Recently there was an article at Mashable.com titled:

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On

It created jitters around social networks such as Twitter and Digg.  IE6 is an outdated browser which cannot render and run new web applications correctly. Developers and web designers literally pull their hair trying to make the site work in IE6 by applying patches just to make the basic functions work.  Internet Explorere 6 is the most hated application next to Vista.  In general internet community has long despised the works of Microsoft for it’s inability to amaze the world, like Apple has, and its ability to destroy competition, as it has done to Netscape.

Many people wonder what is keeping IE6 on life support.  Who would want to use this “stone age” technology especially when it has so many security holes?  The web has long moved on; today we have the state of the art browsers such as Firefox, Opera and even IE8 but as the article from Mashable is telling us, the web can only progress so far when IE6 still holding market share at around 20%.  I’m all for IE6 to retire, it is old, it is insecure, it is outdated, but…

…What is keeping IE6 on life support?

As much as people would like to blame Microsoft, it is not Microsoft’s fault.  It is the Internet Communities fault, and I will explain why.  Here is the blunt statement. IE6 will die when Windows XP will die.  IE6 would long be gone, if the internet community did not bombard Windows Vista so intensely as it did.  Windows XP users are the ones running IE6 as it was first shipped with XP, and still today it is shipped in its original form.  Nothing goes without consequences.  Many techies and bloggers inflamed the community against Windows Vista;  they all gave it horrible reviews as a result the general public got swayed from switching to Vista.  Some computer manufacturers followed  too by providing the option to buy new PC with XP pre-installed.  There is no sense of screaming KILL IE6, when you tried to KILL VISTA. Vista was the only gateway into new browser technology.  I do not want to go into the argument of how awful Vista is because it is still a matter of opinion. If you ask anybody, they do not even know whats wrong with vista other than what someone else has told them.

What can be done about it?

Some social networks are turning off life support for IE6; Facebook being the leader among theme, and Youtube is rumored to follow.  But that may not be the punctual way to kill off IE6. Facebook and Youtube are dominated by young users who already use Firefox anyways.  It is mostly older folks who still run IE6 on their XP boxes.  The only plausible solution is to give Windows 7 a free ride and it will suspend XP into retirement much sooner than social networks would.

Whether you consider my post a vent or not, is not the issue, the issue is XP.  Kill XP = Kill IE6.