Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 21, 2001. It attained a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003. Then IE7 was launched in late 2006 and it began a sharp market share decline.
I just checked my Google Analytics (as well as some other sources) and there is still a not-insignificant audience using IE6. Maybe 5-10%, but still that is alot of people.
Real web developers who aren’t lazy like me support IE6 and just do the legwork, but the truth is that it is a pain in the ass. IE6 rendered web pages horribly and JavaScript runs like a dog in it. (A slow dog) I just wish that there was a way out of this mess.
When IE6 was the dominant browser, developers could really push the envelope because they didn’t have to test everything 5-6 times in different systems. Not it’s just a mish-mash. IE6, IE7, FF2, FF3. I can’t keep up.
For a decade now, Flash has been the alternative. But yet, it has never made it. Here is my guess as to why: You need the IDE. If they had made it so you could produce Flash with pure CSS and html then it would have been alot more palatable. I guess they wanted to make money, but they missed the opportunity to be the dominant rendering engine. Oh well, enough time spent in la-la land. Back to work. I have to debug IE6 now.
Whatya think?