Let IE6 die - Use Activebar2 to encourage your users - Westhoffswelt - Welcome to the real world

Let IE6 die - Use Activebar2 to encourage your users

All began after I read a Golem article about an initiative started by the Norwegian company finn.no to finally let the IE6 die. I decided to revive a project written about two and a half years ago, by myself. I am talking about Activebar, a crossbrowser information bar, which mimics the look and feel of the natively used bars by all modern web browsers. It provides an easy and unobtrusive way to finally tell your users to exchange their old and rusty IE6 with something shiny and new.

The result I came up with is Activebar2, complete rewrite of my old project using all the glamor and glitter that is available with current javascript toolkits.

Activebar2 in actionActivebar2 in action

Download

Downloads as well as documentation and examples can be found on the corresponding project page. Take a look there to see what can be done quite easily using Activebar2

Trackbacks

  • IE6Update - My Activebar2 in action on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:00:49 +0200 in Westhoffswelt - Welcome to the real world

    As the initiative "Let IE6 Die" was started by a Norwegian company some time ago. I decided to create a rewrite of my Activebar using more modern approaches and libraries like jquery. Activebar2, the name of the rewrite, was mainly intended to mimic the look and feel of the browser information bars known from the Internet Explorer. Its purpose was to show the users that a new version of their current browser is available for download, to motivate them to finally lay IE6 to rest. The guys from IE6Update.com took my Activebar2 and made some minor additions to it, to integrate it into current web projects even more easily.

Comments

  • Thomas Hansen on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:52:36 +0100

    Great initiative, I actually encouraged John Resig to add up the jQuery UI NoMoreIe6 widget at the ajaxian article about this case, but I think you should have had a more *fair and just* download link, take a look at this one ;)
    http://ra-ajax.org/the-fair-upgrade-from-ie6-banner.blog

    ;)

  • Jakob on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:24:32 +0100

    The text shown in the example bar is just this, an example. You can let the bar display whatever you like easily. Therefore if you prefer opera just let the bar show an according message and link to opera. You can even link to the microsoft download page of the IE7 if you like. The main intention behind all this is just to provide an unobstrusive way of encouraging your website visitors to finally abandon the IE6.

    greetings
    Jakob

  • norro on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:14:30 +0100

    Do you have any idea to pimp it to work in all older versions of Internet Explorer? So all versions less or equal 6.0

  • Jakob on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:24:41 +0100

    Unfortunately this is not possible at the moment.The jquery framework, which I used for the rewrite does not support anything prior to IE6.

    I took the decision to use jquery mainly to make sure the bar is not only usable in IE but in nearly any other current browser, too.

    According to the usage statistics of my website and more general statistics I found on the net, the percentage of people still using any <IE6 browser is quite marginal.
    Moreover any person still using IE5.5 can only be considered being nuts ;).

    greetings
    Jakob

  • Nick Pettit on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:17:50 +0200

    Hey Jakob,

    My name is Nick Pettit and I'm the co-founder and lead designer at a company called Done21.

    We recently created a non-commercial derivative work of Activebar2 called IE6 Update (http://ie6update.com). On our site, Activebar2 is linked from the bottom of the page with the appropriate licensing image.

    We didn't think to contact you when we created it, but after presenting it at BarCamp Orlando (http://barcamporlando.org) yesterday, it has seen an explosion in popularity. It sparked a lively debate that spilled onto the Internet and quickly spread all over the world. Yesterday it was at the top of Reddit.com all day, and was acknowledged by thousands of people on Twitter, including @Firefox, @ChrisPirillo, and @JoeStump.

    We never expected that level of popularity, so I thought now would be an appropriate time to contact you just so that you're aware. We strongly believe in giving credit where credit is due, and we are very appreciative of the work you've done that helped us get started. :D

    If you have any questions or would like to talk privately, email me at: nick-AT-done21-DOT-com

    Thanks again Jakob. You rock!

  • vbulletin 4 styles on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:04:13 +0100

    Hi and thanks for this, i am using it on my vbulletin 4 styles website, i was wondering can this be positioned at the bottom of the screen instead of the top ? as i am using vbulletin 4, the login area is cut off by the activebar2 overlay..

    Really appreciate some help on this one.

    Regards Darren

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