Browser trends from Sitepoint showed some IE6 death signs just a month ago, noting that more people browsed the Web on their smartphones than used IE6 and IE7 combined.

Yet, little more than one year ago, IE6 was still the third most popular browser in the world. At the time, companies were lazily using IE6 as a means of social control - social networking sites were nearly inaccessible through the dinosaur browser. This was all despite the ridiculous security risks it posed. Yet, at the time, the future of IE6 was still up for debate.

Web developers, designers and regular users noticed that IE6 was on the decline earlier last year, with only 2.9% of the U.S. Internet using IE6. At the time, the highest number of IE6 users were located in Asia.

Wordpress.com stopped supporting IE 6 last May and YouTube stopped supporting it back in early 2010.

Even Microsoft apologized to developers about that whole "wasting time on building stuff for IE6" thing. The company began automatically upgrading Internet Explorer on Windows 7, Vista and XP.

Regardless of how you feel about IE6, data shows that the end is near.

The hoax was perpetuated by an entrepreneur living in Canada named Tarandeep Singh Gill. He's the founder of a comparison shopping Website called AtCheap.com. In an email with ReadWriteWeb moments before he publicly revealed who he was, he told us that he hoped to lure a few people away from Internet Explorer, but he did not expect it to get the level of coverage that it did.

"I was really surprised that most media outlets fell for it," he said.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we're re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

"While working on my latest website, IE6 compatibility was being a pain in the ass," he told us. "So I thought of doing this, with a hope that this would knock off a few people from IE6."

Anatomy of a Hoax: How Did It Spread?

Gill's hoax started with a phony company called AptiQuant, a self-described "psychometric consulting company." He bought the domain name aptiquant.com on July 14 (according to WHOIS records), threw up a Wordpress install and copied the content from another business' website wholesale, changing the names of staff members on the "Our Team" page, but leaving their headshots intact. He even went so far as to set up Facebook and Twitter profiles for AptiQuant, the latter of which was suspended after the hoax was exposed.

The similarities between the content of the two sites stopped at a press release titled Is Internet Explorer For The Dumb? A New Study Suggests Exactly That, which linked to a legitimate-looking PDF of a scientific study claiming to demonstrate a correlation between usage of Internet Explorer and having a low IQ.

The story began spreading online on July 28, with outlets as big as NBC, Business Insider and Mashable picking it up right away. Within a few days, hundreds of outlets had reported on the study, including some of the most reputable news sources in the world.

"At a certain point, AptiQuant's release itself became irrelevant; the conclusion was repeated because other, more trusted news outlets had reported on them," wrote Wired's Tim Carmody in a post that outlined several glaring red flags in the supposed research and on the fake company's Website.

Some Internet commenters were suspicious from the beginning, but it wasn't until today, five days later, that the whole thing was confirmed to be fake. Several hours after news of the hoax began making the rounds, whoever is running the AptiQuant Website posted this concession that the study was indeed concocted, adding a few more "tell-tale signs that should have uncovered the hoax in less than 5 minutes!"

So how does a fake news story like this get spread around so easily? The rapid online news cycle and pressure for writers to chase pageviews are at least partially to blame, former ReadWriteWeb writer Frederic Lardinois wrote on Silicon Filter. It also doesn't hurt that people generally like taking jabs at Microsoft and that Internet Explorer is the browser that many Web developers and IT workers love to hate, especially its antiquated version 6, which stubbornly lives on.

So Why Did He Do It?

The original "research" makes this motivation pretty obvious. In fact, this is something that should have been a dead giveaway to any journalist reporting on the story originally. The report's conclusion reads:

It is common knowledge, that Internet Explorer Versions to 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web standards. In order to make websites work properly on these browsers, web developers have to spend a lot of unnecessary effort. This results in an extra financial strain on web projects, and has over the last decade cost millions of man-hours to IT companies. Now that we have a statistical pattern on the continuous usage of incompatible browsers, better steps can be taken to eradicate this nuisance.

Even if you ignore the very agenda-driven rhetoric (for example, the call to "eradicate this nuisance"), the rest of the above paragraph should call into question the legitimacy of the research. How often to you see psychologists and other scientific researchers refer to Web standards? Is IE's poor adherence to standards really "common knowledge" outside of the Web development community? Why would researchers be concerned with things like the financial scope of Web projects? Are these problems that would motivate anybody outside the IT world to conduct research of any kind? Probably not.

To ensure such nightmares are never relived, the company will start rolling out automatic upgrades to Internet Explorer across Windows 7, Vista and XP, the company announced in a blog post today. Rather than relying on users to update the browser themselves or requiring you to trick your parents into updating theirs around the holidays, Windows will update to the latest compatible version of IE on its own.

This doesn't mean that every Windows machine on the planet will automatically be updated to the latest stable build of Internet Explorer overnight. The automatic update feature will be rolled out in Australia and Brazil first, and then to other countries over the course of next year. The software will upgrade to the most recent version of the browser that's compatible with one's operating system. Thus, Windows XP users can only go as high as Internet Explorer 8. Still, that's a huge and worthwhile improvement from version 6.

The feature will be available to most Windows users, but it can easily be disabled, much to the delight of corporate IT departments everywhere.

Not suprisingly, Microsoft's own Internet Explorer 9 gets a perfect score. The latest stable releases of Firefox and Chrome, however, each score 2.5 and 2 points, respectively. Other browsers like Safari are not able to be analyzed by the site, which returns a message saying "We can't give you a score for your browser." Presumably, the domain yourbrowsermattersunlessyoureamacuser.com was too long to be marketable.

Google's Matt Cutts took to Google Plus today to defend his employer's Web browser. "It's the same 'Look, we have more checkboxes filled in' type of marketing that was more common in the boxed software era," Cutts said, adding that Chrome indeed does have the ability to block insecure content on secure pages.

The latest version of Firefox fares even worse, racking up a mere two points.

Microsoft's new site is primarily intended to encourage users of older versions of Internet Explorer to upgrade. The bane of the existence of Web developers everywhere, Internet Explorer 6, only gets one point. To its credit, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to ensure that the next version of its browser is both secure and compliant with Web standards.

The hoax was perpetuated by an entrepreneur living in Canada named Tarandeep Singh Gill. He's the founder of a comparison shopping Website called AtCheap.com. In an email with ReadWriteWeb moments before he publicly revealed who he was, he told us that he hoped to lure a few people away from Internet Explorer, but he did not expect it to get the level of coverage that it did.

"I was really surprised that most media outlets fell for it," he said.

Anatomy of a Hoax: How Did It Spread?

Gill's hoax started with a phony company called AptiQuant, a self-described "psychometric consulting company." He bought the domain name aptiquant.com on July 14 (according to WHOIS records), threw up a Wordpress install and copied the content from another business' website wholesale, changing the names of staff members on the "Our Team" page, but leaving their headshots intact. He even went so far as to set up Facebook and Twitter profiles for AptiQuant, the latter of which was suspended after the hoax was exposed.

The similarities between the content of the two sites stopped at a press release titled Is Internet Explorer For The Dumb? A New Study Suggests Exactly That, which linked to a legitimate-looking PDF of a scientific study claiming to demonstrate a correlation between usage of Internet Explorer and having a low IQ.

The story began spreading online on July 28, with outlets as big as NBC, Business Insider and Mashable picking it up right away. Within a few days, hundreds of outlets had reported on the study, including some of the most reputable news sources in the world.

"At a certain point, AptiQuant's release itself became irrelevant; the conclusion was repeated because other, more trusted news outlets had reported on them," wrote Wired's Tim Carmody in a post that outlined several glaring red flags in the supposed research and on the fake company's Website.

Some Internet commenters were suspicious from the beginning, but it wasn't until today, five days later, that the whole thing was confirmed to be fake. Several hours after news of the hoax began making the rounds, whoever is running the AptiQuant Website posted this concession that the study was indeed concocted, adding a few more "tell-tale signs that should have uncovered the hoax in less than 5 minutes!"

So how does a fake news story like this get spread around so easily? The rapid online news cycle and pressure for writers to chase pageviews are at least partially to blame, former ReadWriteWeb writer Frederic Lardinois wrote on Silicon Filter. It also doesn't hurt that people generally like taking jabs at Microsoft and that Internet Explorer is the browser that many Web developers and IT workers love to hate, especially its antiquated version 6, which stubbornly lives on.

So Why Did He Do It?

The original "research" makes this motivation pretty obvious. In fact, this is something that should have been a dead giveaway to any journalist reporting on the story originally. The report's conclusion reads:

It is common knowledge, that Internet Explorer Versions to 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web standards. In order to make websites work properly on these browsers, web developers have to spend a lot of unnecessary effort. This results in an extra financial strain on web projects, and has over the last decade cost millions of man-hours to IT companies. Now that we have a statistical pattern on the continuous usage of incompatible browsers, better steps can be taken to eradicate this nuisance.

Even if you ignore the very agenda-driven rhetoric (for example, the call to "eradicate this nuisance"), the rest of the above paragraph should call into question the legitimacy of the research. How often to you see psychologists and other scientific researchers refer to Web standards? Is IE's poor adherence to standards really "common knowledge" outside of the Web development community? Why would researchers be concerned with things like the financial scope of Web projects? Are these problems that would motivate anybody outside the IT world to conduct research of any kind? Probably not.

Apple has added the "Do Not Track" option to the latest version of its default browser, Safari, catching up with the rest of the browser market. The Federal Trade Commission suggested the feature late last year during an investigation of ways to protect consumer privacy and, since then, most major browsers have adopted it.

"Do Not Track" gives users the ability to identify and opt out of certain type of online tracking.

Today, Apple rounded out the list of major browsers by adding "Do Not Track" to a test version of Safari. According to The Wall Street Journal, "the tool is included within the latest test release of Lion, a version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system that is currently available only to developers."

The addition leaves Chrome as the only major browser without built-in "Do Not Track" support.

When Google announced the browser extension, an FTC spokesperson was quoted in The New York Times as saying, "We're pleased that Google is engaged in the process, but Mozilla and Microsoft are clearly steps ahead." It looks like Apple has joined the pack.

Web developers, designers and users rejoice: Internet Explorer 6 use is quickly on the decline. Even Microsoft, the company that released Internet Explorer 6 more than a decade ago, has joined in on the celebration.

"Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we're in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it's time to say goodbye," writes the company on a website it launched today to track the browser's demise.

As part of its countdown, Microsoft released a detailed map of where the browser is still being used the most.

For the most part, Internet Explorer 6 falls well below 5% for many countries. The problem, it seems, is in Asia. China tops the list of problem countries, with 34%, while South Korea comes in with around 25%, followed by a number of countries in the region at around 10%. IE6 only accounts for 3% of browser usage in the U.S., while both Norway and Finland lead the world with under 1% each.

Why do people still use the now ancient browser? Some companies actually use it as a form of control. Websites like Facebook and YouTube are not accessible using IE6, meaning employees can't mess around while they're on the job.

But why is the browser so popular in countries like China and South Korea? According to Download Squad's Sebastian Anthony, it could be a result of piracy. "China is notorious for its number of pirate Windows installs, with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer even claiming that as 9 in 10 copies of Windows in China are pirated," writes Anthony. Nonetheless, even usage there has dropped dramatically, with IE6 falling from more than 50% last August to 35% today.

Yesterday, Google released a Chrome browser extension that lets users block certain websites from showing up in their Google search results. That way, if you never want to see an eHow article again, you don't have to. Kynetx, a company that offers developers a single platform for building extensions for multiple browsers, saw the announcement and immediately offered $500 to the first person that could create an extension "with the same functionality for all 3 browsers and all 3 major search engines."

Less than a day later, the company has announced a winner and released the extensions.

We think this is a very useful tool, we run into spam results way too often. The only problem is that this extension works only in Google Chrome on Google. Kynetx makes it brain-dead simple to build an extension for Chrome, Firefox and IE that will annotate search results on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Kynetx works by providing an AppBuilder tool and a rule-based language to create browser extensions that operate similarly to GreaseMonkey.

The extensions, which are available for Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox, function nearly identically to the one put out by Google yesterday. When you get a page of search results, if you don't want to see a certain domain any more, you simply click the "block" link next to that result. At the end of your search results, it will tell you if something has been blocked and you can click to see the blocked results (the highlighted entries in the screenshot below).

The big difference, of course, is that these extensions work with the top three most used browsers as well as the top three search engines. If you block something on one browser, it automatically synchronizes and keeps that domain blocked in other browsers too. The same goes for search engines. If you block something in Bing, it will be blocked in both Yahoo and Google.

Ed Orcutt, a developer based in Highland, Utah won the $500 prize by getting there first. This is the second time around for Orcutt, who also won another Kynetx contest by creating HoverMe, an extension that helps Twitter and Facebook users discover where their friends hang out on the social Web.

All of the extensions are now available at PersonalBlock.com.

If there was one thing that seemed clear from today's announcement of the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate, it's that Microsoft is looking at Google's Chrome as its primary competitor in the browser market.

Did they come out and say this? Of course not, but it was more in what Microsoft didn't say today or at other recent IE9 events that really stood out. Not once did we hear the words "Mozilla" or "Firefox," but we surely heard "Chrome."

The thing about this Internet is that it's all about movement. Standing still is a form of death. The threat here isn't coming from the steadily useful Firefox, it's from the up-and-comer, Google Chrome.

What Microsoft Said (And Didn't Say)

But let's get back to the presentation today. Microsoft invited us all down to unveil the first release candidate for Internet Explorer 9 and showed off some of the usual features: HTML5 hardware-accelerated graphics and user interface.

Much of the talk around IE9 has been around moving the browser out of the way of the content. There are fewer menu buttons, icons, toolbars and status bars getting in the way. IE9 has gone minimalist and when Microsoft showed off the UI today, it did so by putting it side-by-side with Chrome.

When it came time to show off how quickly Internet Explorer 9 performed when faced with HTML5 graphics, it was also side-by-side with Chrome, not Firefox.

Only when we reached the topic of "do not track" lists and privacy did the topic of Firefox come up, as Mozilla is working on its own approach in this realm. In the realms of usability, design and performance, however, the only comparisons made were to Chrome.

In September, Microsoft held a gala event to announce the beta release of Internet Explorer 9. There were bands, auditorium-size stage shows and hours on end of Internet Explorer goodness. Today, the company is holding a much more subdued event to announce the release of Internet Explorer 9's first release candidate and unveil many of the expected features.

In addition to the general announcement, we're expecting to see more in the way of IE9's hardware accelerated HTML5 graphics support, updates for developers and the much-discussed "Do Not Track" feature. We're live at the event so stay tuned and we'll bring you the news as it comes.

We're told that the event will begin any minute, so stay tuned.

9:07 AM: We're getting going.

We're going to hear from partners dealing with HTML5 and those with privacy/do no track issues.

We're going to start off with a video from developers and designers talking about IE9.

9:09 AM:

What do they have to say? (All good things, of course)
-The browser gets out of the way
-The RC will have geolocation
-These developers really like pinning websites and treating them like apps.
-The "desktop is moving onto the web and the web onto the desktop" - this has been Microsofts party line with IE9 all along.

9:11 AM: Ryan Gavin takes the stage.

"We've had 7 updates to IE9 before today".

The word today, it seems, will be "developer." Gavin is talking about release scheduling and how it has been well-received in the developer community.

"This is probably the highest quality beta in IE history."

Says they've received more than 17,000 pieces of feedback on IE9, more than the entire life cycle of IE8.

9:14 AM:

Now we're talking about hardware acceleration. "You can't have a discussion about browsers today without discussing hardware acceleration."(The motto, of course, has been "Beauty of the Web.")

And here's the other topic of the day: Trust.

"IE9 aspires to be the world's most trusted browser."

IE9 can block 99% of malware, says Gavin. And yes, the release of IE9 RC1 is today.

9:16 AM:

Privacy & Tracking Protection:

Tracking lists have been published: privacy choise, easy list, Truste and Abine.

9:21 AM: Now we're seeing dev tools for tracking features. As you browse, you can watch IE9 create a browsing profile and exmaine how your browser is being tracked.

9:23 AM: "What you see there is that with one click, you're protected. It's as simple as finding a list and clicking a button."

IE9 also allows creation of "personalized tracking protection lists."

Some offer do not track lists, others like Truste offer whitelists, which list what to allow, not what to block.

"This is the first in the industry to enable this level of control."

9:24 AM: Now we're moving on to "Interoperability."

Announcing geo-location support.

"In today's Web, sites need to ask you for your location. Now, you can ask the browser and the browser can, with your consent, give your location."

Geo-location - uses the same services as WP7 to provide location.

9:30 AM:

We're now getting into the usual demos of how fast IE9 hardware acceleration is. The difference, they say, is between full and partial hardware acceleration.

IE9 is "four times as fast" as Chrome 10.

9:40 AM: Moving to the last area: User Experience.

Three things - navigation, tabs, and pin sites.

Consumers like the "site-centric experience" - tightened up UI, squared off tabs, made more room for content.

Showed two sites, side by side, on Chrome and IE9, and showed that IE9 offered a "full toolbar's width" more screen space for content. (It's clear here today that Microsoft considers Chrome its big browser competitor and not Firefox. As a matter of fact, the word Firefox hasn't been mentioned once.) One other thing? My Chrome looks cleaner than the one they just showed - I have to wonder what version that was.

"Another area where we had a lot of feedback was around tabs."

For 97% of sessions, users had 5 tabs or fewer. "At the same time, we care a lot about that last 3%."

Can move tab bar under one box to give full width of window for tabs.

9:46 AM: Pinnable sites:

Now allows for various elements on a website to be grabbed and pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar.

Users 40% more likely to return to site with "pin site" feature. ("Pinnable" sites are websites that can be a permanent icon on the bottom taskbar of Windows 7. They can also feature "jump lists", which add quick actions to the right-click menu of these pinned items.)

9:53 AM:Unlike the HP WebOS, this one is running just an hour long. That's it folks. As always, we're interested in hearing what you think of the latest with IE9.

It's the first time that IE has been knocked out of the number one position in a major geographical area, says Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter's CEO, who points to the growth of Google's Chrome as the reason for the shift. It isn't that Firefox is gaining steam, but rather than IE is losing users to Chrome.

IE still retains its lead in the browser market in North America with 48.92% of users, followed by Firefox at 26.7%, Chrome at 12.82%, and Safari at 10.16%.

StatCounter's figures are based on aggregate data on a sample of over 15 billion page views per month.

It doesn't come as a surprise that users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer haven't upgraded to the latest version of their browser yet. Only 60.2% of IE users are running version 8 yet. The total number of IE users has been dropping for a while now and has recently dipped under 50%, but IE remains the most often used browser on the Web (we hesitate to call it the most "popular" browser). The upcoming release of IE9, though, could prove to be a turning point, as it is faster and far more standards compliant than previous versions. For the time being, 14% of Internet users are still running IE6, which was released on August 27, 2001.

Do You Run the Latest Version of Your Browser?

Are you using the latest and greatest version of your browser of choice? Do you use Google Chrome's canary builds and the latest beta version of Firefox 4 to stay on top of things? Or are you still stuck on IE6 at work because your admin locked down your machine and your company's internal Web apps still only run on IE6? Let us know in the comments. ]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_71_of_internet_users_run_latest_version_of_their_browsers.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_71_of_internet_users_run_latest_version_of_their_browsers.php News Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:52:11 -0800 Frederic Lardinois Earlier this morning, Microsoft announced a new developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) during its PDC keynote. This new version is very similar to the first developer preview the company launched earlier this year, as it does not feature the full Chrome-like user interface Microsoft introduced with the first public beta of IE9. Instead, it is meant to give developers the ability to test their Web apps against the improved rendering engine's new capabilities like CSS3 2D transforms.

Even though the user interface is disabled by default, though, a small hack makes it possible to use the preview with a full user interface.

The company also released a new set of speed tests for IE9 and other modern browsers. One thing that was not announced during the keynote today was a launch date for IE9.

Enable the User Interface in the Developer Preview

Our friends over at Ars Technica found a way to use the IE9 preview engine within the IE9 beta chrome. While it's a bit of a hack, it's quite easy to do and should be perfectly safe. If you are feeling adventurous, just head over here and give it a try.

StatCounter Global Stats, which looks browser market share by browser and not by version, shows Internet Explorer occupying just below 50%, down from nearly 60% a year ago.

When you look at the browser wars on a more regional level, IE is still above 50% in North America, while it has dropped as low as 40% in Europe. In Asia, IE is even more dominant, with nearly 60% of the market. Almost universally, Firefox holds a strong position in second place. Worldwide, Chrome holds the third spot easily, though the browser battles it out with Safari in North America.

The first images of Internet Explorer 9 leaked last month and today's video confirms that Microsoft will likely use the stripped down, minimalist interface we saw in these leaked screenshots. As we noted last month, it looks like Microsoft has done away with the menu buttons and freed up even more space by combining the URL bar and tab bar into a single toolbar. While this frees up more space for displaying websites, it remains to be seen how effective this new layout will be when more than four or five tabs are open at the same time.

According to this new video, Internet Explorer 9 now also scores 95 out of 100 possible points on the Acid3 test, which measures how well the browser conforms to a specific set of web standards.

After looking at this video, do you think you will give Internet Explorer another try?