| 19 October 2009
If you have seen this image when you landed on this website... 
you may now understand the warning sign by reading this article written from various news organizations.
Some Web designers are staging an online revolt against an old version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which they say is hampering the ability of the Web to move forward in a cool and interactive way.
The designers say Internet Explorer 6, which was released in 2001 and since has been updated twice by Microsoft Corp., is crippling the Internet's potential and slowing down the online experience. They also blame IE 6 for giving webmasters a collective headache, because they have to write special "hacks" into Web code to accommodate an outmoded browser.
Joe Doyle, CMP who is the 2010 SEC web designer understands completely the premise of the revolt. The premise is simple: Internet Explorer 6 is antiquated, doesn’t support key web standards, and should be phased out. "Every effort was put into cross browser compatability for the SEC website including IE6, but there comes a point that coding should be limited as it becomes no longer cost effective for the client. The users who use IE6 need to bite the bullet and simply take some time and download the latest version. We just need to offer a gentle prompt to encourage this process as seen in the attached image above." You can dowload the latest version (IE8) here.
An estimated 15 to 25 percent of people still use IE 6 as their portal to the Internet, according to two Web monitors.
In recent months, several Web companies have launched sites devoted to the idea of undermining or killing Internet Explorer 6. The most recent site, called "IE 6 No More," has gained momentum on social-media sites like Twitter and Digg in part because a number of respected Internet start-up companies have signed onto the campaign.
The "IE 6 No More" site provides Web developers with a piece of code -- an online hurdle, essentially -- they can install to encourage Internet users to download a new browser before coming back to the site.
YouTube, for instance, now sends a message to Internet Explorer 6 users who visit the site, asking them to upgrade to another browser like Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.
But bigger problems for IE 6 may be on the horizon as the Web becomes more complicated.
Developers are already working with a new Web language -- called HTML 5 -- that is expected to make Web sites able to display flashier video, save documents to computers more easily and act more like traditional computer applications.
