Microsoft has released a brand new Web site that's aimed at stepping up its campaign to maneuver customers off Internet Explorer (IE) 6.,
Office 2010 Professional Plus
The new website — the Online Explorer 6 Countdown — went live on March 4. The web page “is dedicated to watching World wide web Explorer six usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Online Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers,
Office 2010 Download,” according to the page.
The site includes links to tools for businesses that are stuck with IE 6 because they’ve developed internal-facing apps that are dependent on Microsoft’s 10-year-old, non-standards-compliant browser.Gartner analysts have complained in the past that Microsoft’s tools for moving business end users off IE six are too pricey.
The new IE Countdown web page also includes a world map, highlighting which countries around the globe still have the most IE 6 installations. (China is No. 1.)
In addition to focusing on the developer side of the “IE 6 must die” message,
Office 2010, Microsoft officials also are emphasizing the improved security from which IE people can benefit by switching to IE 8. IE 9 is still in Release Candidate stage and is not mentioned as a comparison point.
Update: Another reason IE 9 is not mentioned — which I didn’t consider earlier — is that IE 9 won’t work with/on Windows XP. I’d wager that a substantial percentage of those stuck with IE 6 are also still using XP,
Office Professional Plus 2010, and if those users want to stick with IE,
Office 2007 Enterprise, they can only upgrade to IE 8.