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Does Microsoft still provide updates for Explorer 6 - I stopped using it a while ago and now Microsoft seem to push down the latest versions of their browser automatically when you use their newer Operating Systems. A lot of people with older computers will still be running IE6.
Will this affect you? I don't personally use Google Docs.
As a webmaster: I still test my sites with IE6 - but look for graceful degradation rather than trying to make anything perfect in IE6 - it may only be google docs currently but that and facebook, and other big sites putting up pester messages to IE6 users will hopefully bring on the day where I no longer have to code or even test for this browser.
As a web user: IE what?!?
Microsoft say support for IE6 will continue for the next four years
We REALLY need Microsoft to be more aggressive with getting people off of IE6. Not only with this make the Internet a more secure place and reduce a major web development headache, BUT the sooner real users stop using it, the sooner we can block it and thus block all the badbots that spoof it.
Remember that upgrading a corporate network is an expensive exercise if everything is tested properly. It isn't done lightly and in the current economic climate there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting the investment case past the bean counters.
I hope your employer is not a bank!
IE6: die die die
Security folks:
IE = huge risk
Large corporate dinosaur:
no upgrades, IE6 will be just fine
Security folks working for large corporate dinosaur:
IE6 ?! To reduce risk we turn off everything like JavaScript
Just this week had a report of IE6 not rendering my work properly (while I knew it was and was properly tested. Turned out they had blocked JS ... and well the drop down menu in IE6 without JS: it's just not going to work ...
Somebody will need to tell them dinosaurs to get on the wagon or become extinct.
And I'm quite happy it's the likes of Facebook and Google sending a loud and clear message, cause MSFT's message is just plain wrong.
I worked for a large insurance company until December. Most people on my floor were still stuck on IE6.
My experience is that what's happening in the outside world doesn't influence the plans of large corporations. They will still continue to use IE6 regardless of Google supporting it or not. My personal idea is that this will push more corporate users to Bing.
Well my employer runs over 10,000 desktops with IE6.
Remember that upgrading a corporate network is an expensive exercise if everything is tested properly
So are you saying your employer also doesn't push windows updates to each workstation?
So are you saying your employer also doesn't push windows updates to each workstation?
Where I work, updates are tested beyond belief against all situations in the environment - especially a browser upgrade. There is large amount of work by all involved, and I understand not upgrading. It is costly. Smaller windows updates do not even go out on their own as packaged by MS, and you can't even hit the windows update site from work. Consistent office environment...
Remember that the sole purpose of doing IE6 in the first place was to keep people from getting off IE. (Nailing IE to the side of the OS hadn't prevented the revival of Netscape as Mozilla.)
Is it any surprise that it worked, at least for the IT certified ignoramuses who mixed the "browser is the computer" kool-aid with the "IE is the browser" moonshine? Not only can they not move from IE, they can't even move from IE6.
And yes, my employer fell for it.
Is it any surprise that it worked, at least for the IT certified ignoramuses who mixed the "browser is the computer" kool-aid with the "IE is the browser" moonshine? Not only can they not move from IE, they can't even move from IE6.And yes, my employer fell for it.
I went around and around with them over this issue. I knew that if they married themselves to MSIE too tightly (it was IE5.5 at the time) it would come back to haunt them. Eventually I quit of the issue. Making IE the corporate browser was one thing, but I truly felt that it was utter foolishness not to do the basic design/development stuff that would allow web applications to work on whatever browser was used.
The argument was always that it is more expensive to support multiple browsers, and I'd argue it isn't any harder to design to W3C specifications.
I wonder how much money ended up being wasted by all the companies out there that adopted the MSIE only philosophy only to then have to spend major money just to test and fix stuff when the next version of MSIE came out.
In the end the inability of companies to leave IE6 behind proves that it is much more cost effective to design to W3C specifications and use open technology as this pretty much future proofs a website/webapp against newer versions of browsers. It is also a smarter way to design from a security standpoint as it doesn't lock an organization to an outdated browser just because their webapps don't work on the newer stuff.
Surely it'll not be IE8 as that one will be hard to maintain next to IE6 without all sorts of side effects, but safari, chrome, firefox etc will co-exist with IE6 quite nicely, will be happy to be the default browser and render modern stuff properly.
A nice side effect of that would be more diversity: we do not need any browser having more than 50% of the market.
The (repeated) actions by Google, Facebook etc. are every time another nail in the coffin f IE6, a fact we can't but rejoice.
Personally, I think its just a matter of corporate inflexibility. Processes are wound up so tightly, no one can get anything done. Combine this with clueless management, and you got your IE6.
corporate inflexibility
...and corporate security, and corporate intranets/extranets that lean heavily on proprietary IE coding. It gets very expensive, very fast.
Besides some man hours, I don't see whats expensive about upgrading to IE8.
Many corporate financial software, enterprise resource systems and production control systems have web interfaces. Upgrading the browser may trigger possible incompatibilities with the software in the heart of their business process. In my own environment I have seen large companies going bankrupt during such upgrades, sometimes for reasons like not being able to create invoices during a prolonged period of time.
No large company or institution will upgrade their central software and the browsers to access it if there is no compelling reason to do so. The last compelling reason was the "Millennium Bug". Those companies are now stuck software-wise in the year 2000 and they will stay there for some time as long as economy is not getting better to give them the money and buffer to survive a central software upgrade or incompatibilities with a rolled out browser and that central software.
Here on WebmasterWorld we mostly think of browsers as the access medium to websites. But for many companies it is the access medium to their business process and web surfing is just secondary activity.
...and corporate security, and corporate intranets/extranets that lean heavily on proprietary IE coding. It gets very expensive, very fast.
Security has little to nothing to do with it, because if security was the driving goal, then corporations would have dropped IE6 years ago. No one can reasonably argue that IE6 is more secure than IE8. To even attempt to argue this is a joke.
It is the leaning heavily on proprietary IE coding that makes things very expensive very quickly. It is not proprietary IE coding alone that is to blame, however, short sightedness and dismissing W3C HTML and CSS specifications is also to blame. Often times corporate intranets/extranets break not because of some IE6 specific functionality, but because the code was sloppy and relied on bugs in IE6 that were subsequently fixed.
Designing and coding to W3C HTML and CSS specifications as well as avoiding the use of messy browser hacks is an insurance policy against the future. All browsers, MSIE included, have steadily become better about adhering to W3C standards. It is MSIE's tighter adherence to standards that is causing non-compliant websites/webapps that depend on IE6 bugs to break in IE7/8.
Corporations have only their own IT departments to blame for their problems.
In regards of corporate applications, I think their developers should test new browser version the latest when that new browser is officially out.
Finally, while there are tons of reasons for corporate environment to stick to one browser for long time, in many cases, it is about smart a.. IT managers with bunch of certificates that like to be the smartest in the world. Actually, I don't think there is a boss that is not the smartest in his/her group. I remember my corporate life... phew...
Actually, truth be told, I use Linux for development, so I test in Firefox (Gecko), Opera (Presto), Konqueror (KHTML), Epiphany (WebKit), and Lynx, and they all render compliant HTML and CSS beautifully. But I've no convenient way of testing in Internet Explorer and, surprise, it's the only one that causes trouble.
Way I see it, if Microsoft won't release a cross-platform version of the rendering engine, why should I waste time testing to see where their piece of junk breaks?
Yes, I do have machines running new versions, but every new version of everything just seems to turn into bloatware.
Take Adobe Reader - other than downloading a form from an IRS website, I don't think I've ever run into anything else that wouldn't work with 10 year old Version 5, which opens a heck of a lot faster than the newer versions, probably because it's 1/5th the size.
[computerworld.com...]
I am not talking about the Large Corp. Networks / Government, and Good Luck to Google trying to go that route on those fronts. Last Corp I worked for gave me Admin Rights to my dev machine but all windows update sites and any extensions that end with ZIP/RAR/EXE were filtered by firewall. And if you brought your own on a memory stick there was a tech standing next to you in 5 minutes, writing you up for violating company policy.
