Why do you want to support IE6,7,8?

[hannubys]

1. I know that simple adblock has changed to become adblock plus. But it was working fine and better than adblock plus for IE now. Why you didn't simply improve it instead of rewriting a complete engine ?
2. Don't you think you should drop support for IE6,7 and 8 ? They have low market share, don't waste your energy on this. I'm saying this because coding IE extensions is more complex than Firefox or chrome.

Don't hesitate to give me a detailed answer.
Thank,

[mapx]

IE 8 is the most widely used IE browser
http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-m ... pcustomd=0

[hannubys]

For now but it won't last. Users of IE8 are mostly entreprise users and they won't use ABP

[mapx]

IE 8 is the unique chance for IE under windows xp ...

the other questions ==> the developers

[hannubys]

We should not consider Windows XP

[lewisje]

Until XP becomes rarely used, Eyeo needs to consider it; my guess is that they found that whatever they were doing to make ABP for IE work in their target version of IE worked all the way back to version 6, so they decided to officially support IE all the way back to 6.

[_______]

This is very disappointing.

A developer trying to hold the web back by supporting IE6/7/8.

Not only that but having to hack around and generally have to do more error prone work (Chrome JS engine in IE) to support IE6/7/8.

[jasoncollege24]

You would be surprised how many home users still prefer to use windows XP over any other operating system. I know a rather large number of people who refuse to get new computers, or update their operating systems, either because they don't trust newer operating systems, are confused by them, or simply do not like them. Disregarding an older browser, just because it's for an older operating system would be like telling car mechanics that they're not allowed to work on older cars, just because they're not built anymore.

[Gingerbread Man]

I don't understand this either. It doesn't affect just the application; it also impacts the website.
#385 (Re-enable SSLv3 on the servers) – Adblock Plus Issue Tracker

• Many high-profile websites stopped supporting IE6 years ago, including Google.
• Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP on April 8th 2014, which makes IE6 unsupported as well.
• Internet Explorer 8 works on Windows XP (SP2 and later). It was released on March 19th 2009, which was over 5 years and 1 month ago.

[Wladimir Palant]

It makes me sad as well but there are still countries where IE6 is widespread - especially China.

[noelpg29]

• Many high-profile websites stopped supporting IE6 years ago, including Google.
• Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP on April 8th 2014, which makes IE6 unsupported as well.
• Internet Explorer 8 works on Windows XP (SP2 and later). It was released on March 19th 2009, which was over 5 years and 1 month ago.

and Microsoft also dropped IE8 for WinXP on April 2014 as noted here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... pport-help

If you continue to use Windows XP now that support has ended, your computer will still work but it might become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses. Internet Explorer 8 is also no longer supported, so if your Windows XP PC is connected to the Internet and you use Internet Explorer 8 to surf the web, you might be exposing your PC to additional threats. Also, as more software and hardware manufacturers continue to optimize for more recent versions of Windows, you can expect to encounter more apps and devices that do not work with Windows XP.

[Gingerbread Man]

That was implied. Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft, and that extends to any Microsoft applications running on it, including IE6, IE7 and IE8. I could also add that global usage of IE6 is at 4.15% and likely to drop more rapidly as a result.

But if the point is to make Adblock Plus accessible to Chinese users, then the above is irrelevant. Net Applications — an American web analytics company — puts IE6 usage in China at 22.2%. Baidu — the #1 search engine in China — puts IE6 usage at 9.35%. Regardless of which estimate is more accurate, that's still a lot.
http://www.modern.ie/en-us/ie6countdown
http://tongji.baidu.com/data/browser

[Wladimir Palant]

I've gathered some statistics and restarted the discussion on whether supporting IE6 and IE7 is worth it. As things are now, Netmarketshare seems to be the only source listing such a high IE6 market share in China, e.g. StatCounter currently sees it at 3.36%. Thank you for the Baidu link, I didn't see that one.

[Wladimir Palant]

Looks like the consensus now is: at this point supporting IE6 and IE7 is no longer necessary. That's quite a relief.