Zombie of the Internet, or IE6 Refuses to Die

Borrowed from an interesting article on zombie botnets

I was unsure at first how to approach this post.
As a rant 'Arrrgh IE 6.0...', as a joke 'Oh that pesky IE6...', as concise argument 'The flaws of IE6 support are...' or a comparison of other peoples arguments Google says "".
Then I realised the Things I can't do is make a affirmative statement "I will not support IE6" or an appeal "For the love of (insert holy deity of choice) stop using IE6!".
What I can do is write about my feelings on IE6, draw together some other peoples arguments, present some humorous elements to illustrate my dislike for IE6 (and 7 if truth be told), and advise you to get a browser that supports more modern standards.

I can say this:

 My personal projects will not support IE6, and I may even go as far for some as to block IE6.  I can also say that any website work undertaken IE6 support will be a chargeable feature, not an expected norm.

First the ranty history bit, IE6 is proverbially the Zombie of the browser world. In its day it was bad, but so was the internet in general. a collection of blue grey/white pages with little moving images and very little style or design. That meant you never really noticed. Before IE6 there was 5, and there was alternatives Mosaic/ Netscape or  Opera to name a few but the usage of the internet was just blossoming too.

Although internet had started to grow, flourish and the design world take note, as with everything the understanding came later. Designs worked and if not the design was changed. People did not know why bits did not work but some things would not and so Tables and Frames became the norm. But also knowledge came, and competition. People started to gain knowledge, with this became relisation that things should work, standards meant there were rules. This knowledge meant we started to learn were and when the rules had not been followed or had been misinterpreted.

This lead to change or growth, patches and competition. Eventually IE7 the Ghoul of the internet! Why do I say this? thats another post.

IE6 was released with windows XP in 2001 and like a movie Zombie plague it spread unstoppably,  effecting the lives of every day computer users as they found it their first and only experience of the web.
It was 2 years before a alternative was released that tried to change peoples knowledge. Yes I mean Firefox but this is not a pro browser rant, this is a stop using IE6 rant. There were lots of browsers when IE6 was prevalent, but developers did not used to be marketeers so they existed in small circles (oddly like movie zombie apocalypse survivors) Firefox was the first to push for change in circles outside the norm or more importantly to regular people not just technically minded people. This pushing helped grow the internet experience but still it was 5 years until IE6 moved on to IE7, and this time without the operating system update assisted spread it was not so much enfaces on change.
This meant that IE6 spread through a corporate world, were it was supported by the biggest player of the time in all the right places and it was prevalent so long that its foot hold became a strangle hold. Business systems costing millions were built working around IE6 and its flaws and the work arounds to support these meant these systems were infected with the Zombie plague and as such would not function again in the normal world, as in Shaun of the Dead they would need to be kept in the shed repeating their last actions... (see the Zombie analogy works so well) The cost of clearing all these systems being too expensive or tied up in investment to change them. As such we are left living in a world were whole governments still utilise a decade old piece of technology and actively encourage its support, encouraging a eco structure of needed support. While its own inventors have stopped providing even that.

Smashing Magazine 

Lets talk Market Share, its like talking money. Almost at release IE6 had a market share of 68% give or take a few... ten years on IE as a set (6,7,8 and 9) has 45% [wiki stats] and of this IE6 makes up 3.5% [w3bcounter] so with nearly 2 billion(1,966,514,816) people on the internet, that means 6,882,8018 people are still using IE6 sound slike a lot until your realise that the UK government employes more people than that between them , the NHS and the MOD. So the UK could be the only place in the world still using IE6!

I started this as a ranty, comical strip and seem to have got tied up in actual facts and feelings of frustration IE6 has brought me..
As such I'm going to link to some thing says it far  more eloquently than I can.
 Finally as this made me smile I thought i'd show you from Flickr with link to tutorial to make your very own IE6 stress relief Voodoo toy.