Browsing the 2013 web in Internet Explorer 6 is hell

According to the latest figures, there is still a whopping 4.6% of users still using Internet Explorer 6 to browse the Web on the 2013, 12 years after its launch. And that two years ago, in 2011, Microsoft started and maintains a constant campaign to abandon the anachronistic browser.

Upgrade and forget about IE6 hell

I have to admit that the number has caught my attention because, having updated WindowsXP, it is enough to use a version 7; which, with important deficiencies, is at least quite advanced in relation to the previous version.

And that small relative percentage really means an lot of millions of users who are "enjoying" a disastrous Internet browsing experiencelike the one you can see in the video published by Duncan Maile on DuncsBlog.com

But hell isn't just for users and surfers, it's also for Web application development companies that are faced with customers who want their pages to keep running in IE6, forcing them to perform a custom design and build that will only work in the outdated browser, and in a very limited way.

Certainly only strong reasons can advise a company to currently use Windows XP - whose expiration date is getting closer and closer definitive in April 2014 – such as the cost of licenses, having captive software for specific hardware and its drivers, or the resistance to change of organizations and users.

And here's a unanimous message from all of us writing on this topic: update as soon as possible Ideally you should jump to Windows 8.1 , which is by far the best operating system Microsoft has ever made; surpassing the XP in so many things, that it gives to write several articles.

But even the jump to Windows 7 or a Linux system, are more than enough to forget about the cumbersome obsolescence of Internet Explorer 6. And, although the inconvenience can be costly in time and money, the upgrade quickly pays for itself by bringing us into the second decade of the 21st century, technologically speaking.