"steve" <tinker123@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:758f1963-9c1f-4a4f-8a1a-512f0393317c@i10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> Hi;
>
> I'm against blocking people from sites based on the browser they use.
>
> However, IE 6 is becoming more and more of a hazard and it seems to be
> persisting.
>
> I run a few web sites. I have been thinking of not blocking, but
> temporarily redirecting IE 6 users to a message advising them to
> upgrade their version of IE before entering one of my sites.
>
> Before I do that, I want to make sure that everyone who uses IE 6 can
> do that.
>
> I know some versions of IE will only run on some versions of microsoft
> windows. I went to the download page for IE, but that information
> isn't clear there.
>
> So, my question is, what versions of microsoft windows can ONLY use
> IE 6? How prominent are these older versions of microsoft windows?
>
> Thanks in advance for any information
>
> Steve
Windows XP and newer can run IE7 and IE8. Windows 2000 and lower, right down
to Windows 98, can run IE6 but cannot run IE7.
Windows 2000 is still used, for instance, in the company I work for, albeit
on only 20% of the PCs.
I've got Google Analytics running on a few of my sites (both personal hobby
related, and commercial sites that I run as part of my employment), and
Windows 2000 and lower appear to be almost gone, for instance on one of my
sites (this is a hobby site with around 12,000 visitors a month) I have the
following figures for Windows users (which make up just over 92% of my total
traffic):
XP: 45%
Vista: 27%
W7: 25%
Server 2003: 1.5%
2000: 0.2%
CE: 0.1%
98: 0.01%
And here are the IE breakdowns (total IE users on this site is just over
38%, with just a fraction less using Firefox, and Chrome accounting for 15%,
then a smattering of other browsers making up the rest)
IE8: 76%
IE7: 15%
IE6: 9%
With a personal hobby site there are likely to be a lot less Windows 2000 +
IE6 users than for say a commerce site. So, here are the figures from an IT
related ecommerce site I run (which incidentally has almost the exact same
number of visits per month as my hobby site ....). Windows users make up 89%
here.
XP: 53%
W7: 25%
Vista: 19%
Server 2003: 1.4%
2000: 1.25%
98: 0.05%
NT: 0.04%
CE: 0.02%
The difference here for Windows 2000 is an order of magnitude. IE browsers
make up 53% of the traffic to this site, with the breakdowns as follows:
IE8: 64%
IE7: 23%
IE6: 13%
Had we cut off IE6, we would have potentially stopped almost 900 customers
from visiting this ecommerce site in the last month.
You also have to consider that even with Windows XP there might be a lot of
business users who are simply not able to upgrade from IE6 due to business
reasons - there might be internal applications which don't work with IE7 or
IE8. Other businesses may have an internal IT policy that does not allow
them to upgrade, for instance to simplify support across the business by
keeping the variations in software versions to a mimimum.
Obviously you need to look at the demographics of the users of your site and
see if there's a significant number of IE6 users still visiting it to
determine what impact it would have if you required them to upgrade. If this
is a commercial site then I would suggest that you maybe post up a some sort
of short questionnaire for those users still visiting with IE6 and try to
get some idea of what impact removing support would have.
--
Dan