Where oh where has my IE6 gone

this really is not okay

from WinCustomize Forums

 

Even though I sent an email to support, I had to find out by off posting that stardock is no longer supporting IE6. IMHO, IE6 is the most stable, user controlled browser yet. Why, oh why, would you not support it???

I use IE6 for all of my serious browsing and Safari for my fluff browsing (youtube, tmz and other sites) where I wish to view flash content.

IE7; used it and uninstalled it as it continuously crashed when closing multiple tabs.

FF; unable to control third party cookies.

Chrome; you’re joking right. I haven’t downloaded it based on my assumption that the browser will be flash intensive and as intrusive as can be. (they did buy doubleclick, right) While I love their search engine and yea, the map is pretty cool, Google is an ad mart. Their primary concern seems to be how to make more money and please their advertisers, not providing us with a secure or stable environment. Try emailing them sometime, see how far you get.

I must have missed stardock informing it’s users of the change and to me, it seems just lazy not to make the most use of the site and to make it accessible regardless of browser type. My experience with IE6 and Safari, when viewing the site, is soooo different, which I’m having to use to post this plea.

I’m also losing my identity when switching over the forums and have to log in again??? And no, I’m not using impulse either, is there a point to do so???

Please, reincorporate whatever needs to be reincorporated to make continued use of IE6.

 

5,416 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

What site/page are you specifically having trouble with?

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Zoomba, reply 1
What site/page are you specifically having trouble with?
End of Zoomba's quote

 

https://forums.wincustomize.com/

this is troubling as I would just rather drop a site that doesn't support IE6 or makes one use flash or one that makes you accept cookies. I come here almost daily, I support and contribute. I don't think I'll drop the site but I don't appreciate being told that I have to update to continue to participate. >:(   :'(   #:(  

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

https://forums.wincustomize.com/
End of quote
What is not rendering correctly.

Some functions may not work as well in IE6 but it should still work for a bit.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

FF; unable to control third party cookies.
End of quote

How do you mean? Firefox has an option to refuse all third-party cookies right alongside the other cookie options.

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Zubaz, reply 3

https://forums.wincustomize.com/What is not rendering correctly.

Some functions may not work as well in IE6 but it should still work for a bit.
End of Zubaz's quote

I'd post a picture of this but I'm limited in ability so it seems, (ctrl-V) doesn't work and I haven't had much success with the url posting thing. A picture has been already posted on this forum. it shows the navigation buttons at the top to be repeated across the page. six high, infinity across.

I lose log in from there to here and my first attempt to re-log in resulted in a security alert that the data was being transfered to another location. And I just now noticed that opening wincustomize in IE6 identifies me as "joe user" and not "hello, wimpy". Safari is handling all of this quite well, it is however, not my preference in browsers. I will look at Safari's preferences and see how user friendly they are regarding security.

BUT, that really isn't the point, is it. I didn't see any announcements regarding dropping support for IE6, and from what I hear, I'm not alone. There has to be millions of users that still only use IE6, it's a good rock solid browser that allows the user to control their web viewing experience.  (flash X|  , third party cookies X|  )

I do like the cute little degi-cons, they're, well, cute.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I believe those issues were a result of connections timing out or failing when trying to download the scripts or styles, rather than a browser issue.

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting kryo, reply 4

FF; unable to control third party cookies.

How do you mean? Firefox has an option to refuse all third-party cookies right alongside the other cookie options.
End of kryo's quote

that observation was made when I quit using the program which is about the same time thunderbird quit sending out my email. been a couple years at least. sounds like there have been some improvements?

Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top

wimpy, IE6 support will likely be dropped shortly after IE8 is released. At present we are only stating that IE6 is not supported on one website, http://www.impulsedriven.net.

You should be aware, however, that choosing to disable flash and cookies will limit the functionality of all of the stardock websites. The forums rely on cookies and require flash to update your account images.

We're aware that the header for forums.stardock.com and forums.wincustomize.com isnt displaying properly for IE6 and will fix that in the near future.

Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting andrew_, reply 8
You should be aware, however, that choosing to disable flash and cookies will limit the functionality of all of the stardock websites. The forums rely on cookies and require flash to update your account images.
End of andrew_'s quote

That's a darn shame. I have wincustomize as an exception on IE6 preferences but don't find the same abilities on Safari. Why are you dropping support, pray tell?

Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Well IE6 is an aging technology. It's abilities are far below modern browsers in terms of both performance and rendering. We're continually faced with really cool things that we would like to do both for presentation and functionality, but which just arent possible with IE6. It's always limited web developers and web developers have always been forced to either limit functionality to IE6 users or find 'unique' ways to hack around it's shortcomings. IE6 still has security issues and will soon stop receiving patches by Microsoft. Typically, its a safe practice to stop supporting a product when the manufacturer does. Microsoft has stated however, that IE6 (as for it's updates via Windows XP SP2) will be supported, but if you're not running Windows XP SP2 then you've already lost Microsoft's backing for IE6.

IE6 is also now nealy 7 years old, and it hasnt enjoyed an update in some time. In addition, the market share for IE6 is dropping by the day. The average percent of IE6 users accross our websites have dipped below 10% and we expect that number to take a dramatic plunge when IE8 is released. We've only just started to check out sites on Safari, namely because of Safari's availability on Windows now, and that the new Chrome browser by Google uses the same engine as Safari.

Given that the number of users are falling by the day, and it's many and numerous shortcomings, there just aren't many solid reasons to continue to develop for IE6.

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So that's our take on the situation, and the direction we'll be moving towards here in the future. You're completely welcome to disagree though, and I recognize that not everyone will feel the same. Since this has taken more of a discussion direction rather than a report on problems using our sites, I'm going to move this back out into General Discussion. Posts in Forum/Site Issues forums are moderated much more heavily as theyre used to diagnose, debug and resolve issues.