Another Blow to IE 6, this time from WordPress.com
Internet Explorer 6, the browser that refuses to die down despite the fact that even Microsoft wishes to do away with it and has launched a campaign to discourage its usage, has been given a blow by WordPress.com. The latter has stated that it will no longer support IE 6 and users will be required to upgrade to a new version in order to log into their WordPress dashboard.
The move has come alongside the Dashboard revision undertaken by WordPress.com, which supports a large number of sites and has a growing user base. It now offers an improved, easy to operate and faster dashboard to the users helping them in effective content management.
This is not the first thing going against IE 6 as prior to this many sites have already discarded IE 6 for a number of flaws it has. First of all, it has a lot of security issues and secondly the browser is not compliant with the modern web standards. Also when there are already a number of latest and efficient browsers available, so why rely on this obsolete one. Why people still use IE6 when advanced and upgraded versions of IE like IE7, IE8 and IE9 are available?
Despite all this, it occupies 2.5 % share (April 2011) in the browser market which if considered that other browsers like Opera and Safari have 2.6 % and 4.1 % share, is still high. Not only this, IE 7 has just reached 4.9% that clearly establishes that the continued usage of IE 6 is negatively affecting the other browsers.
Source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp
The reasons behind the popularity of this browser and what is preventing the users to abandon it are best known to them. Here, it can be said that the users’ undue love for IE 6 has delayed its demise, a thing which Microsoft, designers and developers desperately want.
The fact that a considerable number of people are making use of IE 6 adds on the work of designers and developers who have to make the sites compatible with this dying yet problematic browser to avoid any accessibility issue and to meet the demands of their clients. Its death will bring in a sigh of relief to them as they will then be channelizing their energies to create websites for latest versions.
However, this is a big decision made by WordPress despite knowing the fact that IE6 has a considerable user base (11.4% of the world still use IE6). What to watch for in the days ahead is that how wordpress’s decision to drop IE6 is going to have an impact on IE6 user base as wordpress.com hosts millions of websites. What do you think? Share your views.
