Facebook Chat Ends Internet Explorer 6 Support

You may have often noticed that Facebook chat cuts you off from your friend in the middle of a conversation. You keep asking -- you there, you there. No response from the other side. You get annoyed that your friend left you without even saying bye.

Well, chances are that the problem is not at your friend's end, but with the middleman -- Facebook. Fortunately, Facebook admits it as an issue. Good that no one name Steve is heading Facebook or the typical answer you might have get was -- just don't chat with that person! No, I am not talking about that Steve. I am talking about the other one.

Rodrigo Schmidt, Facebook Engineer has admitted on his blog post, "Many of you have told us that sometimes your Chat session comes and goes or even stops completely. We're working hard to end those interruptions so that your experience is stable and consistent. The good news: We've already made progress, and we're taking some more big steps in the coming weeks. For example, in the past couple of weeks, we've already made Chat faster and more stable, fixed bugs and improved the technology on which it runs."

Chat has become a popular feature of Facebook, though not as rich as Gmail or Yahoo! chat which allows you to do much more than just chat. But, yes Facebook chat is good enough to chit chat with an online buddy instead of posting it on his wall. However, these interruptions sopil all the fun.

Schmidt further writes, "In the coming weeks, we will be making important improvements in the way connections are established and messages are sent, so that Chat will be much more stable for you and your friends. The biggest improvements come from changes that aren't supported on older web browsers. After evaluating the alternatives, we've decided to make rapid improvements and provide the best Chat experience possible, which means we will no longer support Internet Explorer 6 browsers."

Trivia: Rodrigo's byline says he is "a Facebook software engineer on the Chat team, uses Facebook Chat to stay in touch with his family in Brazil and friends in Europe." Well what else do you expect him to use -- Gmail Chat? Even if he does, who knows! It's sad that he can't video or voice chat.