The European Competition Commission have forced Microsoft to offer alternative web browsers with their operating systems, which will be available from March 2010 in Europe. This will obviously confuse some of the less techy users but it may also achieve something I think we all want – the accelerated demise of Internet Explorer 6!

The new Windows update once installed will give the user a choice of browsers, including Google Chrome, Opera , Safari and best of all Firefox. Those that simply think Internet Explorer is the web may find this confusing and ultimately will select the safe IE option – but hey, at least they upgraded. IE6 has caused us web designers a lot of trouble over the last few years and this force update may just make it truly possible for the first time to stop supporting it completely. The IE7 and 8 updates have helped reduce IE6’s domination but an active choice may just do enough to finally make this out-of-date browser insignificant enough to finally be ignored, ultimately this will educate the masses to the infinitely better options available.

With any luck this will be what most web designer have been waiting for, yes, it may take a while but it’s a massive step in the right direction.

In 2001 Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 became the most dominant web browser in the world.  Nine years on new technology and browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome have left this average piece of software behind.  In 2009 I think it is time that the web helped IE6 finally move on, but will it?

Most web designers and developers would agree that IE6 has had its time and now is its time to give way,  not only to its successors in IE7 and IE8 beta, but to Firefox, Chrome, Mozilla, Opera and Safari which all bring a much richer web experience to their users.  The problem is that there are many factors halting the decline of IE6, these include:-

• Corporations using systems that still don’t support browser updates
• Users that have never heard of Firefox or Chrome never mind installed them
• Less wealthy parts of the world where older system are more common
• Microsoft’s imminent release of IE6 for the mobile phone market

So it looks like we are going to be stuck with IE6 for some time to come, but that doesn’t mean we cannot advise our visitors which in turn will keep things naturally changing and moving.  I am not saying completely stop supporting IE6, whether we like it or not it has a place on the web and lack of support will only serve to damage the flow of traffic to our sites.

What I would recommend is adding conditional CSS or JQuery to warn users that they are using a browser which could damage their experience of the web and hopefully this will help keep IE6 to a minimum.  In the meantime I will be adding conditional CSS to my site, but ultimately I will still support IE6 until the percentage of users is low enough to not be a concern anymore.