Is it all over for IE6?

Anyone who works with websites or web applications has been waiting forever for the remaining ten or so percent of users still clinging to the sinking ship which is IE6 to let go, and swim for the lifeboat of IE7, IE8, or better still, Firefox. But will the events of recent months toll the death-knell for Microsoft's decrepit browser?

This year has not been a good year for IE6. January started with the attacks on Google’s systems which originated in China, and which - by Microsoft’s own admission - were made possible by flaws in the IE6 browser.

By the middle of the month, when the malicious code used in the hacks was published online, first the German and then the French governments called for web users to upgrade or find an alternative browser. Meanwhile the UK government, while it talked about getting its own house in order in terms of using 6, has not issued any timescale for government departments to migrate to another browser, and nor has it issued any warnings to the public.

And now at the start of February, to add another nail to 6’s coffin, Google has withdrawn support for the ageing browser – announcing that from 1 March some services, including Google Docs, could not be guaranteed to work properly in the browser.

But despite petitions, campaigns, security breaches and government warnings, IE6 lives on: so is it really the browser that won’t die? Microsoft has said that it will support 6 until 2014, giving us another four years of IE6 misery as a minimum. But the message is, if you’re still using IE6, whether it’s at home, or because your system administrator at the office isn’t clued-in enough to upgrade – enough’s enough. IE6 is buggy, it’s insecure, and it’s nine years old – and in terms of the web that’s positively ancient. Allow web development to move on – and ditch IE6!