Judging by this screenshot taken by an IE6 user who was watching some videos on YouTube, it appears the Google company will be phasing out support for the browser shortly. I don’t have Internet Explorer 6 installed on my computer, so I can’t verify this first hand, but illogical it seems not and a simple Twitter search shows multiple people confirming the news. Heck, some are even downright ecstatic over the news.
The online video behemoth is pointing to ‘modern’ browsers like Google Chrome (twice on the same page even, unsurprisingly), Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5 as alternatives.
With the impending move, YouTube follows in the footsteps of that other Web 2.0 poster child, Digg, which recently hinted at wanting to cut support for the browser too. Digg’s User Experience Architect Mark Trammell at the time wrote that the site is strongly considering removing essential features like digging and commenting for IE6 users. He explained that while IE6 users make up around 5% of site traffic, it only accounts for 1% of diggs, buries, and comments.
YouTube so far hasn’t officially communicated about the desire to drop support for IE6, but it’s conceivable that like Digg it would rather have its developers spend time optimizing the service for newer, better browsers than wasting man hours on the oft-despised Microsoft browser. We recently reported that Internet Explorer is losing market share to Firefox and Safari at a rapid pace.
(Thanks to Valieriy Slysarenko for the tip)
We run Google Chrome as our browser of choice
I use it too. But it’s still lacking of 3rd party plugins.
Interesting, didn’t know there was an overlap of users who know how to take a screenshot and still use IE6
hahahaha – me either, that must be one interesting group of people.
too bad at work our stupid IT department makes us use IE 6. LAME. Oh and I know how to take a screen shot!
anyway youtube is not making money, chuck users. at least use it to promote chrome…
funny that they list themselves first, it kinda takes away from their efforts to seem non-biased by including Internet Explorer and Firefox, but not Opera or Safari.
At the very least they should have added Opera.
Opera is actually one of the least used browsers. It has a very small user base. Safari is also one of the least used. IE8 and Firefox 3.5 have the largest user base right now.
“Opera is actually one of the least used browsers”
Apparently it has a bigger user base than Safari and Chrome:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200905-200906-bar
haha, i think that “interesting group” would be web developers who are stuck debugging for IE6
oh you would be surprised, darvin, if that is your REAL name lol
I have both IE6 and Foxfire on my computer. I absolutely detest Foxfire. It slow, awkward and unctrollable. I hate to see iE6 being deleted. I tried IE8, but that required a technician having to work on my computer. They will lose my business. I do review new CD’s, then decide which I wish to spend money to purchase. It will cost entertainers some cash.
@Jane Bays
There are browsers other then firefox. Look around. IE6 is notorious for breaking internet standards, which is incredibly inconvenient for website designers. It’s also old, making it an issue security wise. It’s a thorn in every bodies side, which is probably why youtube is doing this.
hahaha, thats great!
I can tell you who… web developers like me who have to, in some way, keep IE6 around for testing. I fired up my own Win2k virtual machine and sure enough, there it was.
And let me add, it was beautiful.
i beg to differ. Being a web developer myself, I have to say that developing a site for IE6 has been one the worst experience ever.
For info, I use standard-compliant css and IE6 seems to live in its own secluded world
i find it difficult to believe that anyone doing any sort of semi-serious webdev wouldn’t hate IE6.
I think (hope) Joshua meant that seeing that message displayed on YouTube that they’ll be dropping support for IE6 was beautiful, not that IE6 is beautiful.
I sent the screenshot. Dont think there are many techcrunch readers that use ie6 by choice.
The pc wasnt mine, and i was very happy to learn this because i know the pain of developing for ie6. Hope more large websites follow soon.
http://www.ticalo.com
Some of us still have IE6 in order to test our websites on the stupid thing.
I personally use Opera.
~DtD
cool
So i wasnt the only one thinking this. I upgraded from IE6 to Firefox several years ago and havent looked back since. Switching from IE6 to Firefox is easier than switching from IE6 to IE7, since MS ruined the UI of that browser.
Operas good, but i got addicted to some addons when i started using Firefox, so for now Opera is not for me, although i heard its a bit faster than Firefox.
that’s the exact same thing that crossed my mind at first.
the model around it seems to deliberately wantto do away with plugins browsers. I’ve learnt to use google gadgets for some of the plugin uses was used to on FF… for some things gadgets just wont do though.
wondering why Google is doing this. We;ve waited long enough. Its keeping chrome from being of much use to a lot of people who hate change pains
I use Chrome for our web app that we use at the office, but the caching problem it inherits from WebKit is _VERY_ annoying. Despite every header necessary saying to not cache, sometimes AJAX queries are cached.
yeah u r right…dese problms are really dere
very nice choice…. me too use chrome
Firefox is the best option!
FOR CUNTS!
BAM!
what exactly is a cunt from your point of view?
apparently from both your name and your response
“cunts ain’t digging you man. sorry about your luck
jerk off. and yes I have a cunt and think you using such a wonderful thing to degrade someone makes no sense.note to you,this is why your not getting any!!!!!!!!!!!!
It seams like chrome is paying a lot of ad$ for the tech-journali$t this days!
I wonder how much time will take to people start seeing the “do no evil” corporation for what it really is!
Looks like they are not a big fan of MS. But for the benefit of IE users, they might want to reconsider. Nevertheless, it’s up to the community to think what’s right. Let’s see what happens next
- Darren at AdExcel dot Com
Darren,
It’s not MS, it’s IE6. They are still supporting other versions of IE.
YouTube had its March Madness videos on Silverlight.
Of course “they” are not. They are Google and therefore obviously not a friend of MS.
right dear….me also think so
They’re not a big fan of MS because that’s their biggest competitor. Google is actually being very cool about the whole thing, they could have simply state to upgrade to Chrome, but they actually display all 3 big browsers. (Too bad there’s no Opera.)
IE 6 is the scourge of the web and everyone who can has a moral obligation to switch – it is really holding up innovation. If you are an employee and your company forces you to use it at work it’s their fault but otherwise everyone should really switch. Everything will be faster and better.
There’s nothing Anti-Microsoft about it.
Here here
Actually, I think this will help Microsoft as well won’t it. Most IE6 users will upgrade to IE8.
There is of course a chance that as part of the upgrade process some users may switch.
But if a popular site such as YouTube is asking users to upgrade, then it only helps Microsoft, because a lot of users will be voluntarily upgrading to their latest browser because they want to continue watching videos
Disagree. It’s much safer for IE6 users to keep it and install Firefox alongside. There must be some reason why they’ve stuck with IE6, and If they replace it with IE8 then they are stuffed if they need an IE6-only intranet site or plug-in.
ever since before *trying* ie7, i’ve been locking down inetcpl, and using better browsers. maxthon somewhat fixed ie7, but ie7 just wasn’t good enough… tried ie7pro recently.. it’s missing too many features…
as long as google lets lynx users watch vids, then they’re all right with me. One of utoobz best features is the moronic (text) insults
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/6853/ie6yootoobkrommos.png
Which browser is Borat’s favorite? inquiring myndz want to know. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1050670/bulgarian-web-browser-challenge-ie
ms still patches ie6, but i think only because xp sp2 is still supported.
whatever apps use bits of ie, apparently run fine using ie6 bits.
“Nevertheless, it’s up to the community to think what’s right.”
The “community” has no idea of what’d be possible if IE 6 (and 7) had disappear, and how fast their favourite websites could evolve.
Simply changing the Firefox useragent with an iMacros script does not show this message:
SET !USERAGENT “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
URL GOTO=http://www.youtube.com/
WAIT SECONDS=3
But with an original IE6 I see the message, too.
Good
Probably because it displays the message using Microsoft’s proprietary markup. This is not going to be supported by Firefox even if you send different User Agent data.
Heh…I actually gave an example of the markup but the comment filtered it out. It’s HTML comments around [IF IE6]…
is it reaaly so??
Google please do it for search too and don’t support IE please.. kill MS browser.
Agreed. This should have happened 7 years ago.
How about people with slow computers with little memory in other parts of the world stuck with IE6?
Because they should download Firefox or Chrome on their low-memory computers.
Or just use a text-only browser.
Youtube works real well in lynx.
You are kidding right, Chrome isn’t memory efficient
I really doubt that Chrome (or Safari) aren’t memory efficient. Do you rely on Mozilla’s propaganda ? Because their “studies” on memory consumption are absolutely pointless.
Look at what Safari is capable on the low memory iPhone 3G and tell me it’s not managing memory efficiently. Same for Chrome on Android.
Umm, the version of safari on the iPhone is limited, it has little flash, you cann’t download (understandably) ect.
Got my vote
Kill IE8. that’s too difficult, just kill all of the IE.
now killing all of IE will be more difficult since you have to kill IE8 too which you admitted “too difficult.”
If you kill IE, you all will have to find a new browser to hate, I guess that will be Chrome.
especially when they decided to enter the os market and chrome is the baby.
but i still like chrome. next to kill, opera.
Kill Opera next?
You mean kill the fully standards-compliant, fast, secure, feature-rich browser that is responsible for many of the innovations you see in Firefox and Chrome?
The reason they want to kill IE6 is because it’s NOT standards compliant and they have to spend lots of time (as do most web developers) writing ugly workarounds to get it to work with their site.
Opera 9/10 will render any standards-compliant modern website perfectly, at least as well as Safari or Chrome.
I don’t even use Opera, I use FF and Chrome mainly – but your comment displayed ignorance that I could not ignore.
It would be nice if their JavaScript improves a bit.
“Opera 9/10 will render any standards-compliant modern website perfectly, at least as well as Safari or Chrome.”
Definitly no. Chrome and Safari are miles ahead Opera. Do some serious testing as a developer and you’ll realize this old reputation is not connected to the reality anymore (except for HTML 5 forms).
Points taken Mike and Lennie, but the point is this guy is acting like Opera should be next in line to “kill” after IE6, despite the fact that it’s still light-years ahead of IE7 and even IE8, and ranks just below FF/Chrome/Safari.
Maybe mike and Lennie can explain exactly how Opera’s reputation is not connected with reality anymore. Could it be that they are relying on bugs in WebKit (developing for WebKit), and cursing Opera for not having 100% bug compatibility with WebKit, so when Opera is slightly different, they automatically blame Opera because they are biased against it?
Mike: “Chrome and Safari are miles ahead Opera. Do some serious testing as a developer and you’ll realize this old reputation is not connected to the reality anymore (except for HTML 5 forms).”
You’re evidently not a developer, or at least an inexperienced one. Opera has higher standards support than any other browser. As for HTML 5 forms (or anything else HTML 5) it’s not very relevant yet as it’s not yet a candidate recommendation.
“If you kill IE, you all will have to find a new browser to hate, I guess that will be Chrome.” from Nick
i totally agree perhaps they will hate firefox too.
hahahaha…i hope google ll do dis soon
This is huge. It’s about time some big names got behind this, it’ll be good for the whole internet.
great news!!!!!!!
))
Revenge is near
I wonder Why there is no a suggestion for Apple Safari ?!
why not opera? or any of the other tiny browsers? they could only choose a few browser to display, and the chose these three.
Firefox: very customizable
Internet Explorer: sounds familiar to IE users
Google Chrome: very fast
Safari: also very fast
so, you have 4 different browsers, with all different “specialties”. except for chrome and safari, who both have the same specialty.
youtube being owned by google, what browser would you think they choose of those two, their own browser, or apple’s browser?
that’s why there is no suggestion for safari
Safari mainly is and always should be only used on a Mac, IE6 wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe it’s due to the Googacheif being butted from the Apple Board?
Because .001% of users are using Safari.
Wow, you have no idea. Safari makes up over 8% of the browser market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers. Like Stefan said, Safari and Chrome use the same rendering engine, so it makes sense for Google/YouTube to push their own browser using this technology.
It is too bad that Opera doesn’t ever get any good referrals like this, but then, they command a very small percentage of the desktop browser market (< 1%), but they are huge in the mobile market. Oh well.
My preference is:
Windows: Firefox, Opera, Chrome, IE
Mac: Firefox, Safari, Opera
Firefox is just too useful with plugins, I prefer the webkit rendering engine on Mac, but it just isn’t quite ready on Windows, so Opera is nice.
But not on Windows, Safari on Windows is really small. And as this is IE6, their is only IE6 for windows.
Safari on Windows makes up ab out one half of one percent of browser usage. That’s not quite as awesome as Opera’s three quarters of one percent of browser usage.
“It is too bad that Opera doesn’t ever get any good referrals like this, but then, they command a very small percentage of the desktop browser market (< 1%), but they are huge in the mobile market. Oh well.”
Opera is small in the mobile market too.
Oh yeah, you mean it’s installed on a lot of phones ? Right, but people don’t use it on this king of phones.
Look at this :
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-US-monthly-200812-200906
4% of the US market.
about 25% worldwide but that’s because there are still a lot of older phones in the rest of the world. In Europe, the iPhone is strong.
I’m pretty sure that in the next years, Chrome will be #1 for mobile browsing. It couldn’b be with only one HTC but with a few dozen on the market…
Still, energy consumption (price too of course) is more or less important depending of the countries, and there won’t be smartphones everywhere very soon.
Anyway, comfortable browsing requires a smartphone.
@Jerry: Safari 4 (Final and the Beta) uses 100% RAM on my computer (Win Vista). I don’t see how anyone can use it if it destroys your CPU.
Maybe there is something wrong with your installation. I am using a Mac and works absolutely and insanely great and the same on my dad’s PC.
Yeah, there really is something wrong with her PC. She’s using Vista.
i love safari its also fast but i am having problems on downloading files somehow safari freezes during transfer of file from temp folder to selected download folder. has anyone experienced this?
Great news ! Thanks a lot YouTube !
IE6 bye bye !
Finally! IE6 is holding the web back. People who still use that on a regular basis should not be allowed to own a computer.
How about something better? Make it a law that they need to download a newer web browser?
Some people may not feel comfortable changing-or may not even know how to change it (like my mom, “why point the arrow there, why not here or here”. Older people may not use a computer everyday-but if they want one-what’s wrong with that?
“…better browsers than wasting man hours on the oft-despised Microsoft browser.”
You make it sound like it’s Microsoft’s fault it is so bad. If you look at any browser that old its bad. It was good for its time.
However, it’s Microsoft’s fault for not taking enough initiative to convince people to upgrade to IE8 (and IE7 at one point)…
Perfect example, look at Firefox, it has a built in updater program to constantly keep FF at it’s latest version.
Sure, IE6 is kinda before that whole “auto-update” thing, but still.
Whose fault is it then?
IE6, whether or not it was bad for its time (and I do think it was) caused no end of problems because MS stopped developing it once they had most of the market share. This was undeniably Microsoft’s fault, and the resulting stagnation is still causing a massive pain in the ass for any website owner still having to support it today. Ask anyone who makes websites and they will tell you the same thing.
I said this back when XP SP3 came out, that Microsoft should have just made IE7 a mandatory upgrade as part of the install. Microsoft could fix this issue, but instead they chose the ignore it an hope it’ll just go away tact and the rest of the world has to suffer for it.
Windows Updates automatically upgrades to IE8, but lot of companies have centralized updates where they can choose not to have it. They are doing it because of legacy applications do not work on newer browser. IE8 should have some IE6 mode also which user can select for such apps.
What, no safari?
because this is an appeal to _Windows_ users and Safari on Window isn’t a popular option.
What about Safari?
Damn, beat me to it.
They can only feasibly include so many browsers. What about Opera, Camino, and Flock? Looks to me as though they chose the two most popular browsers (IE and Firefox) and added Google’s own browser (hey, you have to push your own stuff, right?).
An IE6 user that knows how to take a screenshot? I’m amazed!
You are my favourite Internet user today.
^this.
I think its important to note that this prolly doesn’t mean they’re gonna block the site for IE6 users, just they won’t be spending hours trying to reconcile the design and functionality for that browser –
which likely means people STILL won’t upgrade, they’ll limp along but the site won’t look quite as nice, maybe a couple menus will fail
Exactly. We’re going to see IE6 phase out completely, but we’ve still got a ways to go. This is definitely a start, and a flag — at least for me — to stop designing with IE6 in mind.
We should still include HTML/text only links in footers, just to be on the safe side (and for good SEO practice). But as for worrying about how my main menu and other Web 2.0 items look? Not anymore, at least not for IE6.
What…are you talking about?
What? She makes perfect sence to me.
This will not affect me anyway. I’m using Chrome and Firefox here.
I have IE8, FF, Chome. Icheck that it’s loaded radom on diffrent comp.
If You need other browsers You can run one from page http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ after install FF plugin.
Can any computer that is running IE 6 even handle IE8 or FF3.5
Usually not, which poses a problems for users and nonprofits who can’t afford to upgrade to newer machines. Hopefully as the economy strengthens and prices come down, we’ll see less and less IE6 use on the user end.
Personally, I’m not worried about IE6 anymore. I’ve been testing on it less and less, so now I won’t even bother.
“Can any computer that is running IE 6 even handle IE8 or FF3.5″
Some can, some can’t. IE 6 shipped as the Microsoft OS default browser in the fall of 2001 and continued until the release of Vista in January of 2007.
So, that’s a broad range of machines that came bundled with IE 6.
In late 2001 and early 2002, the Pentium 4 and Athlon chips on new machines ranged from 1.4 to 2.2 GHz and most machines were configurable with between 128-512 MB of RAM.
The higher end of those machines can certainly run Firefox. The lower end would probably struggle.
If you look at 2003 and 2004, most of those desktop machines can run Firefox without problems and many latops.
By 2005 and 2006, I’d say there’s really no problem except for the lowest spec laptops.
- A
hey ,chrome use more space on hdd more than 125 MB.
What’s the stats for IE6 users on techcrunch.com?
techcrunch doesn’t really count since it has a more tech audience.
My site is a little bit more mainstream, and for http://styleguidance.com IE6 makes up 2.79% of all users.
So what’s next after that?
This has been showing up on YouTube for well over a week now, before the Digg article came out.
There’s no Safari because Apple users can’t see that message , because they can’t have ie6, obviously)
There is Safari for Windows
Safari 3 is supported on PC and is actually very good. It uses the same fondations as Google Chrome (webkit) with a different GUI and JS engine.
i think all main stream website should stop supporting IE 6, so people will be forced to not use it, IE 6 should be killed.
I got the same message on one of my computers with I.E 6 installed. I never upgraded it because i use firefox and Opera.
True this only affects I.E 6. Which is really old, newer versions of I.E will still be supported.
Nice, but what about opera ? They don’t support opera browser ?
I keep IE on my computer only for those sites that don’t support firefox. IE only serves the purpose to occupy the efforts of security hackers. Beyond that I don’t have much use for it.
Check out the “IE Tab” Firefox plug-in. You can specify sites that will run in a IE tab based on whatever IE you have installed. I used to have to use it back when Netflix streaming only supported IE.
Who.
Cares.
Seriously, IE6? Get real. MOVE ON!
I guess this article is more for web developers than users. We have to develop websites that work in all browsers being used — and for a while IE6 was still included in that list. Now that web giants like Google and Digg are moving on, so can we. So it really only matters to us, because now we don’t have to work as hard to make a website function properly.
It also matters, a little, to regular users; now that YouTube and Digg won’t be spending time and money coding for IE6, they can put that time and money into better features that you can enjoy. So in a way, you do benefit from this even if you’re not a web developer! (:
I am sure that Google Chrome will rock the spot, but until they release it for Mac, Safari 4 is the bomb!
totally agree! but it speaks for safari, that chrome for mac still hasn’t been released (as far as google tries to beat the benchmarks to get positive PR).
THANK YOU GOOGLE!!!!!!! Dang I hate writing for IE6 Die!
Amen!
This won’t affect us either. We are also only using Chrome and Firefox.
Is this really a big deal though? I want to see ie6 abolished as much as the next guy, but aren’t most people who use ie6 large companies that are invested in NOT upgrading there browsers? how many people using ie6, will actually care about youtube AND are actually can do anything about upgrading their browser?
I have a lot of users on one of my websites who use IE6. I once built a CSS-only menu for this site from scratch but it didn’t work in IE6. The website in question is not corporate and is geared toward teens and twenty-somethings — many of which are using their parents’ or secondhand computers.
I think, for the most part, most companies have upgraded (especially as they upgrade their computers and OS software, since we all know how Microsoft will force the latest browser with new upgrades and machines). You’ll probably see more schools and libraries with IE6, rather than corporations, because they are nonprofits and don’t have the funds necessary to upgrade to newer machines.
This is only a half-truth. The reason for slow corporate adoption is because many enterprise (read: crap) web-based systems only support IE6. Goliaths like Oracle and SAP fail hard at building their apps using standards-compliant code. And it costs too much for their customers to upgrade their enterprise systems. So IE 6 will live in corporate environments for much longer.
Not a problem for YouTube though. While corporate users do watch YouTube videos, it isn’t of their primary concern.
You have a great point there. But if the Google stops supporting IE6… Mwahaha!