If you have not had any reason to move up from IE6, this may be a compelling reason to look for something new. Or an even more convincing reason to stay with IE6.

Your deadline is September 15. If you want to continue features like chat in Facebook, you will need to get IE8, Firefox or Chrome. Facebook announced the changes as part of its effort to improve its chat and repair some issues that caused the chat window to disappear and chats to be interrupted.

“The biggest improvements come from changes that aren’t supported on older web browsers,” Facebook’s Rodrigo Schmidt wrote. “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.”

Your choices are Internet Explorer 8, Chrome 5 or Firefox 3.6. All three browsers work well with Facebook and all three browsers will get substantial updates and different looks over the next few months. See it this way: You have to get used a new look and some of the reduced interfaces may be confusing, but these browsers are much faster, more capable and more secure.

On the other hand, if you are an employer who is annoyed by the use of Facebook at work anyway, Facebook’s announcement may be a good reason to stay with IE6. Less support for features means less wasted time in Facebook chats.

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