The Death of IE6

I’m not celebrating the death of something. But, I’m glad that Google has stopped supporting IE6 altogether.

I wanna quote two paragraphs from a post on Gizmodo:

As anyone who's ever used a computer furnished by their employer can attest, IT departments are slow to make any changes that might disrupt the delicate balance of their electronic ecosystems. And they sure as hell aren't going to let you upgrade or install anything yourself.

Making matters worse, Internet Explorer 6 is deeply embedded in the infrastructures of countless corporations worldwide. Back when IE6 was the only game in town, businesses invested in Intranets and browser-based apps that functioned only in IE. Why bother with anything else? Five years later, of course, a lot of businesses learned the hard way that "IE-only" actually meant "IE6-only." Oops. Now, ask yourself how much interest corporations have in re-investing more capital to fix something that, in their eyes, isn't broken. The answer is: not much.

It is the sad truth that the big non-technology enterprises can’t still let go of IE6 because their applications are so well targeted only at IE6.

I don’t know how I could have survived my last two internships at DBS and UBS were it not for Firefox. While at DBS, I briefly got Admin rights and the first thing I installed was Firefox. At UBS, Firefox portable saved my days. Not that I’m being fuzzy. It’s just that my work there involved online researching (I don’t know answers for everything) and it was just plain hard to do that on IE6 without opening 20 or so windows with no way to recognize which was what.