Microsoft finally admits it: Internet Explorer 6 is a shitty, shitty browser. According to the new Microsoft web site The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown: "Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer 6. And neither should acquaintances. Educate others about moving off of Internet Explorer 6." By educate they mean "move to IE9", but why not give these poor IE6 users a real helping hand, and help move them to Firefox or Chrome?

On the Microsoft Join the Cause page they offer up an HTML code snippet you can add to your website. This code snippet displays a banner only IE6 users can see, and then guides them to an IE9 upgrade.

You could embed that code on your website, or you could tweak that code, just a little, and guide poor IE6 users to an even better Internet where browsers work based on OPEN STANDARDS.

Here's what Microsoft's banner looks like:

The standard "guide me to more Microsoft products" code can be found on the Microsoft "Join the Cause" page.

However, you can also embed this slightly-altered code on your web pages to guide IE6 users to Firefox:

<!--[if lt IE 7]> <div style=' clear: both; height: 59px; padding:0 0 0 15px; position: relative;'> <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/"><img src="http://www.theie6countdown.com/images/upgrade.jpg" border="0" height="42" alt="" /></a></div> <![endif]-->

Or embed this slightly-altered code on your web pages to guide IE6 users to Chrome:

<!--[if lt IE 7]> <div style=' clear: both; height: 59px; padding:0 0 0 15px; position: relative;'> <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html"><img src="http://www.theie6countdown.com/images/upgrade.jpg" border="0" height="42" alt="" /></a></div> <![endif]-->

And you can embed this code to guide users of ANY version of Internet Explorer to Ubuntu Linux:

<!--[if le IE 9]> <div style=' clear: both; height: 59px; padding:0 0 0 15px; position: relative;'> <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download"><img src="http://www.theie6countdown.com/images/upgrade.jpg" border="0" height="42" alt="" /></a></div> <![endif]-->

Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer. Have fun educatin' folks!

ixian@pigdog.org