I hereby officially proclaim Internet Explorer 6 to be a dead browser walking. Even though IE6 still somehow manages to keep 19.8% of the Web browser market, IE6 is a late Web browser! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If Microsoft hadn’t nailed it to the operating system, it would be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are of interest only to historians! It’s shuffled off this mortal coil! It’s run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This…. is an EX-Web browser!

Excuse me for the Monty Python moment there, but I was so pleased to learn that Amazon would no longer be supporting IE6 for its seller accounts at the end of March, I couldn’t help myself. I’m sure that this is only Amazon’s first move in dropping support for this hopelessly obsolete Web browser.

With this move, Amazon joins Google in stopping support for IE6. But don’t think that this is just a move by third parties. Microsoft itself wants you to stop using IE6. Heck, Microsoft even sent flowers to a recent mock IE6 funeral.

Of course, they’d rather have you move to IE8. Personally, I think you’d be better off with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

In any case, it’s clear that everyone with any sense is abandoning IE6 as fast as possible. I’m also sorry to report that some companies and government agencies aren’t helping matters by still running Web applications that won’t work correctly with anything except IE6.

Come on, people. It’s time. If you’re still running applications that are IE6-specific, you have to dump them. You’re doing your customers a disservice by requiring them to use a Web browser that’s infamous for its lack of security and is clearly on its way to the trash can. The sooner every company dumps support for IE6 and starts requiring that its Web applications can work with any generic HTML 4-compliant Web browser the better.

A version of Good-Bye IE 6 first appeared in ComputerWorld. >