A lot of the recent hubbub about IE6 nearing extinction has been driven by the monthly browser statistics published by the W3 which puts it's use at a mere 7.1% for MAY 2010:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

But Netapplications another company that releases more reliable statistics has IE6 by 10% more users for May at 17.16%:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/brow...20Explorer*%22

What makes Netapplications stats more reliable is that it gets it's tracking data directly from ISP's as opposed to the W3 getting it's data from W3 counter javascripts that it's users posted in the source of their websites (which reflects far too small a sample size). Not too many people use the W3 counter anyway but go for the more popular Google Analytics.

I would like to see this browser die as much as anyone else but I just don't think it's as dead as we have been made to believe by the W3, what are your thoughts and does this change you feelings about non-support?

as opposed to the W3 getting it's data from W3 counter javascripts that it's users posted in the source of their websites (which reflects far too small a sample size). Not too many people use the W3 counter anyway but go for the more popular Google Analytics.

The W£ counter??

The stats a W3Schools come from people VISITING the W3Schools site not some counter that people have installed!

And Netapplications data comes from their clients and their resellers NOT from ISPs.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

The W£ counter??

The stats a W3Schools come from people VISITING the W3Schools site not some counter that people have installed!

And Netapplications data comes from their clients and their resellers NOT from ISPs.

I have been told that W3 gets it's data from the code that has been installed on thousands of sites using it's tracking script but I now do see W3 mention on it's site that it gets them from it's own log files.

In that case, it opens up another baffling question, what makes the browsers people are using to visit just this one site (w3schools.com) a universal enough form of measuring world wide browser usage?

I mean this is just one type of website (a technically oriented one) and it's demographic may be savvy enough to not use outdated browsers but that doesn't mean those browsers are not being used to visit the many thousands of other genres of sites out there by the many other types of demographics.

They do admit this in their own site:

W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. This fact indicates that the figures below might not be 100% realistic.

But people still quote W3 statistics like it's at all reflective of current browser usage. If Google had released similar stats based on their logs it would have been a lot more reflective of actual events since people from all walks of life (and the massive volume of them) use Google.

As for Netapplications getting it's info from it's clients, I guess you're right there too, just found this on wiki:

Net Applications measures browser usage by tracking the machines that visit the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors per month.

I guess I should look into things more before posting

At least N.A. gets it's data from more sites vs the W3's one site which would still make it more reliable as it gives a broader picture.

In that case, it opens up another baffling question, what makes the browsers people are using to visit just this one site (w3schools.com) a universal enough form of measuring world wide browser usage?

People like to have numbers to throw around, even when they are not relevant.

As with all statistics the exact numbers are really secondary to the trends and the trend for IE6 has been consistenly downwards.
Same with the percentage for Mozilla users, the right thing to to would be to take the trends and extrapolate them along with the trends on your own sites.

Same with NetApp stats, use the numbers as controls for your own data

The ones referenced for the usage stats were Statcounter, who supposedly collect data from about 3 million sites.

Several companies have dropped IE6 support. Google has dropped support for most of their apps. YouTube, Facebook, and Digg have dropped support. So have Salesforce.com and Atlassian. Though the official end of life for IE6 is April 2014, even Microsoft has scaled back support and is pushing IE8.

But here's an interesting article about businesses using IE6, who according to Chitika, another stat firm account for about 13% IE6 business hour usage:
Why You Can’t Pry IE6 Out Of Their Cold Dead Hands

As for me, my IE6 stats are well below the 5% mark, so I've dropped support for it. As always, look at your own stats and make that choice. Hopefully as much of the hardware that came bundled with IE6 nears its end of life, businesses won't have a choice but to upgrade, as the new machines will come with Win7, which doesn't support IE6.

tim

Originally Posted by serandfae

As for me, my IE6 stats are well below the 5% mark, so I've dropped support for it. As always, look at your own stats and make that choice.

Yeah it would be very interesting if people viewing this thread posts there own stats. My site which has been live since October of 09 has had 14.60% of visitors using IE6 until this point (according to my google analytics dashboard).

I do support it, but only because I had written the conditional ie6 stylesheet full of hacks when I made the site initially and see no reason to delete all the hard work. But if I made the site now, I wouldn't have supported it.

It would have died much sooner had MS not scuppered the corporate uptake of XP with it's somewhat "odd" licencing structure and stability problems, consquently many companies chose to stay with Win2k (as I did until the release of Windows 7 beta/evaluation version) and so were "frozen" at IE6.
Obviously no IT department in their right minds considered Vista as a reasonable step forward, but now that Windows 7 is proven to be a viable upgrade companies are doing so.

IE6 still be repaired by Microsoft, it is something quite safe and valid for use, especially if it avoids the cost of the upgrade. IE6 is alive and currently prevents any form of innovation is happening. It looks like IE6 will continue to haunt us in the coming years.

7.1% of users using 6? And decreasing month by month, I'm not going to worry about such a small amount of traffic that's shrinking by the minute.

S

Let's face it, the beast is clinically dead.
How you deal with it's remains is up to you.

You can keep it hanging about to annoy you or you just can let it go peacefully into the annals of history.

From looking at the GA stats of a couple of client sites I control, they are still getting between 10% - 20% of traffic on IE6.

Unfortunately, a lot of corporates hard up for cash haven't upgraded there desktop environment for years.

Same goes for some public sector workplaces.

I tend to think that consumers are much more proactive in upgrading their hardware and software. Keeping up with the Jones's if you will

Since I work for a corporation that is heavily entrenched with Microsoft, and only decided to make IE7 the OFFICIAL browser earlier this year, I understand the stigma of corporate and business upgrades all too well. At some point, businesses need to understand that it's not just about the time to upgrade workstation - though it can be pushed out via SMS - it's about the SECURITY of your business and the huge risks you are taking by continuing to use a nearly 10 year old browser that has so many security issues it's pathetic.

What we have gone to is graceful degradation for IE6 - people see the all important content, but that's about it, along with a message that users of IE6 and below are seeing a degraded web experience because of the ancient browser they are using - with some encouragement to upgrade.

I still use IE6 on a laptop that is so old it has Win98, so I cannot upgrade. I usually use FF which is outdated as well. Why? It has everything I need...and I'm really attached to it. I know...it's sad.

Originally Posted by mvpsandeep

50% of unique visitors coming on my site using IE6

And the non "unique" ?

Originally Posted by mvpsandeep

50% of unique visitors coming on my site using IE6

For your bus and coach hire site?
I would venture that your target market probably includes a lot of Senior Citizens.

And I think this highlights an important point.
Often the elderly "reverse inherit" computers from their children.
What I mean is when their kids upgrade to the latest hardware, grandma and grandpa are given the old clunker. Seems fair enough since they won't be doing much in the way of graphics hardware intensive role playing games, going on guild raids or hanging out with the Gorean crowd in SL (presumably).

But as LIR pointed out there are security risks inherent in using IE6, so if you are going to palm off your old computer goods onto your parents/grandparents, do them a favor and at least install Firefox or Chrome.

I don't know about you but here (Romania) people still use IE6 on full scale. Sometime is a nightmare to work for a client how use it. IE6 is still a must!

Originally Posted by johnny.dacu

I don't know about you but here (Romania) people still use IE6 on full scale. Sometime is a nightmare to work for a client how use it. IE6 is still a must!

Of course, which is why you should do what is best for YOUR target audience

about 30% of my clients here in Thailand are still using IE6.

I hear many businesses still use windows xp with ie 6. Some say they don't want to upgrade because they are afraid they might mess something up or something. Not sure why that would be. I heard the same about upgrading from xp to vista for businesses. Since xp is getting old some companies are buy new pc with win7 that comes with ie8, so hopefully ie6 will die off completely. On occasion I do hear someone rambling on about how ie6 is the best. I really have no idea how they come up with that.

Our websites still gets 20% IE6 traffic (US 3.97% - Global 20%). We have dropped support for IE6 effective June 2010. IE6 users will get a message to upgrade their browsers.