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Internet Explorer 6: who MUST use it?

S

steve

Flightless Bird
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
 
R

Rob

Flightless Bird
steve <tinker123@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?


All versions before Windows XP can only use IE 6.
Or a competing browser, of course.

You should check your own sitelogs to see how prominent older versions
of Windows are. This varies very strongly depending on the audience
of the particular website.

Also, some companies just refuse to update. We have a website at work
that gets mostly business visitors, and about 14% of them were still
using IE 6 on Windows XP this month. It is going down (from 16% for
this entire year), but it is still an appreciable percentage. More
than all Apple and Linux users combined, for example.

It seems some companies are using archaic badly coded software on their
intranets, which (because of the "you can have only a single version
of IE on your system" stupidity) prevents them from upgrading IE.
 
D

Dan

Flightless Bird
"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
 
P

PA Bear [MS MVP]

Flightless Bird
> So, my question is, what versions of microsoft windows can ONLY use
> IE 6?


None, if you don't count WinXP Gold & WinXP SP1, neither of which are still
supported.

steve wrote:
> 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
 
D

Dan

Flightless Bird
"PA Bear [MS MVP]" <PABearMVP@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:-OWtZsEs8KHA.5412@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> So, my question is, what versions of microsoft windows can ONLY use
>> IE 6?

>
> None, if you don't count WinXP Gold & WinXP SP1, neither of which are
> still supported.
>


Ooo, that's nasty :p

Steve, PA Bear is right here - prior to Windows SP2 you can run only IE 6 on
XP (the default, IE7 requires XP SP2 minimum), and as Windows 2000 shipped
with IE 5.01 it technically can't run ONLY IE6, because it can run IE 5.01
and IE 5.5 too.

Dan

> steve wrote:
>> 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

>
 
S

steve

Flightless Bird
Re: Internet Explorer 6: who MUST use it?

On May 13, 9:32 am, steve <tinker...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 for the great information guys!

It looks like IE 6 is falling out of use, with organizational users
being the last.

I don't believe in blocking people from web sites.

I think for my personal, non-business sites I may grey out the screen
for IE 6 users with a message advising them to upgrade if they can,
before letting them into the site.

Steve
 
T

Twayne

Flightless Bird
Re: Internet Explorer 6: who MUST use it?

In news:b553ded1-68b8-412d-ab66-9463f29cf78c@a16g2000vbr.googlegroups.com,
steve <tinker123@gmail.com> typed:
> On May 13, 9:32 am, steve <tinker...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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 for the great information guys!
>
> It looks like IE 6 is falling out of use, with
> organizational users being the last.
>
> I don't believe in blocking people from web sites.
>
> I think for my personal, non-business sites I may grey out
> the screen for IE 6 users with a message advising them to
> upgrade if they can, before letting them into the site.
>
> Steve


No one MUST use other than IE6, but ... many financial and data-sensitive
sites are requiring the latest version of IE because of the added security
and features it provides.

If you want to know about versions of windows vs IE6, do a search on the MS
site; the infor is there because I saw it once, but can't recall what
subject it might have been under.
IE7 was good, though kind of a flash in the pan, and was quickly replaced
by IE8, soon to be IE9 I guess.

HTH,

Twayne`
 
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