Microsoft is sticking to its guns over its continued support of the much maligned IE6, insisting that it 'keeps its commitments'.
The debate over whether the internet should shun Internet Explorer 6, which still holds a significant proportion of internet traffic, has been raging for some time.
Microsoft has long held that it will not abandon users who are still on IE6, despite the pressure to force an upgrade to a more modern browser.
Dean Hachamovitch, on the official IE blog, insists that this stance simply will not change, despite the company's desire that people move onto IE8.
"Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product."
Commitments
"We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have.
"As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade.
"Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC."
According to Microsoft's own lifespan policy, support for all programs lasts for 10 years, meaning that it will continue to back IE6 until 2011.
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optimaximal
August 11th 2009
1. It's not surprising really, but is largely irrelevant because they are actively pushing IE8 out to XP over Windows Update - home users (i.e. those who IE6's awful obsolescence matters too) should just let it be updated.
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