Microsoft stands by IE6
Microsoft has promised to continue backing Internet Explorer 6 for the next five years, in spite of criticism from the design community.
Amy Barzdukas, the Californian software giant’s general manager with responsibility for the web browser, told the Guardian it would support the application until 2014.
Launched eight years ago, Internet Explorer 6 has become a bone of contention for web designers because of its incompatibility with recent advances in page-building.
Unlike the latest version, Internet Explorer 8, the browser has a number of technical issues including problems supporting transparent .png images, dealing with margins and aligning list bullets with text.
It means designers are limited in their ability to create cutting-edge web pages by the need to cater for users with outdated browsers.
Another problem is that Internet Explorer is known to have a series of security flaws.
Microsoft encourages IE upgrade
In a wide-ranging interview, Ms Barzdukas admitted that Microsoft would “prefer” users switched to Internet Explorer 8.
However, she acknowledged that many people have little desire to change.
“If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing and you’re not particularly curious about new technology and don’t really care, upgrading sounds like a hassle,” she said.
“Part of our communication needs to be making clear that there are significant advantages to upgrading to a modern browser.”
Internet Explorer is the browser of choice for approximately two-thirds of global users while Mozilla Firefox is second with a fifth of the market.
Microsoft’s loyalty to version six will disappoint many web designers who have called on it to carry out a forced upgrade to version eight.
