Back when IE6 was released, ten years ago (!!), it was really starting to look like Microsoft had won the browser war. Browsing the web with anything other than IE on a Windows machine was an increasingly crippling experience.

It was a very grim time.

Fortunately, a number of web developers held out of a viable alternative to a Win32/IE monopoly. When Firefox was finally good enough for general use it was embraced by many web developers, Google in particular. By 2005 many prominent new web sites (Gmail and Google Reader, for two) took special care to support Firefox from day 1, something that was would have been unheard-of only a few years earlier. At that point it was clear that Microsoft could not win the browser war, and IE development languished.

I understand your sentiment, as I have to make sure the apps I make work on IE6. But don't ever forget that it's your browser that's broken (and possibly your company's IT policies), rather than the web (in most cases).

Oh, I have no illusions about what's broken. That's why it's bittersweet. I'm sad that I can't view a web site, but I'm happy that IE6 compatibility is going away.

Have you tried Google Chrome Frame? You're exactly who they made it for.

Don't websites have to state in the meta tags that chrome frame is to be utilised for it? I don't think it generally applies for all sites.

I am. Only since the recent release of admin-less chrome frame. Can't say I've noticed much difference, unfortunately.

Problem is people have to enable it on their sites, and probably dont. You can use gcf: to force it though.

Couldn't you use the chrome inside IE6? Or a virtual environment with a real browser? (To be honest, I'm not sure if I'd just prefer going with links instead of ie6..)

I'm using Chrome frame, but it doesn't work that well. Don't have virtual machine access.