Microsoft Launches Campaign to End Internet Explorer 6 Usage

It’s become a popular fad in recent years to encourage the downfall of  Internet Explorer 6, but it’s all for good reason. Aside from the fact that it’s hardly that powerful in today’s day and age, it’s also not too compatible with recent Web technologies. As a result, many people who still use IE6 might experience sites that simply don’t work, or do work but have weird aesthetic bugs.

Up to this point, Microsoft hasn’t spoken too vividly about its desire to also see IE6 go the way of the dodo, but that changes now, with the launch of the “Internet Explorer 6 Countdown” website. This Microsoft-backed site literally keeps track of the global percentage of users that still use IE6, and every so often, it’ll be updated to reflect current numbers (courtesy of Net Applications).

At the time of writing, a staggering 12.0% of the planet still use Internet Explorer 6, although a good reason for that is that IE6 is huge in Asian countries. China, for example, has a simply unfathomable 34.5% IE6 usage, while South Korea falls into second place with 24.8%. By comparison, the highest non-Asian country is Saudi Arabia, with a still high 10.7%.

It’s Microsoft’s goal to see this global percentage plummet to at least 1%, but even lower would be better. Will this campaign prove successful? Time will tell, but to help things even further, Microsoft encourages site owners to implement a block of code that will inform IE6 users that they are using an outdated browser, and to click it to update.

For interest’s sake, I’ll be checking out the site from time to time to see what kind of progress is made. It’ll be quite a feat to see that number hit 1% this year, but with a global push, it could happen.

Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye. This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers.