The Near Death of Internet Explorer 6
Use of that major security hole of the internet more commonly known as Internet Explorer 6 has fallen since IE7 was released until now where the number of people using it is just below that of IE7 users (at least on my site where Firefox users make up about 35% with IE6 and 7 making up just over and just under 30% each). Thatis about to undergo a further significant change.
To celebrate the first birthday of IE7 Microsoft removed the genuine advantage test from IE7 so that anyone with Windows XP could install IE7 regardless of legitimacy and privacy concerns. On 12th February Microsoft are taking the next step with changing the status of IE7 from being an optional download to being an essential one. This means that anyone who has windows update set on automatic who hasn’t already upgraded to IE7 will be doing so automatically on that day.
The really surprising thing about this is that given the 600+ unplugable security holes in IE6 that Microsoft have taken until now to make the upgrade to IE7 an essential security update.
Obviously there are a few people still using IE6 because their computers are still running older versions of windows and for one reason or another they can’t upgrade to a better operating system - hopefully most of these people have got the message about IE6 being a security hole and are using Firefox or Opera instead. As far as anyone deliberately choosing not to install the upgrade to IE7 on 12th February in order to continue using IE6 all I can say is your computer is a disaster just waiting to happen (security wise) and once just about everyone is using a better browser the really weird quirks that make catering for IE6 a job and three quarters to code for will mean that many web sites will stop adding all the extra codes needed to get their pages to work properly in that antiquated browser and you will find that the pages on the internet that don’t work in really old browsers such as IE6 sarts to increase dramatically over the next year or two.
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