WARNING Do Not Update Your Windows Testing Box!!!
by Thomas Aylott Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:36:00 GMT
If you need to test websites in Internet Explorer 6, this message is for you.
New IE6 Patch Removes Ability to Test Memory Leaks
There has just been a patch released by Microsoft that updates IE6 to remove the memory leaks.
Some people seem to think this is great news:
Why is this bad? You might ask…
Well, are you a developer that codes stuff that could ever cause a memory leak in IE6? Do you want to test your code in IE6 to make sure that your careful work to eliminate all the memory leaks has actually worked?
Or do you just want to hide your head in the sand and pretend that all Internet Explorer 6 users that will ever visit your site will have updated their system WITHOUT installing Internet Explorer 7 which is a forced update?.
Think about it… What section of the universe uses IE6 and updates regularly but then manually goes in and disables some of the updates? Developers who need to test! That’s probably about it. Note that this update only affects XP sp2 users. Windows 2000 IE6 users won’t be updating.
Just make sure that you don’t update to the latest IE6 on your testing box or Parallels testing setup or whatever. Because it could render your testing environment pretty stinkin’ useless.
And it’s happening! http://ajaxian.com/archives/jscript-57-fixing-ie6
Are you people insane? This is HORRIBLE news!
Who exactly do you think is still using IE6 ? What percentage of those people do you think update their systems regularly? What percentage of them do you think are still using Windows 2000 or Windows XP before SP2 ? What percentage of people who use IE6 AND update their systems regularly would MANUALLY DISABLE the IE7 update?
This is horrible news for us web developers because it means that supporting the most popular browser on the internet is going to be much more difficult, not easier.
This is going to give new developers a false sense of security because they won’t be able to reproduce the critical bugs that the MAJORITY of their users WILL experience.
The only “official” way to even test older versions of IE is to install them in Virtual PC. This news means that you’ll now have to have two Virtual PCs just to test IE6 . One for JScript 5.6 and another for JScript 5.7.
But since Microsoft expires their VirtualPCs, will you even be able to get ahold of IE6 with JScript 5.6 anymore?! Assuming you’re one of the few developers who even know that you should be testing on it.
Those of us who use MultipleIEs are now left in the dark for this new update.
Thank you so very little Microsoft. Just leave IE6 as the pile or flaming donkey turds that it is and stop trying to further fragment our web developer testing environments!
Actually, the amount of IE6 users out there is huge, more than IE7 of 10,000 visits per day on the National Express East Anglia website we have just created. 37.5% IE6 and only 34% IE7 . http://www.nationalexpresseastanglia.com/