Sean Walther's Blog

Facebook to drop IE6 support on IE9 beta day, September 15

I’ve been quiet for  while, and wanted to start up again with some great news.  Facebook is going to stop IE6 support for chat on the IE9 beta day.

Projects always ask about IE6 support, whether they need it, etc.  Surprisingly IE7 and IE8 support is also an issue, since they don’t support many of the cool toys supported by actual modern browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox).

I hope IE9 quickly replaces at least the IE7 and IE8 communities.  IE 6 seems here to stay, at least for that last 6-8%.

Some other information from that article:

• Microsoft will support IE6 until April 2014
• Google has removes IE6 support in Google Docs, Google Sites, Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube!
• Microsoft Office Web Apps doesn’t even support IE6 (how could you when trying to do anything cool)

The article quotes numbers as high as 17% for IE6 usage share, but I haven’t seen those numbers in a long time.  My website enjoys an IE6 user base of 0.5% (in the last month, whereas IE, all versions, was around 19%).  Other larger websites I manage see around 7.7% IE6 usage (with IE, all versions, being an amazing 55% of overall traffic).

Tags: browser support, Chrome, Facebook, Google, Ie 6, IE 7, IE 8, ie6, IE7, IE8, Internet Explorer, internet explorer 6, Microsoft