​Modern browsers for modern applications

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 2:00 PM

​The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. So to help ensure your business can use the latest, most advanced web apps, we encourage you to update your browsers as soon as possible. There are many choices:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+

Mozilla Firefox 3.0+

Google Chrome 4.0+

Safari 3.0+

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products -- as well as new Docs and Sites features -- won’t work properly in older browsers.

2010 is going to be a great year for Google Apps and we want to ensure that everyone can make the most of what we are developing. Please take the time to switch your organization to the most up-to-date browsers available.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Senior Product Manager

313 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   1 – 200 of 313   Newer›   Newest»
dotnetdiscussion said...

It's about damn time.

Gussy said...

FINALLY! YAY!!!!

Carl said...

As a Software Engineer/Web Developer all I can say is . . . . I LOVE YOU GOOGLE! This is the best news I have heard all year. You made my day!!!!!

Ryan said...

NICE!

Presidente said...

This is great news for everybody that suffers with older browser support. I just hope other big companies will follow...

sareiodata said...

Thank you! Now I can say to my clients "Not even Google supports IE6". :)

Aitch said...

Thanks Google, Microsoft should really work harder to phase these outdated dangerous browsers out (and, the minority vendors with old vulnerable versions still in the wild)

I look forward to seeing a wider adoption of these bold principles about the future of current technology on the web.

(And, am thankful that Apple have been so smart as to push Safari as a first-class application platform on their new devices.)

This really is an exciting time to be a web-software engineer.

Bart Ensink said...

thank you very much, Bye IE6!!

athstarkie said...

On behalf of web users and developers everywhere, thank you, Google!

It's time for IE6 to go.

Esteban said...

Heart-felt thanks from the front-end web dev community.

zachc said...

Finally! Die IE6! Die!

-A Web Developer

Jay said...

It's about time! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Travis Cline said...

Bravo.

Travis Bell said...

Wheee!

pashdown said...

Google should help us all by redirecting all IE6 requests to a download page for the listed browsers. If Google blocked it, its use would be less than .1% the next day.

joshuarudd said...

This is GREAT news.

Damien Tanner said...

This is possibly the best news all year =)

Ramon Antonio said...

Hope support goes for standards, not for concrete browsers. There are some like Konqueror+Webkit that don't get support for not having the right user-agent.

Rob Ashton said...

Good on you.

Brett Crockett said...

Thank you Google! Lead the way!

Alex said...

Great news! I hope other big companies will drop support for IE 6, and who knows, maybe 2 years later support for IE7 will be dropped... and so on :))

turbidity said...

Sounds good to me! IE6 needs to be eradicated. Sometimes coding fixes for that browser takes almost as long as the primary dev.

Jorge said...

Good news!

mikemetcalf said...

Here here!

Sean said...

Thank you! This is huge!

chapolito said...

Hopefully this will give the movement to update old browsers some much needed momentum.

Ivan said...

thank you google!!! =)

Rafael said...

this is amazing news!!!
specially to all of us web developers who waste loads of time adjusting css and markup to work on IE6 :)

thanks Google!

Max R said...

2010 is going to be a good year.

Martin said...

It really was about time to! Thanks Google - no we can all drop support and remove all the wired workaround stuff from the beautiful code of our websites...

Paul Freet said...

On behalf of web developers everywhere, thank you.

josef.dunne said...

Excellent news! Thank you Google! (And thanks for Android too!)

pufone said...

Please mention Opera too. It's better than Safari or Chrome.

Phil said...

And Opera 10 presumably?

murphy said...

Congratulations!

evil-otto said...

Will you use intelligent capability detection or just sniff browser user agent strings?

supertivo said...

at last!

Bron said...

Er, Opera?

pelld said...

Oh you could at least post Opera. They invented Tabbed Browsing. You all use that.

Eric Hill said...

This is excellent news! Please feel free to phase out supporting IE6 for ALL of your products. The sooner more forward-thinking companies like yours do this, the better off we'll all be.

Savaticus said...

Thank you google, maybe this move will help other companies move into the new millennium and stop forcing their developers to write horrible code required to support bad browsers.

ПЄϴ§ị§ said...

GOOD

Jason said...

About time

Earle Martin said...

About time too. Well done.

Eiras said...

Oh, where is Opera ? Like, Opera 10.50 even beats Chrome in a couple perf benchmarks, and is great on standards.

MD said...

Thank you! I wish IE6 would just go away already!

snoguitar said...

Amen!

zoL said...

Finally.

Z said...

Don't forget Opera :)

http://www.opera.com

PHB said...

Why don't you get a clue and support the use of Google bookmarks in Google Chrome? I have over 500 bookmarks, all stored in Google bookmarks. Without access to my bookmarks a browser is useless to me.

I am not the only person telling you this either. You have been told that this is a problem repeatedly and each time the only response is 'well a lot of people have asked for features'.

Providing support for a service provided by your own company is hardly in the same class as random feature requests.

DFischer said...

FINALLY.

This is amazing. Thank you Google! We needed the support from big companies to finally start phasing out IE6. THANK YOU THANK YOU!

S-Ash said...

This post should really be done in different languages instead of English.

Urvan (SSDT) Anahata said...

Nice Move :))

energythief said...

*golf clap*

John Random said...

As a Opera fanboy I'm curious at what version number do you draw the line?

hcarvalhoalves said...

That's wonderful news, to know that a company the size of Google is pushing forward the adoption of newer browsers to the common web user.

Esa said...

It would be even more valuable news with the services that have JavaScript API.

tegar_maji said...

I'm agree IE 6 must die!

Aleks said...

About time!

Walter Hernandez said...

That is a great decision.

Dave Lichterman said...

THANK YOU SO MUCH! This will make my life, and the Internet as a whole, so much better!

Chris said...

Thank you. This is a HUGE step in the right direction.

Andrew Hughes said...

I think you're forgetting Opera somewhere up there.

AcceptanceRise said...

What about Opera??????????

Anoop said...

Why not Opera?

ray.voelker said...

huzzah!

zashisan said...

What about the modern, but not perfectly up to spec browsers, like links, w3m, dillo, etc?

Roy Hayward said...

I understand their choice, but this means my poor little W2K box is getting left further behind. Thankfully there is Mozilla still lets me install the latest Firefox. (All my other boxes run linux now, this is my last machine to pay the MS tax, so it is a object of nostalgia.)

Anterpreet Singh said...

Good step. IE6 must die

Cody said...

A large number of people would appreciate if you added Opera to this list.

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/avuts/google_dropping_support_for_nonmodern_browsers/

Ryan Meyer said...

I consider Opera to be a more mature browser than some of the others. Why is it not included on your list?

NiteShdw said...

Why is Opera 10 not included in the list of modern browsers?

hellotoothpaste said...

Thank you. That's all I have to say as a web developer.

mr.strack said...

Where Opera?

PopSmith said...

This is just awesome.

I am hoping this, along with other companies dropping IE6 support, will cause IE6 usage to hit >1% by the end of 2010. Yeah, that's a bit optimistic but I'm sure many others would love to see that as well.

he2he said...

Will the new apps be tested with Opera, too?

andylenz said...

Great!!!!!!!!!!

Bassman on overdrive said...

Leaving out Opera 9.5+ is a real PITA.

Frank said...

It's great news for the web that Google encourages people to upgrade their browser. I think they're plenty of other companies that will do the same now. Web developers around the world will be able to focus more on innovation and latest web standards possibilities.

If you don't know what a broswer is or which one you already use, I recommand you give a look at http://www.whatbrowser.org

Co0L said...

Don't forget about Opera Browser. It is modern and rather popular, especially in Europe.

Ben said...

Opera 10+ ?

Avi said...

This is music to my ears - Let's push things forward!

andri said...

Not that I am a big fan of Opera, it still deserves a place within the "modern browser" group.

goutham v said...

thanks this decision can set standard to use only IE7.0+

Fortyseven said...

I can definitely see this being good for the more advanced services, but maintaining a basic 'lite' search page for lesser browsers doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Sometimes, in the trenches, you just have to load up lynx at a bash prompt and look up stuff. ;)

vetalik said...

You should support also Opera 10+

ascetic said...

great news! its about time

ferdousx said...

Great move!

Sam said...

it's about time :) good for you! and us..

Nicolas said...

Nice! Hope other companies will do the same ^^

PK said...

Yes, you did it, it wasn't so hard was it?

Timo Virtanen said...

Great work guys!

kaups said...

Excellent news for developers and users. Thanks to this better websolutions can be done now.

malihu said...

Or Opera browser ;)

Walter Vos said...

Thanks for doing the right thing! It's good to have a big publisher like Google doing this.

bvimo said...

Will Google support Opera?

d.k.b.e.1.9.8.3 said...

Will Lynx work?

rami said...

Why don't you start supporting Opera? Its also a mordern browser and its the best one :P

py said...

why don't you link to Opera ?

Joakim said...

Excellent initiative Google, let's get rid of this plague called Internet Explorer 6 once and for all! It doesn't really matter what people upgrade to, as long as they leave IE6 behind!

abubega said...

How about Opera?

chlorinekid said...

about time someone took a stand and got the ball rolling. i was beginning to think IE6 would be around forever. good luck to you..

RobIII said...

Bye bye IE6! Onwards to the future!

psycho said...

Great! :)

Michał B. said...

How about Opera?

SZayat said...

What about Opera 10?

Stormen said...

Thank you, Google.

Internetowy said...

How about Opera?

Fredrik C said...

Where is the love for Opera? It is a modern browser!

Pjärta said...

Thank you soo much for helping us webdesigners and developers to kill the clients use of IE6!

www.nanandgrandadsmith.com said...

And Opera 10.10
http://www.opera.com/

Tristan Woudenberg said...

Don't forget Opera, great browser as well!

Gercek Karakus said...

finally...

Jigsus said...

What about Opera?

Sir Demon said...

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Now maybe I can finally convince my bosses that IE6 is crap and they should stop using it or supporting it on our website.
If Google goes first, they may finally agree!

Nobody said...

Is the omission of Opera deliberate?

Fry said...

Hoorah. Maybe this will mean that the rest of the world's web developers can stop supporting IE6 as well.

Thank you, Google.

geekalot said...

Where is Opera on this list?

winterwind said...

And why Opera browser is blocking?

./orta  said...

This is great news for everyone on the internet!

Skylar Saveland said...

Thank you

Wojtek said...

BRAVO!
Finally!

alessandro.plasmati said...

AMEN.

Sean said...

IE7+, FF3+, Chrome, Safari - that makes sense. But what about Opera? I'd love docs even more if spreadsheets fully supported Opera 10+.

Jus said...

SUDDENLY, Opera devs are on their own again :)

Nighteh3 said...

Finally! Thank you Google !!

kingjames128 said...

Excellent decision. I hope others will follow.

Steve said...

Excellent news. It's great to see Google assisting in attempting to rid the Internet of IE6. IE6 has dragged sites down to the lowest common denominator for years, and I wasted months trying to get my own site to work with IE6.

ultrac said...

Where is Opera? You are crazy.

KentonBomb said...

Thank you, Google. Thank you.

Ala care este said...

Should I rant about Opera not being in that list? Or is it just carelesness? Or maybe malicious intent?

jayoh said...

amen!

Zac said...

As much as I understand the move and hate all things IE6. I am forced to use it at work due to ridiculous intranet apps that were built with the IE6 only compatibility. I work for a state government agency and the IT folks in my district have no say in what the overall state policy is. I have been using Google Docs for a while and it is good that I am able to access documents I am working on at home while at work. I will miss this feature.

I know they need a kick in the pants at the IT department and I hope it motivates them to finally upgrade. I wouldn't be surprised if they just used this as an excuse to say, 'You don't need those sites to do your job.'

Lastly, please don't make Gmail stop working in IE6.

Yammez said...

Thank you, Google! IE6 must die!

Danny said...

w00t first post

Borut said...

Where's Opera?

Last time I checked it supported web standards better than some of the browsers you listed (at least IE)..

Gejza said...

Opera?

Daniel said...

Good decision, I'm 100% with you.

fergalish said...

What about text browsers? Lynx, w3m etc?

Dan Frydman said...

Thank you Google. About time someone big in the business community suggested this to other businesses and a boon to web developers. More importantly it means more security for users.

Scott said...

LOVE IT!!!! Please help kill IE6. Bane of my existence.

How about a step futher and make users of IE 6 upgrade or NO google?

If you did this, I would expand my ritualistic worship of the Google god.

I believe that killing IE 6 will be the nexus of a perfect harmonious convergence.

Mark said...

What about Opera?

Greg Heafield said...

I realise this list is not meant to be exhaustive, but what is your stance on Opera?

Mikhail Koryak said...

Great news!

ludovicovan said...

this is great news, but please don't discriminate on modern but less widespread browser.
It's a shame Gmail don't work well with konqueror (chrome's father).

thanks

markbrown4 said...

Where's Opera on that list?

Ertugrul said...

And since when Opera 10.10, which Chrome looks heavily alike, doesn't count as modern browser?

Ken said...

what no Opera choice?

Danny said...

THANK YOU!

Anthony said...

Good. Better to have targeted development, where you can focus on functionality, instead of spending all of your time fixing bugs to support legacy software.

Douglas said...

yay

Jonathan said...

thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Therese Reuterswärd said...

Thank you! This will make it easier for the employees at my company to persuade the IT department to switch to IE7.

Paul said...

Great, now hopefully the standard will become not to support ie6 anymore.

ferd said...

Opera needs some love. It's even better at supporting standards than Chrome is and they're the one who submitted the proposals for the HMTL5 Video tag that youtube now supports.

Matt said...

Speaking as a web developer, this is so awesome.

Richard said...

You little beauty! Good call :)
Down with IE6!

Diego Caravana said...

This is great news! And a clear signal that Microsoft monopoly is finally on the way of its end. Thanks Google!

mspehar said...

What about Opera browser?

mspehar said...

What about Opera browser?

anthony said...

why no opera?
www.opera.com
best in browsing.

mikescoding said...

epic

newbiestuff said...

How about Opera browser? I use the latest, Opera 10.10, but it still has some bugs. I prefer the older version, 9.xx series. Do you still support that?

Mark Holton said...

37Signals... hats off to these guys as they were seemingly one of the first to cross the rubicon. Great to see Google also making this move, and hope all others follow suit. IE6 should die.

Bordeux said...

Finally!

Niklas said...

About time. Keep up the good work!

Loan said...

When you stop the IE support ? :D

Freak said...

At last! (front-end developer)

Smurfy said...

This is pro.

deimos said...

No Opera support?

Dmitry said...

This is the best news last week :)
Maybe now people will think, and will be less use of IE6. And maybe the enterprise segment will be also withdraw support for it.

BaZZo said...

ok

Dan Croak said...

Great move. Thanks for pushing the web forward.

rus said...

great!

world needs to get rid of ie6 once for all

Yorick said...

FINALLY !

David Morash said...

Opera support?

lasse said...

Finally we have a chance to get rid of this ancient browser which has been pain in the ass for most of web developers.
Thank you Google!

Uchimaru said...

Daftar google Apps dpt gratis internet 30 hari..

Marc said...

Hoorraayyyyyy!!!

Rayonnage said...

Opera isn't a modern browser ? Seems that Google fears about the little "big" browser ;)

qwerty said...

And where's Opera?

n!ck said...

This is completely understandable and at the same time great to hear! Thank you.

Poliitik said...

Why does Google never refer to Opera? Even though it has a bigger market share than Safari worldwide and it is number 1 browser in some countries.

richbl said...

Excellent! Well said. It's about time the web community saw some value in upholding browser standards. It'll help spur on innovation and progress while accelerating the development of security protocols. Here's to a very small step closer to HTML 5...

Casey said...

Can you please post the other companies that have stopped support for IE 6?

Bix said...

Good on you, Google. It's about time someone gave IE6 the shove into the grave it needs.

richtaur said...

Thank you. This has been a long time coming.

Peter said...

one small step for google's developers, one giant leap for the developer kind

Asela said...

Thank you... its about time something was done about the aging browsers that do nothing but make it difficult on us developers.

kost said...

What about Opera?

eknup said...

don't forget opera

Michael said...

Perhaps one of these days you'll drop support for IE 6 from search and mail and force the rest of the world to Finally upgrade....

Dennis said...

It's about time. Let hope Google will make happen what most developers have been waiting for for years.

Dennis

Karthik Bala said...

good move

Christiaan said...

Thank you Google for less headaches for developers that have to account for IE6 and for smaller javascript frameworks, because code that is now needed for IE6 compatibility issues, that may be removed in the near future.

Maximiliano said...

Very Very Very Thanks
Muito obrigao google!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

amacinho said...

Why don't you consider Opera as a modern browser? Forcing me to change my browser is a deal breaker for a web app.

Rafael said...

And OPERA 10 , I hope...

Xpdite said...

Everyone is Bashing IE6 but there are companies out there that have apps that only support IE6. It would cost millions of dollars to updates those programs and before you jump on the band wagon and say that is there problem... remember who is going to pay for those upgrades.... YOU

Sargunam said...

Thank you. Now I've one big reason to justify my clients that we dont design for crappy old browsers.

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