At Curvine, we’re always keeping an eye on trends in Web site browser software. We’ve noticed an important trend that will speed up Web site development in the months and years to come that we wanted to share: Internet Explorer 6.0 usage is on the way down.

First, some background: All Web sites are developed using a mix of HTML and CSS — many also use Javascript. All three are standards, which means there’s a document available that says exactly how it is supposed to function. In theory world, that would mean every Web site would look the same in every Web browser. In reality, many Web browsers don’t render things the way the standards say they should, and they often add extra items that aren’t even in the standard in the first place.

This means we have to test all of our work in each Browser that people use. Currently, Curvine tests in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, 7,0 and 8.0, Mozilla Firefox 3.6, Chrome 5.x, and Safari 4.x. That’s a lot of testing. Of all of those, Internet Explorer 6 is the oldest by far and has the most challenges.  It is the least consistent with the standards that Web developers follow and because of its age, doesn’t support many of the items that newer browsers do. One example would be “rounded corners” — which are snap in most modern browsers, but are more difficult in IE6.

We’re constantly watching usage of each Web browser, so we know what most people use and we know what needs to be tested. International use of IE6 is still high, but US use of IE6 is dropping fast. Several sites we track show IE6 usage below 4% of all Internet users, which has dropped from 7% – 8% at the end of last year. Soon, IE6 usage will be below 3% and we will stop testing for most new sites.

Web site developers everywhere will rejoice!