Web Sockets Now Available In Google Chrome (opens in new tab)

In addition to what danielrhodes says in his reply about corporate IT departments having legitimate reasons not to upgrade - I'd like to add that my biggest pet peeve is when someone asks me to see if I can fix their computer, and it's obvious that every IT-enthusiast before me has insisted that this person switch to -INSERT BROWSER HERE-. I helped a gentleman last week that used MSN because he found it intuitive, but had Firefox, Opera, Chrome and IE installed. Then there was the mountain of anti-spyware software everyone had installed. After uninstalling the browsers he didn't like or use (despite them being "better" according to most IT professionals) and uninstalling the spyware blockers, his computer worked just fine.

We need to remember that our job is to make the computer better for other people - not just ourselves. I'm amazed at the rate of development I've seen in browser technology, but let's not forget the millions of people that just want to get online and send an email. If we rush to upgrade everyone to "better" technology - we might end up ruining their experience.

Most IE6 installations are in corporate environments where IT doesn't want to switch because it will break internal applications.

I suspect most of these users just use the browser that shipped with their OS. So Windows 7 may be the unlikely saviour - particularly after the next corporate refresh cycle.

I've seem that too. Non-savvy users can and will update their MSN-messenger client if it stops working, for instance.

You forgot XHR.

I think the main issue here is not IE6 but all the modern browsers (FF 3.5, Safari 4, IE8) that do not support this feature. Targeting Chrome users only is not that appealing.

While the numbers are falling, IE 6 users still account for a sizable percentage of the people that buy things from my site. Ignoring them would be "doing something wrong". Guess it just depends on what you're doing.

It really depends.

I recently did a bit of consulting work for a guy who has a large number of domains receiving primarily organic search traffic. Around 20% of the people hitting those (several million a month) are still using IE6.