Facebook Chat drops support for IE6

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 27 Aug 2010 at 09:33

Facebook is dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 on its instant messaging software, in another sign of websites turning their back on the ageing browser.

The social-networking site says it's upgrading Facebook Chat to make the service more reliable. However, that comes at the cost of support for Microsoft's almost decade-old browser, which is still in widespread use.

"The biggest improvements come from changes that aren't supported on older web browsers," Facebook claims in a blog post. "After evaluating the alternatives, we've decided to make rapid improvements and provide the best Chat experience possible, which means we will no longer support Internet Explorer 6 browsers."

The biggest improvements come from changes that aren't supported on older web browsers

Facebook isn't the first company to turn its back on the browser. Google Apps dropped support for IE6 earlier this year, claiming it wasn't powerful enough to cope with the service's new features.

The latest figures from Net Applications show that Internet Explorer 6 is still the second most used browser in the world, behind Internet Explorer 8 and marginally ahead of Firefox 3.6. It's still running on almost 17% of machines worldwide, according to the stats firm.

Microsoft has made repeated attempts to migrate customers from Internet Explorer 6, which remains popular in government and large corporations that have applications that are dependent on the legacy browser.

Microsoft Australia ran a campaign comparing the use of IE6 to drinking out-of-date milk, while the head of the Internet Explorer business group, Ryan Gavin, told PC Pro earlier this year that it was his job "to get IE6 share down to zero as soon as possible".