Since approximately 2.5% of my visitors are using an old, insecure version of Internet Explorer (i.e. version 5.5 and below), I have decided to start showing warning messages to users of these browsers asking them to consider upgrading, or changing to another browser. As mentioned in the previous entry, I’m also encouraging Mac users browsing with Internet Explorer to change to another browser.
While I hope a good number decide to switch to another browser, I am still presenting IE6 as a choice, because for some IE will remain the best browser for them. I’m also not pushing any particular alternative.
When Firefox 1.5 comes out, I will also push people towards upgrading to the latest release, especially those still running pre-1.0 releases (around 1% of my visitors are using Firefox 0.9.3).
I’ll also point out that I’m not making any money from this. I know that Google is offering incentives to those in the US who encourage their visitors to download Firefox with the Google Toolbar, but I’m not part of that. I’m just doing this to try to make the internet a better place.
Browser Upgrade Script
November 22, 2005
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November 23, 2005 at 09:06
You’re probably troubleshooting it but I’m getting a few errors. Namely:
Warning: main(mtstatic/browserupdate.php.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /backup/neiltur/public_html/2005/Nov/22/browser_upgrade_script.html on line 80
Warning: main(mtstatic/browserupdate.php.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /backup/neiltur/public_html/2005/Nov/22/browser_upgrade_script.html on line 80
Warning: main(): Failed opening ‘mtstatic/browserupdate.php.inc’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /backup/neiltur/public_html/2005/Nov/22/browser_upgrade_script.html on line 80
November 23, 2005 at 09:20
Ooops, thanks for that. I’ve fixed it.
November 23, 2005 at 14:16
I don’t see why you need to provide IE6 as an alternative browser. Not heard of the reason major security issue? Promote Firefox or Opera if you must, especially as a web developer.
IE5 users should be redirected permantely, whereas IE5.5 was a security update, so at least it’s slightly better.
Just opened IE5.5 here, and didn’t get any message.
November 23, 2005 at 20:47
Can you perhaps reveal the source behind it?
November 23, 2005 at 21:01
Can you perhaps reveal the source behind it?
November 24, 2005 at 21:40
0.1 % of my visitors use Lynx – which is more than IE5 users.
November 26, 2005 at 11:21
No message appearing on IE3 … but I’m guessing you don’t get many of those any more! In fact, I only installed it to see how badly some sites render; this one degrades nicely though
.
If you do want to detect it, the user agent is Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.0; Windows 3.1)