shouldn't need to do so as well, And your Boss should be happy to upgrade, Either to Firefox if he is still on Windows 2000 or lower. Or finally push to IE 8. That is unless you work for GE
And businesses lose out!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
YouTube is increasingly becoming an important tool, especially in marketing and training. For example, search for "PMP Certification", "ITIL", "iso 9000" on YouTube. Not to mention any number of technical skill areas.
Re:One has to wonder (Score:3, Insightful)
It's time to drag corporations* into the modern age, even if they're kicking and screaming the entire way.
Actually, this will most likely not have ANY affect on Corporate use of IE6, as most Corporation Masters hate things like YouTube as Time wasters. So it is with great glee that they will continue to demand using IE 6 for as long as they can.
Re:And businesses lose out!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Next up, IE7 (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to be standards compliant, you'll throw away the outdated notion of a pixel-perfect lay-out. It's all about flexible lay-outs.
Re:Next up, IE7 (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen brother! Now if we could just get rid of all the sucky "web designers" with their pre-historic web concepts.
"Here's a cool picture of a web page I made with Dreamweaver, now you have to make it work for real, and don't take to long and it has to look exactly like my picture." - I got so sick of that crap. Little newb idiots that don't get the concept of liquid layout and insist on "pixel perfect".
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Those same IT guys that have blocked YouTube to preserve bandwidth and impose IE6 so they don't have to update the Company Intranet?
IE6 is here to stay :(
Re:I think I'll cut support too. (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>will simply see a screen telling them they need to upgrade.
Why do that? Why not just simply treat IE6 users the same way you treat IE5 or IE4 users (give them the webpage, but it may not render properly).
Maybe they have a good reason for not upgrading (like owning a PowerMac or other old computer that won't anything but IE5 or IE6).