WordPress 3.2 Hates IE6. You Should, Too.

Wordpress is finally dropping support to Microsoft's abandoned child - IE6. Wordpress WordPress 3.2, Beta 1 – WordPress News that with release of Wordpress 3.2, which features tons of graphical enhancements and functionality, IE6 will no longer be supported. IE6 has been troubling the software developers and designers all over the world because of IE's lack of support to standards. For over a long period of time, software engineers had to write special code to support the browser, often resulting into conflicts with existing code. Internet Explorer 6 has been in existence since last decade and it was only recently that Microsoft decided that enough is enough and began the #-Link-Snipped-# of IE6. However, it seems that it will take a while before the world gets rid of IE6. As of April, 2011 the IE6 global usage was about 11.4% - which is a huge number. It's important to note that countries like India & China still have a considerable population ( >15%)  of IE6 users. Sizable number of software engineers working in IT companies are forced to use IE6 by restricting upgrade rights to the latest versions of the browser (IE9).

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Worpress official Jane Wells wrote on WP official blog that it required complex code trickery to make WordPress Dashboard work in IE6. If you log-in to WordPress 3.2 beta Dashboard, it looks pretty broken but shows notice in orange background saying "You are using an insecure browser!". The notice box points users to various "Browse Happy" options available for browser upgrade. The WordPress user community has welcomed this update. We hope that the move will force users & companies to upgrade their browsers to the ones that offer more support to standards, are faster & more secure.

Here on CrazyEngineers, we made the move at the beginning of 2010. We decided to cut down IE 6 support in March 2010 for both #-Link-Snipped-#& #-Link-Snipped-#. Many CEans who visited the website from their offices using IE6, would see a broken UI and complained about it. At present <10% of CE users visit CE with IE6 and we are positive that it will come down to under 3% by end of 2011. Those readers who do not have access to installing freeware on their office computers should consider admin-rights-free installation of #-Link-Snipped-#.

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