Well, that was a bit of good ol' fashioned prankster fun, wasn't it? The thing is, I'm just not sure publicly shaming these folks is The Right Thing to Do. I've had second thoughts (I'm a bit of a wishy-washy kind of guy) and decided to take the site down.
Yeah, I know. What a wimp.
So what now? The biggest surprise for me was that there are actually software vendors out there who still require IE6 to run their software. It seems like these folks should get most of our attention. Kind, loving attention, mind you.
And even though nobody asked, here's the best short-term solution in my opinion:
- If employees have a legitimate reason to be on the Web while at work, corporate IT departments should allow a second browser. Just because a company runs some awful, outdated software to make their business work doesn't mean they need to force employees to use a crappy browser for everything else. Have a heart, huh? Seriously, IT, you're slowing down the pace of technology development on the Web. We could be doing some very fun things in 2009.
- Microsoft should provide a new version of IE8 with a built-in, sandboxed IE6 rendering engine which could be "switched on" by a corporate IT dept. for certain URLs. And it doesn't need to be the primary IE8 download from microsoft.com. Just a second option. This shouldn't be tough for the world's largest software manufacturer, right?
Ok, go!
Cheers,
Tim
PS Thanks for all the kind words, write-ups, retweets and suggestions. You guys blew me away with the response. I posted the link on Twitter expecting only the people who follow me to ever see it, and in 3 days it went around the world and brought over 12,000 visitors to the site. Clearly this is an issue that means something to someone. Even if it's just us nerds.
PPS For those of you scratching your heads and feeling a bit "Hey what did I miss?" here's the Mashable write-up: http://mashable.com/2009/08/18/ie6-offenders/