Ashes to ashes, byte to byte – the funeral of IE6

 

Gallery

By Hani Megerisi

Posted on 4 Mar 2010 at 11:56

It's been written off many times, but a group of web designers is hoping to finally consign Internet Explorer 6 to the grave by holding a funeral for the Microsoft browser.

“Internet Explorer 6, resident of the interwebs for over eight years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc,” says the IE6 Funeral site, referring to the infamous hack attack on Google, which exploited a hole in Internet Explorer.

“Internet Explorer 6, known to friends and family as ‘IE6’, is survived by son Internet Explorer 7, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer 8,” says the site, designed by the Aten Design Group.

The ‘funeral’ will be held in Denver, Colorado, and those who cannot attend are encouraged to send flowers, with well-wishers leaving fake obituaries on the site.

IE6's chequered reputation has taken a further blow over the past few months, following the security attack on companies such as Google and Adobe. Political leaders in France and Germany urged their citizens to adopt a safer browser.

While Microsoft patched the flaw, IE6 use continued to decline, culminating in NetApplications announcing in February that IE8 had at last overtaken the aged browser as the most used web-surfing application.