Thoughts and Theories From Roger Andre
for the curious, and people getting to grips with computing and computers.
Thursday 14 May 2009, 9:58 PM
It's Just How Things Are. (So I'm Told).
There are some out sourced IT guys milling around the place, so I ask one of them. “Why is IE6 the default browser in almost every corporate environment”?
“It's just the way things are”. He said back to me.
“Why”? I asked.
“Just is” He replied.
End of conversation. No hope of an explanation. The guy just wasn't interested.
Hmm I wonder if he's one of those MS haters that works on administering MS systems in the work place. A topic recently explored on ZDNet US. The feeling for some was that if you are an MS system admin and you hate your job, then there's every chance that you don't give a stuff about people in the work place you administer having a reasonable experience on their aging XP machines.
Others went as far as to say that if you're an MS hating system admin, then you most likely suck at your job! Indeed, I see desktops everywhere that lack the fine tuning taught at a very basic A+ level of competence.
Now I my-self have had success in convincing the smaller business to update to IE8 and use firefox for general browsing with not one complaint after the transition so far.
The next step will be to show those who are willing, how linux can be evaluated and work within the safety of a VM. If it takes a windows host to solve driver issues etc until the process is simplified, then why the hell not?
When we see machines appearing with 4-8gb of ram and beyond as standard, then resources for those using the usual office apps will not be an issue.
So am I being a cynic here? Is there something I've missed? Is there a really good reason not to roll out an update to IE8 across the network? And; could it be that corporations are being left in the dust because of outsourced IT, cost cutting and just sheer stress?
I'd love to be informed , however brash the answer.
PreviousComments on this post
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when ie7 was first rolled out it caused a number of blue screens.
It was only subsequent updates about 2-3 months later which fixed the issues.
The second point is IE7 uses more system resources so would make machines slower.
The third point is that it still grumbles about self signed certificates in a very negative manner that puts users off when they are logging in to OWA and terminal services.
The final point is ie6 works fine> if it aint brok dont fix it.And if you counter with saying ie6 has flaws.. well so does IE7 so now you have to weigh up the difference in the flaws, then weigh up the the cost of moving over to IE7 and there is more cost than benefit.
IE8 still doesnt work properly with many sites, hence the "broken page" button.
Why be a guineapig for MS?
web site compatibility is a nightmare. Firefox is Great! I highly recommend it to anyone who will listen. There are even some very large government agencies which have switched to Firefox because of the security concerns with MS browsers. This must upset MS to no end, but it's what they deserve for shipping insecure non-compliant krap.
Unfortunately change is risky, so companies tend not to do it. While there is no risk in installing Firefox there is a lot of risk in upgrading to ie7 or ie8, you can seriously hose a machine this way. MS is horrible at ensuring their upgrades won't break things. So the first thing I always do for an MS computer is to turn off automatic updates, it's just too risky to leave it on. I once had every computer in a company blue-screened and need many hours of fixing, because of an MS auto-update gone wrong, that's when I learned to never trust MS updates.
But the other issue with browsers, is that many websites especially in-house corporate sites, require ie6 specific behavior and won't work properly with other browsers. This is becoming less of a problem as time goes by, but it is still a big problem.
It is also asking a lot for unskilled computer users to switch between browsers depending on which site they visit. They just want to deal with one browser and not have to think about if a site will work with it or not.
And let us not forget that some of the website compatibility issues are a deliberate ploy on Microsoft's part. If they can convince web designers to use IE specific features then they can continue to maintain their stranglehold of the desktop.
Thanks guys that was informative input!
Just to add, the practice of MS trying to convince web designers to use IE specific features is surely backfiring on them no?
@codeslinger > change is risky
change is also _expensive_. How many computers were there on this corporate environment Roger? How long would it take to upgrade to IE6? What would be the benefits to the company?
@Roger > the practice of MS trying to convince web designers to use IE specific features is surely backfiring on them
in my experience this is far less an issue than it was back in the bad old days of The Original Browser Wars (IE4 and Netscape 4!!). The biggest headache from a client-side developers perspective is fixing stuff that works in all other browsers to make sure it works in IE6. Also, IE6 prevents a *lot* of very useful CSS2.1 features from being used (such as adjacent selectors, child selectors etc etc)
I've never seen IE 7 blue screen. I have seen a lot of poorly designed line of business apps that can't easily be ported off IE6 not only because of lack of resources in the IT department but also because an app coded that long ago has a poorly designed data back end that now has a huge number of records in; it works, but nobody wants to work out how to extract the data. Solution: MEDV or XP Mode in Win 7 so you don't subject the users to IE 6 for everything, just the legacy app.
Jake/Simon, this was in the Clarks shoes HQ cafe for the staff to use. That's why it was even more annoying to see IE6 on there. I did try to recommend firefox with the Web Of Trust add on, but no chance of that happening.
They told me that MS expected it of them and they needed to show good will. I told them that MS wouldn't give a stuff, or even know and even if they did then why not IE8?
More than my jobs worth I'm afraid (very afraid).
