IE6, dying but not quite dead yet

With Google recently announcing it is withdrawing support for IE6 from March 1 and YouTube support slated to be dropped on March 13  the web has been alight with celebratory posts, tweets and blog comments. There's even been a funeral arranged. Are we finally seeing the beginning of the end for the webs most hated browser?

There's plenty of articles bemoaning the digital barnicle that is IE6, but not so many people seem to be looking at what's actually happening in terms of actual usage. Yes there's plenty of alternatives such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari (hell- even upgrading to IE8 isn't that bad) but the uptake seems to be slow.

Global browser trend stats from Hitslink tell a slightly more depressing story. At time of writing 20% of users are still using IE6. 10 months ago it was 30%. Its simple maths, IE6 usage is dropping around 1% point every month. Take a look (click the image for a larger version):

At Frame Digital we wouldn't consider dropping support for a browser unless it was well under 10%. At the current rate of decline it looks we'll still be applying IE6 specific CSS and javascript PNG hacks probably until the end of the year. Not to mention the additional development hours testing and supporting the piece of junk dated software.

Fingers crossed with the big online mega-corps starting to withdraw support it will force the remaining IT managers and home users to finally upgrade.