Your Network and IE6

IE6 is the bane of most browser developers, and yet its popularity continues within intranets regardless of the
security risks and lack of feature support. If your network continues to use this archaic browser, why? Is it
because of dirt old applications built on top of it? Is it because you're afraid of breaking something?
Is it because your running Windows 2000 still?

We are not afraid of breaking internal apps...we know for a fact that we will break internal apps.

Something as simple as an <img/> tag in a webpage could be enough to compromise the IE6 browser. How do you mitigate such security concerns without making the browser practically worthless for normal browsing? For the most part, are these applications so complex that the time to rewrite/tweak is greater than the potential risk? I'm truly curious to hear the arguments straight from the System Admins experience so I could provide feedback to other developers trying to crack through this perpetual lock in time.

Not my decision, but it really is a management Risk/Benefit/Cost analysis. All we can do is to explain what the risks are then management does the analysis. Generally speaking this means nothing will change until there is an actual incident.

Check out this site. http://www.ie6nomore.com/
Maybe you could flash a message to people that they are using an outdated browser. Even if the browsing experience is not adversly affected.
If every website warned you then you would get sick and tired of it and commit to upgrade. I am going to put it on my personal web sites.
 
We know about corporate aps that are dependant on IE6 but are there any websites that are dependant on old browsers too?.

Hi TNO,
The place that graph came from says 3 out of 4 people cant upgrade because of a technical or workplace reason.
So I recon as long as XP is the corporate work horse, ie6 will be around.
 
Here is another one
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
It is my observation that the majority of people going to w3schools wont be people with older browsers.
 
w3Schools compared to wiki there is 30% short fall of ie users
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer
 
We will be rolling out xp onto ~1000 computers in the next year, hopefully I can get ie7 into them.
 
 

XP isn't the reason we can't upgrade at work. It is internal apps. So until the people that don't like IE6 give us the money (I would estimate $500,00+) to upgrade the apps or they are willing to fire my coworkers to free up the money, then we will keep using IE6. I don't like it but it is reality. I understand that it is a security risk, but that is a potential cost to the business. Upgrading apps that already work perfectly well is a definite cost.

Recent article
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136508/Microsoft_Killing_IE6_not_an_option_
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9136739/Microsoft_Friends_don_t_let_friends_use_IE6_

I can't understand how crucial software (designed to manipulate datas for companies) are so much reliant on a piece of crap is is ever evolving...:shock::shock:
Why did the program designer opted for a IE dependency in the first place?
This is by istelf insane and must be addressed.

Well, people assumed Microsoft would continue to update their product, not sit there for 10 years until Mozilla came along and gave them a run for their money. They don't have a problem keeping Microsoft Office, or Visual Studio up to date.  I don't blame the programmer for this.

It really depends on the company.
 
Where I am it moves very slow because of the nature of the business Banking.
We have many web based applications but they are I/T applications I'm using IE 7, I can't live without tabs :-)
 
A guy I know in the energy industry is running IE 8 on Vista and they are looking at W7E within the next 2 years.
 
 

The print processor in IE 7 & 8 is so much better then IE 6, I can't believe everyone has not switched just because of that.

Really? Printing is the most common activity that your web apps does?

We are finally, migrating to IE7.  It is a slow process but we are on the move.  The main reason holding us back have been 2 web apps.  Both apps worked with IE7, but the fact that the vendor didn't support the versions we were using on IE7.  Once we upgraded those apps we were able to move it IE7.

ebgreen


Really? Printing is the most common activity that your web apps does?

Not my apps but the managers want all time sheets printed (clarity) the way IE 7 can format a page is so much better than IE6 it's not funny.
IE 6 page formatting is kind of dependent on the resolution of the monitor. Some folks like BIG text so it's easy to see.
I didn't write it, I didn't set the policy, I just have to live with it 8-O

We started rolling out IE7. Of course the first group we piloted to has a critical web app that is not compatible with IE7, so...

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/technet/ie8milk/
Anyone for a nice mature cheese? How about Casu marzu?