Facebook and Internet Explorer have rarely gone hand in hand. In August 2010, Facebook phased out support for IE6, but the recent to the addition noted that Facebook’s latest feature, that is Timeline has no support for IE7. IE7 users cannot access Facebook’s Timeline feature, as reported by Sociable. The reason noted was that the browser is quite outdated for Facebook’s Timeline to be pushed in.
This might just make a couple of users use IE7 for their Facebook use. Facebook users, who got this Timeline update last month, saw many users booing the Timeline. It was expected that the Timeline feature, which is stuffed in with a number of features and a completely new look, would be appreciated by the users, but this did not really happen.
The minority were in favor of the Timeline, but the majority called the Timeline ‘worthless’. IE7, with the non-availability of the Timeline, might just lure the crowds to switch to IE7. Facebook, with its older profile for users, can help the count to increase as far as Facebook is concerned.
This disguised blessing might even help the IE7’s global share, which has been declining and currently stands at just a quarter more than 4%. To be exact, it accounts for 4.26%.
As far as Facebook is concerned, the social networking giant has no real plans to offer partial Timeline support for the browser, which is five-year old now and eventually pull out support.
Facebook, however, is not the first, or the only site, which has opted to phase out its features or services. Earlier, it was the search engine giant, Google, who had phased out support for IE7 for some of its services. Google, in 2011, had made an announcement, which noted that it would no longer support IE7 on many of its popular applications, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.
Coming back to the current buzz, Facebook Timeline support is varied and supports all leading browsers, but for the same, the social networking giant suggests that the users make use of the latest versions available of these browsers, may it be IE, Mozilla, Chrome or Safari.
It was further noted by ZDNet contributor Emil Protalinski, that according to him, IE6 feels lame for a Facebook users, which related to the phasing out of the support for IE6. His further noting was on Facebook use on IE7, for which he said that Facebook is likely to stop supporting IE7 altogether. He was quoted as, “Facebook is unlikely to stop just at the new Timeline profile. Mark my words. This is the beginning of the end for IE7 support on Facebook, even if the company hasn’t yet said anything officially.”
Another thought was shared by “the Sociable’s” Darren McCarra, who pointed out the probables that went against IE7, in regards to Facebook Timeline. He said that there are “a number of very evident styling issues caused by IE7’s treatment of the style sheet language CSS.”
For the conclusion, it can be said that while the IE6, has no support for Facebook, IE7 might just be a blessing in disguise for Facebook users, who do not like the recent feature of Facebook, that is the Timeline.