Larry Garfield [mailto:[email protected]] wrote:

> That varies widely depending on your market.  The main site I use DocBook
> for
> is 50% Firefox users and less than 2% IE 6; A few months ago I officially
> announced that our software doesn't care about IE 6 any more, and I'm not
> really going to bother with IE 7, either.  That user base is using almost
> entirely modern browsers.
> 
> Meanwhile, South Korea is stuck on IE 6 because of all the IE 6-specific
> ActiveX in government and banking web sites.  It varies super widely, even
> though Microsoft would love for IE 6 to die, too.  We're talking about a
> decade-old browser. :-)
> 
> You make a valid point that many HTML 5 features are not well supported by
> the
> existing install base... yet.  There's a chicken and egg question there as
> there always is with a new technology.


Microsoft support for Windows XP (which includes IE 6) isn't scheduled to fully 
expire until 2014, so I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that there will be some 
people running IE 6 at least until then--and probably well beyond. I say "isn't 
scheduled" to expire because it wasn't long ago that Microsoft extended support 
for Windows 98 by a couple of years due to the outcry from corporations still 
using it.

The HTML5 specification isn't scheduled to become a recommendation until 2022.

So HTML5 as a replacement for the current HTML output types certainly does not 
appear to be a viable option for quite some time to come. But assuming no major 
upsets, it *will* come. The only question is when it will become real enough 
that it makes sense to start doing significant work on it. I'm not sure we've 
reached that point yet.


*************************
Rob Cavicchio
Principal Technical Writer & Information Architect
EMC Captiva
Information Intelligence Group
EMC Corporation
3721 Valley Centre Drive, Ste 200
San Diego, CA 92130

P: (858) 320-1208
F: (858) 320-1010
E: [email protected]

The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is 
not read or approved in advance by EMC and does not necessarily reflect the 
views and opinions of EMC.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]

Reply via email to