IE6 has long been a thorn in the sides of many web developers, offering limited support for many established web standards that often force devs to implement ugly, ugly hacks. It might not be so bad if there weren’t so many people still using the damn thing over eight years after its release (and two full browser upgrades from Microsoft), but it still has an alarmingly large following. Its poor performance, combined with its persistence, has made it one of the worst tech products of all time.
The article cites a poll made with IE6 users of the website Digg. IE6 corresponds to 5% of Digg's traffic, and three out of four users of the old version of the browser say they can’t upgrade due to some technical or workplace reason.
Graphic by Elliot P.
Statistics from W3Schools show that in June 2009 14.9% of their users were still using IE6 (a smaller percentage than shown in the graphic from December 2008 from the same source, but still very high).
To accommodate IE6 users, web developers have to spend many extra hours adjusting the code so that webpages work properly for this particular browser version. The main reason for its survival, according to the Digg poll, seems to be the lag in the installation of upgrades in corporate environments.
IT managers at big corporations, please schedule an upgrade! Or even better, shift to Firefox, the web browser most recommended by reviewers. IE6, if you haven't noticed, is broken.
It's interesting how the numbers vary. 60% of 2wtx.com visitors use Firefox, which means the number or IE6 users in our case is relatively small.