[person:Francois Bondiguel], founder of [business:PocketSmith] pointed out on his twitter page yesterday that Norwegian websites have started a war to combat users of the browser of Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).
This immediately caught my attention. For one, I myself is Norwegian 🙂 But more importantly is the extra work that IE6 causes web developers around the world, also here at Transfercar.
IE6 was launched in 2001 when the web was very different from what it is now. Also IE6 never complied properly with Internet industry standards. So web developers have been waiting for it to slowly die out. Unfortunately because of it’s bundling with Windows this never really happened, and web sites have been having to provide 2 versions of their pages; one for IE6 and one for the rest of the browsers.
Even the past 30 days on Transfercar.co.nz we have had 23% of IE users still using version 6.
So we have decided to join the efforts to educate and create awarness amongst Internet Explorer users that still have an old version on their computers. From today onwards we have the following message displayed on all our web pages:
Tip from Transfercar: You have an old version of the browser Internet Explorer (IE6)
To get the best possible experience using our website we recommend that you upgrade your browser to a newer version. The current version is Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 is available as a beta. The upgrade is free. If you’re using a PC at work you should contact your IT-administrator.
If you want to you may also try some other popular Internet browsers like Opera, FireFox or Safari
You can also see a screen shot of the message on Flickr.
We hope that every website owner in New Zealand now will take up the challenge and put a similar message on their site. Go here for the source code to implement it on your web site.
The movement also have a wiki page and you can find a list of all websites having implemented the message.
