Youtube and IE

[CharlieChomper]

What I'm about to post is something that hasn't been officially announced as of yet by Youtube (although, expect to see something more official coming soon from them--if I do see something before then, I will try and post it). It has, however, been confirmed by several sources and is hardly a secret just within the tech/techie community.

Basically, in case anyone has been wondering as to why Youtube has increased the number of banner ads or just ads in general involving different browser choices out there--with an emphasis on the "latest and greatest"--it has actually largely been due to an attempt by them to get IE6 users, in particular, to move to a different browser as they will be dropping support for it in favor of other, newer browsers in the near future. Anyone using IE7 will not be affected by this.

This has now made them the latest site to force the transition by IE6 users toward a different browser and drop support for it (in just the past few weeks, there have been a number of other high profile sites out there which have announced dropping support for it).

However, it actually doesn't entirely appear to be related to either changes in web standards nor with respect to some of the issues that have sometimes existed with it, but partly due to the decline in the number of users (according to the last-known figure released about a month ago, the number of IE6 users had actually dropped to just under 14% and was continuing to decline as users have either moved more toward newer browsers or just entirely different browsers).

[Felicity]

Thank you for keeping us up-to-date with the news CC!

I certainly appreciate the time and effort you take to bring us all the technical and other PC related news that is currently running out there!

Felicity

[Becky]

I certainly appreciate the time and effort you take to bring us all the technical and other PC related news that is currently running out there!

Ditto! Don't know where we'd be without you!

- Becky

[Kiri]

Thanks for the CharlieChomper! I'm trying out Google Chrome at the moment, but still use IE6 for some things.

[CharlieChomper]

Thanks. I'll see if I can get some time to try and post about anything further taking place or which you should probably be aware of.

I don't know if you've tried it out or not or what your opinion of it is, but one option worth considering might be Firefox (there is an extension for Windows that does permit it similar behaviors to IE, just as it's possible to import bookmarks from IE--or any other browser--into Firefox). They just released version 3.5, which contains some significant changes that were made to the browser.

There is also its sibling browser, Sea Monkey, which is more of a browser "suite" in the traditional sense (if you remember the old Netscape browser--pre-AOL--it contains many of those same features, as that's actually not only where the name Mozilla came of (it was the name of the "kernal" that the old Netscape browsers prior to AOL to be more precise).

One thing that has been of some concern with Chrome has been in some privacy-related issues that have been attached to it which continue into now (some that had existed with it earlier on, had been addressed as many in the privacy and security communities in particular had been extremely vocal in their complaints--however, a number of those problems continue to exist, which is why it remains on the watch and warning lists from some of those same groups).

Another browser that remains on the "watch/warning" list is Safari due to some very serious security issues pertaining to it which seem to be significantly worse in Windows (and which Apple has continued to refuse to acknowledge--and which I believe I may even posted about some time ago?).

[Kiri]

I'm not too sure why - but Firefox does weird things on my laptop.

I'm not using Chrome for secure stuff - it doesn't cope, and it has problems with some sites in even just displaying the right thing. To be honest - I'm not convinced with Chrome - but with any browser I try, I give them a couple of weeks before ditching them. To get over the unfamiliarity bias. I've been fairly comfy with IE6 so I will try Firefox again - I do need a good alternative to IE.

Kiri

Kiri

[CharlieChomper]

What sort of issues had Firefox been displaying?