IE6 is no longer supported

Most people have no way of knowing, but a couple months ago we began displaying a message to our site visitors who still use IE6 (at the time, less than 15% of all traffic) saying “Please upgrade your browser now. Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported”. The message links to a page with links to all the free browsers we do support and an explanation of why IE6 is no longer supported:

• Microsoft is phasing out support for IE6
• IE6 has too many limitations that are holding back new feature development
• There are much better browsers available for free

For the past several months we’ve also been displaying a warning to people who login to Xero using IE6 (at the time, less than 10% of traffic to the app) that says “Although you will be able to continue to log into Xero using IE6, we no longer provide support for this browser.”

With the release of IE8, we felt it’s time to officially phase out support for IE6.

If you’re interested in ending support for IE6 and letting your users know we’ve put together an IE6 upgrade bar for you to download and use.

Please spread the word!

Posted by Philip Fierlinger on 28 April 2009.

Categories: Company News

12 Responses

1. Awesome guys, we will be using this on our sites (and client sites) for sure.

   by Ben Lilley on Apr 28, 2009 at 1:55 pm

2. It’s great to see a company like Xero take this step.

   by David Richardson on Apr 28, 2009 at 9:03 pm

3. This is really useful – thank you very much for sharing with us all

   by Campbell on Apr 29, 2009 at 12:23 pm

4. And today Microsoft appears to be pushing out IE8 via Automatic Updates as promised a week or two back. IE6′s time really is over.

   by Paul.Rushworth on Apr 29, 2009 at 3:04 pm

5. An interesting move! And surely one that is more justified for people offering a web app, rather than a simpler website.

   Also, you need to update this page http://blog.xero.com/ie6/ as IE8 has been released and pushed out by auto-update, so IE7 is also out of date (sort of)

   by Japh on Apr 29, 2009 at 3:30 pm

6. I’ve been considering doing the same now for several months but been holding back because it didn’t feel very customer centric. However holding back progress overall for the good of the few isn’t fair on the many either.

   I may well follow your lead.

   Cheers ears

   by Jason Glover on May 5, 2009 at 8:28 pm

7. [...] [...]

   by blog.xero.com: “IE6 is no longer supported” - Is IE6 dead yet? on May 25, 2009 at 9:59 am

8. [...] look – another reason to like Xero. Also  Xero’s blog is a lot more active than Saasu’s. Clarity’s blog is [...]

   by What I Want From Accounting Software « i can haz .NET on Jul 4, 2009 at 9:38 pm

9. I get this error with firefox too.

   by Steve on Jan 3, 2010 at 12:09 am

10. Hi Steve – can I just clarify if you’re referring to the warning message displayed when you log into the Xero application or the message that displays when viewing the xero.com website? What version of FF are you using?
    Thanks, Catherine

    by Catherine Walker on Jan 4, 2010 at 11:03 am

11. Google also phasing out support for IE6

    Dear Google Apps admin,?

    In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

    We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

    Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

    Starting next week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

    In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

    Thank you for your continued support!

    Sincerely,

    The Google Apps team

    Its great they are also phasing out with GMail as well. This will put some pressure on enterprises, the biggest holdouts on IE6.

    Rod

    by Rod Drury on Jan 30, 2010 at 12:45 pm

12. Except that the vast majority of enterprises who’ve switched to Gmail are doing so merely as an infrastructure play – ie they’re still using traditional email clients (generally Outlook) at the front end….

    by Ben Kepes on Jan 30, 2010 at 1:27 pm

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