The web development community and website administrators were enthralled over Google's announcement to remove support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) from its Google Apps and Google Docs with IE6 support for YouTube to follow next week on March 13th.

This is a move that has been taken by many modern websites and web applications already and will only serve to aid in the final removal of this antiquated browser from the world's computers.

A recent Downing Street petition calls for the UK Government to withdraw support for IE6 and move on to a more modern browser.  The NHS has already been told to stop using and supporting IE6.

One of the issues with IE6 is its security vulnerability which adds extra burden to developers to work around and fix the IE6 issues in their code.  This coupled with the errors IE6 has with displaying modern websites properly and a lack of support for the very latest web technologies is why so many have campaigned for so long to remove support for the browser.

Recently The Aten Design Group of Denver, who are a web design company, held a mock funeral for IE6.  Although a great publicity stunt they did receive flowers from Microsoft with a message that read:

"Thanks for the good times IE6. See you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven.

The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft"

Hinting that Microsoft will be revealing the new IE8 at the trade show later this month and maybe we can look forward to an announcement that support for IE6 will be officially removed, fingers crossed!

TalkBizNow currently supports IE6 but the user experience is limited and we have spent many a sleepless night getting all the functionality we can into this 9 year old browser, including removing some functionality to ensure security is 100%.

About 20% of internet users still use IE6 and most of these don't have the option to upgrade because they do not have admin access to their computer, which is controlled by their IT Department.  Until Microsoft completely removes support for the browser IT Departments and users will not be forced to upgrade and the problem will remain.

Hopefully the latest press and growing pressure will force Microsoft's hand and we can all get on with developing fantastic websites!