This week, Microsoft celebrated the official end of the road for its long-running Internet Explorer (IE) 6 browser, in the US, after use of the 10 year old browser in that country dropped below 1%.

 

Roger Capriotti, the director of Internet Explorer marketing commented that “IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we’ve been as eager as anyone to see it go away.”

 

So much so, in fact, that the company launched the IE6 Countdown site in March last year, which tracks  general usage of the browser globally, in a bid to accelerate the shift away from the aged browser.

 

“Less than a year later, I’m thrilled to say that the United States has joined the ranks of Austria, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway in dropping below 1% usage of IE6.  In addition, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ukraine, Portugal and the Philippines are also entering the Champions’ Circle.  We hope this means more developers and IT Pros can consider IE6 a “low-priority” at this point and stop spending their time having to support such an outdated browser,” continued Capriotti.

 

 

Unfortunately, South Africa is currently still sitting with 2.7% usage. While this is not as encouraging as some of the other countries, such as Australia and Canada, who are steadily phasing out the irksome browser, at least it’s not as bad as South Korea, which has tenaciously clung to IE 6 with the highest percentage of users at 7.2%.

 

At present though, Norway is leading the pack, with a mere 0.2% of IE6 users.  

 

Capriotti added that since the launch of the IE6 Countdown site, it has garnered more than 2.75 million visitors and 5.6 million page views.

 

“As we kick off 2012, we call on the rest of the world – make it your new year’s resolution to end IE6 and move to a modern browser like IE8 or IE9,” he urged.