Ask HN: Why is IE6 still so popular?

IE6 is still the browser of choice in some rigid, older enterprises, and if your target audience consists largely of Enterprisey folks, you've got to support it. Their reasons for refusing to upgrade vary, but are largely irrelevant-- it's a reality that has to be faced, for whatever reason.

If, on the other hand, you are after the consumer market, I'd suggest you forget IE6 altogether. Any home user still using an un-upgraded copy of WindowsXP is not going to want to spend money for software anyway, so forget them.

The point is: it doesn't matter if IE6 has 11% of the global market share. The important question is: what percentage of your target audience do they own?

Good point. But if enterprise developers continue to support IE6, then there will continue to be a lack of pressure to upgrade, which will perpetuate the need for IE6 support. How can we break out of this vicious circle?

Just as an example, Google has stopped supported IE6 in most of its major web apps and other big names have started doing it also. If Google is doing it, I have no shame dropping IE6 support altogether and spending all the time I save on debugging real problems and developping new features.

How can we break out of this vicious circle?

Decide you don't want the money the Enterprisey folks represent. Or, be so important to their business that they'd rather upgrade than do without you.

The way I see it, a lot of corporate people shop from work. If you're LL Bean or Amazon, support it.

If you're selling something people aren't going to purchase from or for their enterprise cubicle(s), forget it.

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Oops. I forgot to add research. A family member needs their site to remain usable/attractive to the significant corporate population in this area who will visit it while researching options from work. A lot of big, stuffy businesses whose employees are potential customers for this local business.

Simple. Charge customers who insist on IE6 for the extra development work required to support it.

Our research shows IE 6 at 4% of the market and our numbers take the most optimistic results. I have seen other at 3% with a more pessimistic model.

We recommend to out clients that they use the compounding development cost of chasing IE 5-6 and non-JS browsers and apply it to targeting mobile platforms. You get more bang for your buck doing so. By eliminating IE < 7 and none JS browsers you are walling yourself of from a little less than 10% of the market but the development effort to chase them increased development cost nearly 2x, targeting the iPhone (especially if your web was built with a REST backbone) is significantly cheaper 5K is the average app build, will net a better return on investment.

As well some assumptions can be made about older browser uses, they are either not early adopters or are using a corporate PC and may have access to a more modern environment at home or via a mobile device while not quantifiable, these factors will certainly work to reduce that total market size of non-modern browsers.

As I always say to clients, if you get to the point where you have to chase that < 10% for growth you have a good problem.

If Microsoft had introduced Google Chrome style browser updates (either at the beginning or as a default XP service pack) this wouldn't be a problem. But even without problems of enterprise lockin, the average person doesn't update software that appears to work OK very often. Some of them are probably still using Windows 2000 or ME, which doesn't even support newer versions of IE but is still fit for most simple purposes

A significant proportion of internet users don't know what a browser is, and if they see a website that advises them they need to download a piece of software to get it to work, they instantly distrust it. In all honesty it's probably better overall that people who don't know about browsers do ignore websites with buttons telling them they'll enjoy a better viewing experience if they download and install extra software.

Like people using the latest cutting-edge iPads, they'll just have to miss the occasionally useful flashiness that their default browser doesn't attempt to support. The average person that hasn't upgraded by now probably isn't going to be swayed by yet another broken rendering or "this site is only viewable in IE7+ or Chrome or Firefox"

The only party that can seriously reduce IE6 market share is Microsoft, by using OS updates to force upgrades and creating an "IE6 mode" that allows those kludgy enterprise apps to continue to function.

In large corporations, there are often webapps that depend on ie6's buggy behavior, and break with anything else. And it may not even be under the company's own control --- I know of one SaaS player in the financial space that has a major bank pinned down to ie6, even though the bank would like to upgrade.

Chrome Frame is one way out of these situations, but convincing IT that it's a good idea is a struggle at best.

I didn't understand why NetMarketShare's Internet Explorer market share numbers were so much higher than other sources. Then I found this page - http://marketshare.hitslink.com/weighting.aspx - which says "...We now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports".

China has a LOT of IE6 users because of historical issues related to SSL export restrictions. NetMarketShare's 11% number for IE6 is higher than IE7 (8%), which is ridiculous. So unless you have a lot of Chinese users, the number from StatCounter (5%) is probably closer to the truth - http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201001...

Any web developer that adds IE6 support to a new web application deserves to get their house TP'ed.

For the love of god please stop supporting IE6 people. It's not the Enterprise that's keeping it around it's US (developers that continue to support it).

If the entire internet didn't work on it, you bet your ass these slow-poke Enterprise folks would figure something out ;)

Just found a JS library that's supposed to fix IE5-8's browser compliance. I haven't tried it yet though. Is this used a lot?

http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/

one word: compatibility.

Most (if not all) of the management tools that are currently being used by major corporations are made for IE6 (because thats what was big when it was designed and purchased).

The other particular reason happens to be schools. In highschool (and still now in college) the IT team hasn't managed to get clearance to upgrade (it might /cost money/!)

Congratulations, A winner is You for anything in the US. I can't vouch for anything else, so there's 5% of the share.