I mainly wrote this post because I noticed so many places where linking to an older place on the browsers.evolt.org website. There where some scripting and PHP errors on their page since it was being linked to an older location, but the files are still there and the site does work.

Update: It seems that even if you’re using IE6 standalone (from the link above) conditional comments will still report it as 7.0 or, I assume, whatever version you have install. You can verify this by going to About in the Help menu. So, if you really want to test IE6 you’re probably going to want the Trendsoft installer. Interestingly, this will also display the wrong version number in the About dialog, but behaves as IE6 in regards to conditional comments, cookies, etc.

If you think the web looks fine to you and you’re not interested in upgrading, you might want to consider:

• Web pages have to significantly limit their interfaces for IE6. Google’s GMail and Yahoo’s Mail both provide a more limited interface to this browser.
• The browser is a security nightmare. Users can accidentaly allow malicious software to be installed and executed on the system without even knowing it. It’s history is heavily tainted with security issues of every kind.
• It’s much slower than newer browsers like Google Chrome or even it’s bigger brothers, Internet Explorer 7.0 and 8.0.

So, you’ve decided to upgrade, but to what browser? My personal opinion is that Google Chrome blew everything else out of the water.

Installing Google Chrome

Everything from Google is so easy to do: Just go to http://google.com/chrome and choose their installer. It’s available for most versions of Windows, as well as Mac OS X and Linux. Chrome will allow you to import your old settings from Internet Explorer. Chrome will automatically keep itself updated without bugging you.

Installing Firefox

Mozilla also makes it very easy to get started with using their Firefox. Just download their setup for Windows or Mac OS X. Firefox will allow you to import your old settings from Internet Explorer. Firefox will automatically tell you about updates.

Upgrading Internet Explorer

You can upgrade to a new version of Internet Explorer by either:

• Downloading the setup from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer page.
• Connecting to http://update.microsoft.com in Internet Explorer and doing an upgdate process.

Depending on your system there may be an additional step that requires you prove to windows that your copy of Microsoft Windows is “genuine”. Internet Explorer updates come through Windows Update, so you’ll have to have automatic updates enable or check for them manually.

There have also been a website created to promote the stoppage of IE6 and moving forward to anything else. I’m not going to use any version of Internet Explorer any time soon (except for testing), but I’ve had pretty good luck getting sites to work without issue in IE7 and IE8.

What are we missing by catering to the IE6 crowd?

• Alpha transparent PNG images. This allows sites to create images that blend over one another, without having to create convoluted images stacked on a background color.
• A consistent and sane display model. IE7 won’t be passing Acid 2 any time soon, but it’s leagues better than it’s little brother.
• Legitimate CSS stlying. Right now any site that wants to work in IE6 has to use all kinds of hacks that work against the very concept of the CSS language.