Browser-Update.org

Many webdesigners using browser-update.org have told us that we should move Internet Explorer 7 to the outdated Browsers since the release of IE9 last year.

Users now get warnings when they still use Internet Explorer 7 which was released more than 5 years ago in October 2006.

IE 7 currently approximately holds a global market share of less than 3%.

The default outdated browser list is now:

• Internet Explorer 7 or older (released Oct 2006, market share ≈< 3%)
• Firefox 3.6 or older (released Jul 2010, not supported with security updates anymore, ≈< 3%)
• Opera 10.6 or older (released Jan 2010, not supported with security updates anymore, ≈< 0.1%)
• Safari 4.0 or older (released Feb 2009, not supported with security updates anymore, ≈<0.2%)

IE7 is after IE6 the browser webdesigners are struggling the most with when creating their sites. It supports almost none of the HTML5/CSS3 features and speed improvements of current browsers. An interesting approach to get users to update their browser was chosen by an Australian online shop: They added an additional tax for users of IE7 to pay their webdevelopers for optimizing the site for this ancient browser.

Additional information on when we moved browsers to the outdated list and discussion about it can be found on the wiki page "BrowsersToNotify".

Finally we can add French to the supported languages list. Now we have four of the five top languages by native and secondary speakers. Thanks to Médéric for the translation!

Furthermore, there is now a module for the Drupal Content management system available. Thanks to Peter.

Microsoft has also realized the problem about outdated browsers - at least regarding their fossil, Internet Explorer 6. They created the site "The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown" with the subtitle "Moving the world off Internet Explorer 6". Nice to see them join us in the fight. We, browser-update.org, already have convinced about 300 000 users to move off Internet Explorer 6!

Internet Explorer 9 has been released today. But it is not available for Windows XP, which has still a significant market share. Since IE9 is only available for Windows Vista and Windows 7, we have introduced a message for people using other Systems that they need to choose another browser. "Internet Explorer 9 - Not available for your System. Only for Windows Vista or 7. Please choose another browser."

Its been a long time since the last update here and it may seem like this project is not improving. But we have plenty of updates, changes and achievements to talk about.

Users

First of all we have over 6000 Websites using the browser-update.org script now. This is a impressive number but we need to reach more webmasters! So spread the word about this campaign. The Google-Hack showed that a secure and up-to-date browser is very important, with even Microsoft now advising to abandon IE 6.

Translation

We moved to a new (and hopefully easier) translation system using gettext. You can find more information on our translation page.

Customization

Now you can fully customize the notification using CSS and Javascript. This includes text, language, “open link in new window” and even a Javascript callback function.

New Server

We were moving to a faster server in November, because our old server could not handle the load anymore.

Future

This year we need to decide if we should move Internet Explorer 7 to the default-list of outdated browsers.