IE7 Priority Update Not As Beneficial As You Might Think
Earlier this week CNET reported that Microsoft will be pushing
Internet Explorer 7 as a high priority update
to Windows XP users once the new browser is released. This was
noted
by Dave Shea over at mezzoblue, his main point being that if you are
not testing websites in IE7 yet, you should. I certainly took note of
this and have acquired my copy of IE7 beta 3. However, that isn't the
point of this post. I was rather worried by the rejoicing amongst the
comments of Dave's post that support for IE5.X and even IE6 could be
dropped soon after IE7 is released. Surely this is a little premature.
For a start, if a user is using IE5.X then they have not upgraded to
IE6 and will almost certainly not be upgrading from version 5 to
version 7. So, if IE5 is considered significant enough to be supported
before IE7 is rolled out, then it will remain significant afterwards
too. It's down to your audience. However, support for IE5.X does not
bother me too much. IE6 on the other hand has approximately 85% share
of internet browsers at the moment and is the most significant browser
out there. If IE7 were to completely replace it, then web designers
would never have to worry about supporting IE6 again! Will this
happen? No, no it won't. Allow me to point out all the reasons why we
will not be getting rid of IE6 in the very near future:
- "Although IE 7 will be pushed out over Automatic Updates, people will be able to choose whether they want to install it or not" - CNET
- The IE7 blocker toolkit for those not ready to upgrade straight away.
- Windows Genuine Advantage.