Google To End Support For IE6

itwbennett writes "Google announced Friday that it will be phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6, more than two weeks after the attacks on Google's servers that targeted a vulnerability in IE6. In a blog post, Rajen Sheth, Google Apps senior product manager, said that support for IE6 in Google Docs and Google Sites will end March 1. At that point, IE6 users who try to access Docs or Sites may find that 'key functionality' won't work properly. Sheth suggested that customers upgrade their browsers to pretty much anything else."

Comments

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about time high traffic sites stop supporting that abomination of a browser.

Die IE6 die.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Die IE6 die.

Well, no one who speaks German could be evil!

Re:Finally

[dancingmad]

I think he was saying The, IE6, The.

Ding Dong

[Allicorn]

The witch is dead!

About time too.

Re:Ding Dong

[Ant P.]

Now if only they'd kill off IE7 and 8 too.

Re:Ding Dong

[ionix5891]

whats wrong with IE8? its not the best browser alright but its a huge step in right direction

Re:Ding Dong

[DJRumpy]

Did anyone else just fall out of their chair when they read this? I was a little disappointed that in TFA, they mention they would suggest users upgrade to IE7.

"Support for IE6 in Google Docs and Google Sites will end March 1, Sheth said in the post. At that point, IE6 users who try to access Docs or Sites may find that "key functionality" won't work properly, he said.

Sheth suggested that customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome 4.0 or Safari 3.0, or more recent versions of those browsers. "

Why would they even suggest IE7?

I'm also wondering how this will affect corporate infrastructures who rely on Docs or Sites. My company is one of those stuck in IE6 ZombieLand, but we are already in the certification process for Windows 7 and IE8. Unfortunately, for an organization our size, it takes 1-2 years to move to a new version of windows. I can't imagine we're all that unique. This time line seems very aggressive (don't get me wrong, I understand Google's perspective completely).

Re:Ding Dong

[lukas84]

IE7 has been out since forever and runs on XP. It's not unreasonable to expect people to upgrade. Even large companies.

I know a few large enterprises here in Switzerland and most of them have upgraded all their clients to IE7 for security purposes. I know one of them publishes IE6 through Citrix for a few legacy apps.

Re:Ding Dong

[Thoreauly Nuts]

its not the best browser alright but its a huge step in right direction

The only reason it's a step in the right direction is because every other browser has dragged Microsoft kicking and screaming into the present. They certainly wouldn't have done it on their own...

Re:Ding Dong

[DJRumpy]

Apologies. I should have been more clear. Why wouldn't they just suggest the latest release version for the IE browser (IE8) to begin with? I'm not going to debate it's merits or cons, and I don't use IE, but it doesn't make sense, or seem very responsible to suggest an older browser version that is arguably less standards compliant than IE8. It would seem like Google is just shooting themselves in the foot by doing so.

Re:Ding Dong

[hedwards]

And why should they? I mean how exactly does IE8 build shareholder value or add value to the Windows platform?

Kidding aside, this was clearly an effort to kill off support for IE6 at an opportune time. Unless I'm mistaken weren't other versions also equally vulnerable to the exploit?

Re:Ding Dong

[JohnBailey]

Sheth suggested that customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome 4.0 or Safari 3.0, or more recent versions of those browsers. " Why would they even suggest IE7?

Because otherwise it would look like they were stopping support for IE6 for commercial reasons rather than technical reasons. Which would be unethical to say the least.

I'm also wondering how this will affect corporate infrastructures who rely on Docs or Sites. My company is one of those stuck in IE6 ZombieLand, but we are already in the certification process for Windows 7 and IE8. Unfortunately, for an organization our size, it takes 1-2 years to move to a new version of windows. I can't imagine we're all that unique. This time line seems very aggressive (don't get me wrong, I understand Google's perspective completely).

They will have to change or stop using the services. How many years have people been saying that IE6 should be got rid of? Do you need a disembodied hand to write it on the board room wall in blood?

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

Whooshiwhooshwhoosh?

Re:Ding Dong

[jellomizer]

You say it is a bad thing...

Microsoft goal for winning the browser war back in the late 90's was so they could have control of the standards and make the web their own so it would be useless to use the web without windows and Internet Explorer.

Yes they won the war but they failed in their objective. Why...

1. ActiveX security issues and the rise of internet skum...
      When ActiveX was competing against Java Applets they made some things that made the users at the time happy but was short sited... ActiveX while faster also allowed writing to the system and its only security measure was a warning. Thinking their user base will say no when they go to that porn site and it asked to install this app so they can watch the movie... Then this spread and went across thew the advertisers channels so even legit sites with shady advertising companies found ways to install crap on your computer without you knowing. In essence limiting ActiveX to intranet applications. And shortly after that flash took over the spot as it did cooler graphics.

2. Linux and Apache web server.
      IIS had a few big security problems at the wrong time of internet development where a lot of companies went with apache and linux for its server. Now that doesn't really mean that it will directly stop microsoft plans however the Developers who worked on those system initally did their testing with Netscape, Mozilla firefox and others to make sure they got the stuff to work then they finally tested and did cleanup work in IE. So the new post 2001 developers wanted to be more platform independent.

3. Mac Popularity + Linux desktop too... IE5 was the last Mac Browser Microsoft made. Then during last decade there was a surge in the popularity in macs. They were popular enough for developers and companies to take notice. As well Linux users who added to the problems so developers learned there is a lot of pain leaving out 5% market share.

4. Firefox and Webkit browseers... At the time it was the small light and fast browser that gave IE a run for its money on speed. (Today IE is one of the slowest) Back then IE loaded and rendered so much more quickly that using others will feel painful. Then they also had better CSS standard support allowing developers a reason to get rid of IE6.

5. Mobile devices... Microsoft floundered in mobile devices there were doing Ok until the blackberry with opera and the iPhone. And now with android webkit chome based. Developers who want to get that market need to make sure other browers get use too.

6. IE6 Bugs and Security... A big set security problems targeted at IE6 really got a lot of people to switch to firefox and demand that their new browser works for the app

7. High Speed Internet... Back when IE6 was new most people were still on dialup download Netscape, Mozilla or Opera was a big task that took a long time. Today it is easy to get the browser and be up rather quickly.

8. Flash... Micromeda then Adobe made flash and they made it for Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris... and for all the major browsers. What it did was make a lot of browers made the web look cool.

9. Integrated web browser wasn't used very well. After all that legal battles and anti-trust fines microsoft paid... No one really used the inegrated browser the was it was meant to be. They still downloaded normal apps or clicked on the e to get to the internet the integration didn't add to the experience.

10.The Vista/IE 7 Flop... I dont know what was going on with microsoft back 4 years ago. But they were not putting on their A-Game competing against the wrong competitors making lofty goals and not meeting them what ever was the problem Vista/IE 7 made people want to stay with IE6/XP for a bit longer until they can get a good version. Making IE Get even more out of date.

Re:Ding Dong

[BOFslime]

Apologies. I should have been more clear. Why wouldn't they just suggest the latest release version for the IE browser (IE8) to begin with? I'm not going to debate it's merits or cons, and I don't use IE, but it doesn't make sense, or seem very responsible to suggest an older browser version that is arguably less standards compliant than IE8. It would seem like Google is just shooting themselves in the foot by doing so.

I think you missed the key term "upgrade" in his statement.

Re:Ding Dong

[aBaldrich]

I think it's the most clever move they can do. Next year they'll phase out IE7, and companies will have to chose to pay yet again or switch to a free browser.

Re:Ding Dong

[Ironsides]

Why would they have to pay "yet again" to switch to IE7 or IE8? Both are compatible with XP which most companies are still running and it's not like Microsoft charges for the browser.

Re:Ding Dong

[LordNimon]

Why wouldn't they just suggest the latest release version for the IE browser (IE8) to begin with?

Because there are people who are currently using IE7, so why should they upgrade? In fact, my company *just* announced an upgrade to IE7 for IT-managed systems. No, that's not a typo.

Re:Ding Dong

[madprof]

They suggested IE7 as it is a better browser.

Re:Ding Dong

[Low Ranked Craig]

Even the hugest step is not all that helpful when you're 80 steps behind already. You'd think that a company with an $8 billion R&D budget could build a web browser that is 100% standards compliant, performs well, and adds enough value for their users to make it the browser of choice on Windows. Apple and Google can did it, so it's definitely doable. Both Chrome and Safari on my Mac score 100/100 on the acid 3 test. Firefox: 93, Opera: 85.

IE 8 on Window 7? 20. After getting stuck at 12 for 6 seconds.

In the real world this is not that apparent, an I can generally get pages to display identically in FF, Safari, Chrome, Opera and IE8, but I do need to modify CSS that renders fine in the other 4 to make IE8 work, particularly in the area of margins and padding.

There is no good excuse for a company with Microsoft's resources to build such shitty software. I'm a little apprehensive about how crappy their implementation of HTML 5 will be; IE 9 will be the new IE 6. Bet on it.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

And why should they? I mean how exactly does IE8 build shareholder value or add value to the Windows platform?

Intentionally or not, I think you've managed to highlight one of the biggest problems in modern-day business. There's a lot of emphasis of "building or adding value", but there really doesn't seem to be much consideration of how to manage its evil twin, which is the erosion of value.

When you only look at things that show tangible and immediate gains, you're doing the equivalent of nurturing the leaves of a plant and ignoring its root system. When support is an "expense" or "cost center", when the money you save by routing customers - and potential customers - into Phone Menu Hell, when, by a thousand cuts you make the people who send in the money (whether directly or indirectly) feel abused, neglected and resentful, that's all eroding value. Like a weak root system, it may not immediately be apparent what's wrong, but the "plant" as a whole cannot flourish.

None of which matters to the grab-the-money-and-run crowd, but once you've grabbed the money, you're best off not investing it in places like that.

Re:Ding Dong

[uassholes]

Of course, with their resources, they could be 100% compliant if they wanted to be so.

If they wanted to be so; if it was in their financial best interest. If it fit their business model; which it does not.

Apparently it is difficult to be standards compliant, and yet provide a different experience from the other browsers when the user is accessing Outlook Web Access, or other M$ web applications.

Re:Ding Dong

[ClosedSource]

"Microsoft goal for winning the browser war back in the late 90's was so they could have control of the standards and make the web their own so it would be useless to use the web without windows and Internet Explorer."

I don't think MS was stupid enough for that to be their real goal.

Re:Ding Dong

[Low Ranked Craig]

The ability to be remotely installed, and managed is a huge feature that is unique to IE. Being native means they could (and should) be able to have the fastest browser on Windows. They could do a number of things that would make me want to use IE as my preferred browser on Windows, but they don't, hence their eroding market share. The majority of people that use Macs use Safari. Why? Because Safari offers a good browsing experience for most people, is very fast, and is reasonable secure. IE 8 should be the same on Windows.

Microsoft could do a much better job of fostering the creation of browser add-ons (ala FireFox). The current selection is pitiful. http://www.ieaddons.com/en/

Microsoft needs more walking the walk, and less marketing. I find this message humorous (displayed when hitting the above link with a WebKit browser)

We noticed you are not currently running Internet Explorer 8. To take advantage of these new features and enjoy a faster, safer and easier browsing experience, we recommend installing Internet Explorer 8 now for free.

(em added)

Re:Ding Dong

[The MAZZTer]

My notes:

• 1. Flash and all IE plugins have to use ActiveX (Java uses an alternate method though) to work with IE so ActiveX isn't dead yet, but even Microsoft has moved away from using ActiveX with Windows Update (seriously, letting a website patch critical system files is just bad design).
• 2. Good point, I guess devs who use IIS are more likely to be developing for IE, Apache more likely for Open Source browsers.
• 3. I guess this goes with 5... more internet-capable devices that IE simply doesn't run on is going to be bad for IE. :)
• 4. I guess you're talking about the IE/Netscape war? IE wasn't bundled with Windows back then so they did legitimately win, though I don't remember much about that so correct me if I'm wrong. Then the bundling made sure Microsoft had no real reason to continue improving IE (until Firefox came along).
• 5. See 3.
• 6. This was me, circa Phoenix. Well actually it was more about a little thing called TABS. :)
• 7. Never thought about this one much... but back in dialup MB files were a big deal I suppose. Now it's GB files that are a big deal (well ok > 50MB is a big deal too I suppose).
• 8. There's hatred of Flash itself out there, maybe HTML5 will rise to the challenge. :)
• 9. Some apps have it, though some web browsers us it to wrap IE, which is a horrible idea IMO, you just get the security problems that come with IE. You can try to lessen them I guess but at the end of the day you're still running that browser that hackers are exploiting. Steam uses the ActiveX control ok, but they have to use an ugly hack to get new windows to open in your standard browser instead of IE. Enough people complained about the behavior (which, to a dev, is expected since you ARE browsing in IE, but not to users) that they had to change it. They should embed Gecko or Webkit or something.
• 10. IE8 is for XP, FYI. Delivered via Windows Update, only reason you'd stay with 6 is if a work intranet app or web app needed it or something.

PS: Why are ordered lists broken in Slashdot. :(

Re:Ding Dong

[haeger]

In fact, my company *just* announced an upgrade to IE7

The company I work for isn't there yet. Still IE6 on XP for us. And from what I hear there are no upgrade plans on the horizon. Eventually there will be I think, but for a company of this size it'll be atleast one year away from when they announce it.

Re:Ding Dong

[ColdWetDog]

Do you need a disembodied hand to write it on the board room wall in blood?

Tell you what - if you can create this in a Powerpoint presentation that I can send to a couple of vendors then maybe we might start to move in the right direction. So far direct physical threats haven't worked well. We need to step up to the next level and you might just well have found it.

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Ding Dong

[thsths]

> The ability to be remotely installed, and managed is a huge feature that is unique to IE.

The remote installation is unique to IE because any other browser will happily run from a network share. If you want it locally, you just need to set up the shortcut and synchronise some files. No integration with the OS, no "installation" necessary.

The management part is true, although it also depends on the browser being linked in with the OS. So you can only ever have one version of IE installed, and it will obey the restrictions put down by policies. Other browsers can be restricted up to a point, but you could always run your own portable version from a memory stick.

Re:Ding Dong

[mystikkman]

The bigger question which I think everyone's missing is, why was Google using IE6 inhouse when it hacked???

Re:Ding Dong

[jbengt]

Embrace Extend Extinguish was their pattern. And they followed that in order to protect their business from the threat of Netscape becoming a server/development platform not sold by Microsoft. Fortunately, they were only partially successful.

Re:Ding Dong

[ya really]

Latest stable Opera 10 scores 100, no idea where you got 85.

Re:Ding Dong

[matzahboy]

What incentive does Microsoft have to be 100% standards compliant? It is the dominant browser. It can wright the standards. Whatever features Microsoft implements become the standards because web developers have to support IE.

Re:Ding Dong

[westlake]

You'd think that a company with an $8 billion R&D budget could build a web browser that is 100% standards compliant

Is there any browser that is "standards compliant?"

Who sets the standards and are they meaningful? Well-defined and well-aimed.

How often for example will a user encounter a page that demands a fully ACID 3 compliant browser?

Are the standards evolving in a timely fashion or could they be leapfrogged by new and proprietary tech?

H.264 seems to have Mozilla tied up in knots.

Committees tend to move with all deliberate speed.

Meaning you can be forgiven for thinking that they are not moving at all.

The entrepreneur doesn't have that problem.

Which is why Hulu or YouTube or MySpace can take off like a rocket. It's there. It's entrenched before anyone can do a thing about it.

     

Re:Ding Dong

[afabbro]

(seriously, letting a website patch critical system files is just bad design).

You do realize that 90% of those reading this site downloaded their operating system from a web site, right? ;-)

Re:Ding Dong

[ClosedSource]

They weren't successful at all if the goal was to force people to use Windows.

Re:Ding Dong

[Radhruin]

IE9: 32. Unfortunately that number is from 2 months ago after only short development. At any rate, significant progress is being made.

I use IE9 5 days a week, I promise you it's not the new IE6.

Re:Ding Dong

[afabbro]

8. There's hatred of Flash itself out there, maybe HTML5 will rise to the challenge.

Ah, HTML5. We are all waiting eagerly for it to be finished in 2022

.

Re:Ding Dong

[schnablebg]

Your points are valid but Microsoft only had to do one thing to keep Firefox at bay: continue development on IE after IE6.

IE6 was the fastest and best browser on Windows when it came out. Then they didn't improve it for YEARS, so Firefox was able to gain significant inroads. There would still be a market for Firefox but many of the mainstream users of FF would have seen no reason to switch if IE didn't suck so hard for so many years.

We all love software choice on this board, but web development was a lot easier when there was only one browser to test on on Windows.

Re:Ding Dong

[Radhruin]

To answer your first question, no, I have yet to see any browser that is 100% compliant.

Re:Ding Dong

[Tumbleweed]

Now if only they'd kill off IE7 and 8 too.

Why stop there? Let's get proactive and kill off support for IE9, because let's face it, it's not going to support the standards we want either. We all know it, or should by this time. The IE team is like Lucy with the football, and we've all been Charlie Brown for way too long.

Re:Ding Dong

[webheaded]

We just got our and it was godsend for everyone. We all desperately wanted tabs (I have Firefox portable, but still) so this was pretty nice. It is definitely a LOT better than 6. :p

Re:Ding Dong

[NotBorg]

Your "feature" merely exposes a deficiency in the OS tool set. That Microsoft's software update process is exclusive to Microsoft products. It would be nice if I could run update and get a new flash, java, etc. Instead every application has to write it's own update software to check for updates and install them. It leads to all sorts of annoying crap from vendors like tray icons and background processes that run all the time just to see if there's an update.

Contrast with your typical Linux distribution where all software can be installed and updated with the same package management system. A third party could provide a repository that the user could just add to their package management system for seamless and "native" update support.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Chauncey Gardiner!

Re:Ding Dong

[cbhacking]

"Arguably less standards compliant" nothing. I'm pretty sure IE7 is the only browser on that list that fails Acid 2, for example (IE8 handles it just fine).

Re:Ding Dong

[Low Ranked Craig]

True, but the point is that MS could do any number of things to make people and IT departments WANT to use it over Fire fox or chrome, and they could do it in a 100% compliant manner.

Re:Ding Dong

[Low Ranked Craig]

Still 9.63 on my Mac. I wasn't trying to point out an issue with Opera, I was trying to illustrate that a small company like opera software can make a much better browser than Microsoft. Whether or not MS doesn't because they can't or won't is beside the point.

Re:Ding Dong

[Low Ranked Craig]

Well, the acid3 test comes pretty close to defining the standard, and webkit and presto browsers score 100%...

Re:Ding Dong

[shutdown -p now]

Because there are people who are currently using IE7, so why should they upgrade?

Because, so long as we're talking about it from web developer perspective, IE8 is the first version of IE which fully supports the existing non-draft standards (CSS2.1, in particular). IE7 is still broken in that regard, even if much less so than IE6.

Re:Ding Dong

[Radhruin]

Not even close. Acid 3 tests various behaviors across nearly 20 different standards, most of which are hundreds of pages long.

Re:Ding Dong

[c-reus]

how much of that 90% would let a web site compile the kernel for their computer?

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always run your own portable version of anything anyway. Doesn't matter whether the company uses IE or FF.

Re:Ding Dong

[radish]

A properly managed environment doesn't allow things to be run from a memory stick.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue of the (lack of) quality of Micros~1's software should not be a surprise. They are the pioneers of Really Bad Software(tm), so it should be no surprise that they have not changed their style.

I would go so far as to say there _never_ was a excuse for their bad software. But to be fair Micros~1's success has the same flavor as Barry's campaign. They are both based on the ignorance and lack of taste on the part of the software buyers and the voters respectively.

This is the true curse of the modern world. Typical members of society just cannot keep track of everything that is going on. So unscupulous members of society prey upon the clueless. AND MANAGEMENT ACCEPTS THE CONSEQUENCES AS NATURAL AND RIGHTEOUS. This is a key reason why tech-dependent companies fail.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of having a browser support the latest stuff if the user isn't going to download and install the latest version? ;)

Re:Ding Dong

[Firehed]

That they made it unwillingly doesn't change the fact that MS did, in fact, make a standards-compliant browser. Maybe not the latest and greatest, but it's pretty solid (albeit slow) with just about all CSS that doesn't require a -prefix- on the property name. It's accurate enough that I don't worry about doing any more extensive testing than I perform in Firefox or Webkit-based browsers; I'm willing to lose round corners and drop shadows in IE if it saves me the time of having to make tons of hacks for what amounts to minor eye candy.

It's not like I use IE8 as my day-to-day browser, but as a web developer I don't fear it either. Even 7 usually does a decent job, though maybe I've just been at it long enough that I subconsciously build hacks into my code.

Re:Ding Dong

[Firehed]

Actually, I'd bet most of them downloaded their OS from bit-torrent. I bet a few of them even did it legitimately.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand. Can you please reword that as a car analogy?

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

Great summary of events!

Re:Ding Dong

[Blakey Rat]

The only reason it's a step in the right direction is because every other browser has dragged Microsoft kicking and screaming into the present. They certainly wouldn't have done it on their own...

Why would Microsoft bother to allocate resources to a web browser with no effective competition? It's almost as if-- by Mozilla getting their fucking act together led to IE having competition which led to new versions of IE! Amazement!!

It's almost as if you're beginning to recognize the actual implications of a company being a "monopoly." Now imagine what the world would be like if Netscape hadn't dropped the ball in the first place, back in the IE 5.5 era. Your brain will explode, but imagine it anyway.

If you want good software from Microsoft, compete with them.

Re:Ding Dong

[metrix007]

The only reason some distributions do that is because they provide modified copies of the software. When you update OO.org on Ubuntu, you are using Ubuntu OO, not normal vanilla coming from the developers OO.

Obviously, that wouldn't work well in the commercial closed source market.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Compatibility Views

Re:Ding Dong

[NotBorg]

I don't follow your reasoning. Yes distributions often tweak various software when they compile and package it. That's a benefit of open source. It's not a requirement that all software be tweaked, compiled, packaged, and blessed by your distribution. A third party can still package their own software and host it in a repository if they want.

Modern package management systems can pull form multiple sources, resolve dependencies across multiple sources, and allow the user to select preferred packages. The packages don't have to come from the distribution directly.

For example, Opera provides packages for ALT Linux, Arch, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, MEPIS, Mandriva, Mint, RedHat, Sabayon, Slackware, SuSE, and Ubuntu. Obviously there's nothing stopping them from packaging their binaries for Linux. If they wanted to all they'd have to do is host them in a repository and you could get regular updates to their software.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera 85?? Where the hell did you get that result? I just tried and it gave 100/100.

Re:Ding Dong

[aiht]

If they wanted to all they'd have to do is host them in a repository and you could get regular updates to their software.

In fact, they do - see http://www.opera.com/support/kb/view/841/ (Opera Knowledgebase question - "Can I install Opera from a repository?").
Opera have their own Debian repo (http://deb.opera.com), as well as providing Ubuntu packages for Canonical's 'commercial partner' repo.
As a multi-OS user, the simplicity of updating and installing software under Linux is one of the things I miss the most when using Windows.

Re:Ding Dong

[Kjella]

Apologies. I should have been more clear. Why wouldn't they just suggest the latest release version for the IE browser (IE8) to begin with?

Because IE8 is still unsupported by many. For example, I know of a certain US software giant and the product I work with still doesn't officially support IE8. It supports IE6, IE7, some versions of Firefox and Safari so it's not some IE6 crapwork, but it's not official. And not everyone is jumping at the chance to try their very newest release, either. Sure, if you're replacing an IE6 application it should support everything but they'll have many others holding them at IE7.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

Our system has detected that your computer is running a browser that may be incompatible with the exchange. In order to get the most from the exchange we recommend you use Internet Explorer 6.0 or above on Windows

Not at betdaq co uk

(PS To get this error message I used Opera 10.1)

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

- IIS has nothing to do with Internet Explorer's compatibility issues.
- I don't recall a time where ActiveX was more popular than Java, Shockwave, or Flash for general internet applications
- What integrated web browser are you talking about?
- IE 7 was available for XP, and aggressively pushed.

Between the obvious facts and confused information, I really am not sure what this post is going on about at all.

Re:Ding Dong

[metrix007]

The reasoning is that distributions that offer repositories only do so because they generally host modified versions of software.

Distributions that don't do that, don't tend to offer repositories.

Why should any one company be charged with hosting every other companies compiled code when they gain nothing from doing so?

Looking at the point child made, that Opera provide a debian repository, that isn't any better than having programs selfupdate. Self update or add a new repository for each individual piece of software...

Even ignoring all of that, I much prefer the model of updating each software individually as I prefer the greater level of control.

Re:Ding Dong

[NotBorg]

I don't follow this reasoning:

Obviously, that wouldn't work well in the commercial closed source market.

It can and does work fine and there's a lot of value in it.

1. Developers don't have to re-invent the install and update wheel for every application.
2. Users get a consistent UI for installing and updating software. (For example, users don't have 30 different trey icons all telling them in a slightly different way that they have updates)
3. You don't need extra per application processes running in the background checking for updates. Don't need extra startup junk doing it either.
4. The user doesn't need do it all manually (although it's still an option)

Why should any one company be charged with hosting every other companies compiled code when they gain nothing from doing so?

Packages don't need to or have to be all hosted in the same repository. You can have your package management system connect to as many as you like. Your distribution doesn't even have to know or approve of 3rd party software installed this way. I don't know where you get the idea that it all must come from one singular centralized source.

I don't think you understand how package management systems work.

Re:Ding Dong

[metrix007]

Sigh. You're speaking like someone who has mostly experience with distributions that act as you advocate, and limited experience on closed source platforms, then getting annoyed when the closed source platforms don't have a feature you consider convenient.

It can and does work fine and there's a lot of value in it.

In a commercial closed source environment? Citation needed.

1. Developers don't have to re-invent the install and update wheel for every application.
2. Users get a consistent UI for installing and updating software. (For example, users don't have 30 different trey icons all telling them in a slightly different way that they have updates)
3. You don't need extra per application processes running in the background checking for updates. Don't need extra startup junk doing it either.
4. The user doesn't need do it all manually (although it's still an option)

The problems you describe, are not problems.

For 1 - This has not been a problem on Windows for over 10 years. For at least the last 5 years, the MSI format has been used for installs on Windows, and is far more powerful than anything similar in Linux land. Seriously - read up on it.

The MSI format also applies to your second point - It is generally the exception rather than the rule that software has its own interface to update.., i.e. java, flash etc.

As for point 3, what FUD. Either updates are pushed to the client, or it is checked on startup or at some regular interval. No need for extra processes or startup junk as you claim, and it certainly has no negative aspect on performance.

It's also a more efficient method, rather than having all software tied in to each other(not that it has to be, but in practice it often is on linux systems).

Using the MSI format installs to keep track of installs and allowing for things like concurrent versions being installed and rollbacks, with applications updating themselves as needed is efficient and useful, and the way it should stay. Nothing would be gained by changing things as you suggest.

Packages don't need to or have to be all hosted in the same repository. You can have your package management system connect to as many as you like. Your distribution doesn't even have to know or approve of 3rd party software installed this way. I don't know where you get the idea that it all must come from one singular centralized source.

Because generally, that is how it is. You add a few other repositories for particular software like Opera or Virtualbox, with most stuff coming from your distribution.

That wouldn't work in Windows land, and we would be adding a repository source for every package. How is this approach superior to applications self updating as it is? It's the same end result with the benefit of skipping an unnecessary step.

Additionally, the MSI format(which 99.9% of windows aps use to install) already handles version checking and dependencies and rollbakcs and a myriad of other features not found in linux package managers.

I don't think you understand how package management systems work.

I don't think you understand how operating systems aside from those based on Debian work.

Re:Ding Dong

[SenseiLeNoir]

That is not a bigger question, it is a silly question....

Having once worked for Google...

Google is a web company, and having IE 6 around for testing is only prudent. They dont use it primarily. Web Developers at Google, like other web companies, have various browsers installed for testing, and use.

Re:Ding Dong

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't they just suggest the latest release version for the IE browser (IE8) to begin with?

Because management should be sensibly concerned about negative fallout from perception that 'they' are aligned with Microsoft's monopoly mission.

Necrosoft 'upgrades' generally require that I learn a new schema of command organization and grahic representation without providing any clear benefit to me, the user/customer. Additionally, users who paid attention understand that The Browser Wars have demoted them to the status of "Used." People use software to accomplish tasks, and contrary to what we've heard since the inception of the GUI, it's not intuitive just because it's graphic. I can tell you why I have been reluctant to "upgrade" to Mickeysoft's latest version of anything.

Anyone that suggests I upgrade, when the result is less than pleasant, is an accessory to the theft of my good will. And to the degree that most companies have kept silent on the topic of the Browser Wars, users can easily infer there's little advocacy for their best interest. So, why would I receive the suggestion from a content provider favorably?

Re:Ding Dong

[mystikkman]

Why were they browsing Facebook links etc. in IE6 when they were hacked, doesn't make any sense for Google to allow such things and then go back and blame MS for it.

Good riddance!

[lukas84]

It's time to see IE6 go. Unfortunately, Microsoft will support IE6 until support for XP runs out - this model needs to change, badly.

SP3 for XP should've made IE7 mandatory. Unfortunately, the right decisions are not always good for business.

Re:Good riddance!

[arth1]

It's time to see IE6 go. Unfortunately, Microsoft will support IE6 until support for XP runs out - this model needs to change, badly.

The problem is that many large companies have internal systems that were written back when Microsoft pushed ActiveX as the solution to all the world's problems. They can't upgrade their users' browsers until and unless the in-house software they rely on has been upgraded. And sometimes that's difficult, because of the dot-com-bubble bursting, taking with it the companies that made the badware.

I know one Very Large company that just upgraded its internal users from IE4 to IE6. IE7 isn't feasible, and IE8 even less so.

Personally, if I have to use an IE browser, I prefer IE7. IE8 has too many problems, like Z ordering (just try using it without click-to-raise) or incompatibility with non-default high DPI settings.

But better yet is Seamonkey, the true inheritor to the Netscape Communicator legacy. Same rendering engine as Firefox, but a much smaller memory footprint, and configuration menus that haven't been dumbed down for the masses. Plus the built-in HTML composer comes in handy every now and then.

Re:Good riddance!

[Kjella]

It's time to see IE6 go. Unfortunately, Microsoft will support IE6 until support for XP runs out - this model needs to change, badly.

SP3 for XP should've made IE7 mandatory. Unfortunately, the right decisions are not always good for business.

Yeah, because forced upgrades also go over so well with this crowd. Should a RHEL/SLES/Ubuntu LTS release of Linux force upgrades to Firefox? Is it okay to do that just because the next major version is free? There's a lot you can blame Microsoft for, but it's the companies that don't want to upgrade which is the problem here. Or would you rather Microsoft moves more in the direction of Apple too, making decisions for you than to leave it to the users?

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

Yeah, because forced upgrades also go over so well with this crowd.

This isn't DRM-style remote content removal, it's about support. Microsoft has decided that they will support IE6 until support for XP runs out, which is in 2014 - plenty of time to go. The same will happen with IE7, which will be supported until support for Vista runs out, which IMO is also unnecessary.

I can understand why Microsoft does it and i also understand why large corporations don't like to do upgrades (because they mostly use crappy, unmaintained software written for a single use case by idiot developers that got rich by delivering a shitty product).

IE8 is usuable. It works. It's much more secure than IE6. The only people that haven't upgraded yet need a hard incentive to justify an upgrade to their management - "support runs out" is about the hardest incentive you can get.

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

The problem is that many large companies have internal systems that were written back when Microsoft pushed ActiveX as the solution to all the world's problems.

And there's a very simple solution to this, that i've seen in a large corporation here. Upgrade all the clients to IE7/8, and publish links to those legacy applications using Citrix, which runs IE6 ontop of Windows Server 2003. Make sure that IE6 in Citrix can only reach the legacy apps, and not the Internet in general. Problem solved.

Re:Good riddance!

[dissy]

There's a lot you can blame Microsoft for, but it's the companies that don't want to upgrade which is the problem here.

Exactly!

These companies are faced with a choice.

A) They keep IE6 so their internal "webapps" (IE6 apps really) and such don't need upgraded, but since only IE6 is installed they have no web browser.
or B) They install a web browser app, and need to spend money to fix/update those IE6-apps to work with a web browser instead.

If the company chooses 'A', they willingly and knowingly have chosen not to have web browsing capabilities on those computers.

Sure, Microsoft has made some choices that make life harder for people needing to make that choice. But lack of forced upgrades is not one of those poor decisions.
Designing IE in such a way that multiple versions can't be installed along side would be a valid complaint, but it should be clear by now it is a complaint they will never address.

Re:Good riddance!

[jafiwam]

The problem comes from two not-so-problematical things working together;

1. That IE can only exist as one version on the machine.

2. That corporate users are so fucking afraid of using a real browser. (I am looking at you, you pathetic corporate dick sucking IT guys that can't seem to handle an easy to install free Browser.)

Put these two together, and you get a large crowd of self-righteous "I am working so I must get to use my shitty equipment on any web site I want" people that subject IE6 on the rest of the Internet that has have moved on. They use IE6 because someone made a bad decision and won't own up to it. And really, what exactly ARE these mysterious and absolutely critical ActiveX apps? Are you fucking serious? If they are that critical, maybe write some VB to do the same thing. Wouldn't that be fancy? Or is this just another lame job protection thing that you are afraid your rickety shitty ass app being replaced by a 16 line batch file will put you out on the street.

It is this attitude that truly makes these corporate idiots deserve a baseball bat to the back of the head.

IE6 doesn't even render DIV tags properly. Which pretty much means two versions of every web site. (It renders them like tables, with all of their limitations. Why even support it at all if you can't layer your DIVs?)

We don't let horse and buggy on the interstate anymore, no matter HOW rich the idiot is. There's no reason to put up with IE6's shit anymore either. The fucking thing is NINE GODDAMN YEARS OLD, and is FOUR FULL OPERATING SYSTEMS BEHIND.

Kill it. Kill IE6. Kill anybody that still uses it, their fault or not.

Re:Good riddance!

[dsavi]

Yeah, because forced upgrades also go over so well with this crowd. Should a RHEL/SLES/Ubuntu LTS release of Linux force upgrades to Firefox? Is it okay to do that just because the next major version is free?

Maybe if old versions of Firefox running on RHEL/SLES/Ubuntu LTS represented over 25% of the global browser market share.

Or would you rather Microsoft moves more in the direction of Apple too, making decisions for you than to leave it to the users?

That's an interesting point. In some cases such as this one, that would actually be a good move.

Re:Good riddance!

[Eirenarch]

So why not use ActiveX on IE8?

Re:Good riddance!

[hedwards]

Realistically if MS goes this route, some enterprising firm will figure out how to create an application that allows for a side by side install for those internal applications.

Personally, I'm forced to use an application of that nature at work, though thankfully not tied to IE6, and it's an absolute misery to work with most of the time. Companies really need to just recognize that regardless of what mr. Ellison might think thin clients are not the way of the future.

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, they get all up in arms when it's someone else that has to do the work, but won't bother to do a few things to make themselves secure. "Being supported" by Microsoft means nothing to them. See, I do some consulting work for a VERY large credit union in the Chicago area. And, strangely enough, they have a bunch of Windows2000 machines for some mission critical reason.... that they use to surf the internet with IE6 on when they are waiting for the stuff to run... and then they proceed to bitch that web pages don't work. This is outright dangerous. They don't care, they want Facebook to run. (After seeing a bit of how the banking industry works, I keep a lot of cash on hand. I can forgo a shitty quarter percent on my checking/savings account to keep the cash away from that bunch of retards. A coffee can of cash in my storage unit is quite seriously, less risky.)

Re:Good riddance!

[TheRaven64]

I think you are underestimating ActiveX. An ActiveX control is basically a Windows shared library. These are not really web apps, they're windows apps that use the browser for deployment (which, for Intranet use, isn't a completely terrible idea). Making them not use ActiveX basically means completely rewriting the client.

Re:Good riddance!

[TheRaven64]

Microsoft only made it difficult if you want IE7 or 8 as your browser for external apps. If you want FireFox, Chrome, or Safari for the Internet and IE 6 for the Intranet, it's pretty simple...

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

It should be noted though that Firefox/Chrome/Opera are not alternatives in a large environment, and the reason for this is that none of these three browsers have thought a lot about deployment.

Chrome uses it's own custom "install into userprofile" thing, which can be pretty nice for standalone computers at home without admin rights.

Firefox comes with it's own installer, but doesn't bring any update tools for large enterprises, and it doesn't use the standard MSI format.

Opera can't be updated by non-admin users either.

Not of these three browsers can be managed centrally using group policies, like IE can. Sure, there's the Frontmotion Firefox packages, but this isn't Mozilla providing them and they're not very good either.

Microsoft's WSUS has the ability to use 3rd party patches. Not one of the competitors browsers allow updates to be installed through WSUS/WU. WSUS is very popular in small-to-midsized companies where a full software deployment solution like SCCM is overkill and too expensive, but automatic distrubtion of security patches is still key to a secure work environment.

That's why i still recommend all our clients to run IE8 - because it requires less effort, is easier to keep secure (A fully patched IE8 is better than a 16 months old version of Firefox) and is preinstalled anyway.

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, why not install one of several other fantastic browsers (firefox being one of the best supported) and use ie6 for internal stuff. That didn't seem hard.

The only thing I am unsure of is how to force IE6 to internal sites only.

Re:Good riddance!

[stang]

...problem is that many large companies have internal systems that were written back when Microsoft pushed ActiveX as the solution...

Actually, if these companies had written their internal system software as a big ActiveX component, they wouldn't have this problem. ActiveX is (as far as IE's concerned) simply a plugin architecture. Note that the Flash plugin for IE (an ActiveX control) works the same in IE6-IE8.

The problem with ActiveX is that it's just not an appropriate plugin technology for browsers. It has no inherent sandboxing capabilities; there's no way to differentiate between a browser plugin and any other ActiveX control; and Windows comes with several ActiveX controls that should never be allowed to be used in a browser (FileSystemObject, anyone)? For what it was designed for -- resuable components for desktop applications -- it's great, but MS should have put a little more thought into what they were unleashing when they decided to make ActiveX the plugin standard for IE. And no, I don't count "signed" and "marked safe for scripting" features as thought.

No, the problem is that these business systems were all put together using HTML/CSS content that was only ever written for, or tested with, IE. Companies that needed these systems took their bizapps people and told 'em to "make a web version". As is typical with internal apps, they were written to meet the company's needs as quickly and cheaply as possible; which means "works in our current environment", not "is ready for the future". Add in years of ad-hoc tweaks, changes, subsystem additions, and you've got a crufty piece of web tech that barely works in the originally spec'ed envrionment.

Asking for cross-browser/web standards output from a bunch of stuff written by programmers who:

• Are used to working with client-side/Winforms VB or C# .Net (or VB6) and SQL Server/MS Access databases for their bizapps
• Who may or may not be any good at their jobs
• Who may not be the same people who originally wrote the code
• Who were told to pick "fast and cheap" as the two out of three (fast, cheap, good)
• Who were told all of this 10 years ago

is optimistic, at best.

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

Or, why not install one of several other fantastic browsers (firefox being one of the best supported) and use ie6 for internal stuff. That didn't seem hard.

All non-Microsoft browsers suck at central configuration and central updates. You'll waste a lot of time packaging updates, something Microsoft does for you when using IE.

The only thing I am unsure of is how to force IE6 to internal sites only.

Plenty of ways. You can force it to use a proxy server through a GPO, then block everything but the internal apps on that proxy.

Re:Good riddance!

[symbolset]

There's a lot you can blame Microsoft for, but it's the companies that don't want to upgrade which is the problem here.

The companies stuck on IE6 are the very ones that want to upgrade to the next versions - they're "Microsoft shops" and have been for a decade. They're into Software Assurance bigtime. Unfortunately for them they got committed, and built their core mission critical apps on a platform with no compatible migration strategy. They were entitled to expect a compatible migration strategy, and they didn't get one. It's fair to blame Microsoft for that lack.

Unfortunately, they can and will eventually migrate to a newer version of the Microsoft browser and services which also lack a compatible migration strategy, thus getting stuck in the same trap more than once. You would think they would learn and embrace this novel concept of "standards", but no.

Re:Good riddance!

[arth1]

Indeed. And not only the front-end, but the back-end too.
Then there's the whole API issue -- they may not even have it. And porting existing data to a new platform may be a quite involved job, especially if the solution was bought as a black box back when.

Yes, companies today are paying for the mistakes done by managers during the dot-com boom.

Re:Good riddance!

[GIL_Dude]

Simply use Group Policy to set the proxy server for IE to localhost. Now IE is internal only. However be careful of side effects. Some other applications for some reason share / use IE's settings. For example Google Chrome uses IE's settings. Firefox doesn't, so it will be OK. Any client side app that requires internet connectivity is also likely to instantiate a winsock connection using the defaults for the API which are basically "query the IE settings and use those for internet connectivity". Java applets may also have trouble depending on how they are written. As always, testing, testing, testing.

Another way to do it would be to use GPO to set an extended user agent on IE6 - for example adding "INTERNALONLY" to the user agent. Have the proxy deny connection requests that contain this string in their user agent. That would have the effect (generally) of not stopping applications that initialize winsock with the defaults as the defaults don't use IE's configured user agent string.

Re:Good riddance!

[GIL_Dude]

Thank you. I was about to post the same - these other browsers are great (I am typing this at home on Chrome - now that is has extension support, and my secondary browser at home is Firefox while at work I primarily use FF) however as you said they put zero effort into being maintainable in an enterprise. Assume that an enterprise pushes out either FF or Chrome to their users. There is no easy way to configure even the proxy settings, let alone configure the security settings to allow certain apps/ sites more or less trust. The default install will pop up requests for admin rights randomly when they decide to update themselves (of course enterprise users aren't admins - or shouldn't be!). As you said - they don't really have patching: for the most part they are just completely new installs, often bringing UI changes and new features in an update. Unfortunately that means even more testing than a normal Internet Explorer patch since IE patches don't deliver features/changes.

Being a corporate desktop design person, I have admin rights and prefer FF to IE. However I have to manage that installation just like a home user. If Google or Mozilla would spend some time/money on re-architecting their patching model and their deployment of settings they would be very viable in the corporate space. The only thing left as a blocker could be those legacy apps (which it should be admitted are becoming a smaller percentage of the installed base and could probably be handled in ways others in this thread have mentioned like Citrix, etc.).

Re:Good riddance!

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

As a web-dev, I see the biggest problem with IE6 being that it's rendering is massively buggy [the security issues don't directly affect me!]. Issues such as peek-a-boo bugs are difficult to test for; I can build a site, test it and have it all work perfectly, and then make a few tweaks later, and than discover that this triggers a weird IE6 bug. Worse, even if I have "tested"** in IE6, these things don't always reveal themselves... so in practise, I tend to find out about issues when the client complains!

IE7 introduced a bunch of changes including the obvious addition of tabs and UI changes, and the fixes and updates to the rendering engine.

IMHO, Microsoft should have fixed the rendering bugs in IE6. They should've called that IE6.1 or something. But instead, they did their usual trick where they roll bug fixes and features into one, so some people cannot easily update from IE6 to IE7. But IE6 rendering was broken and should've been fixed waaaaay before IE7 was released.

On the other-hand, if MS had done this, we would have a less flaky, but still seriously lacking, IE6 and there may be even less incentive for people to upgrade!

**"Tested" for me typically means I viewed a page once in said browser. Obviously if the budget is there then more testing may be done, but typically there isn't time for extensive testing for minor page changes.

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

I don't think the new UI and tabs are what's preventing people from upgrading to IE7/8, it's just the new rendering engine - the new UI and tabs are basically incentives to get the new rendering engine.

So i'm not seeing what such a IE6.1 would've accomplished.

Re:Good riddance!

[hairyfeet]

Or you could just use the nice MSIs made by Frontmotion. They have a community edition with GPO support, even one that allows you to pass it out with preconfigured extensions. One of the nice things about FOSS is if the parent group refuses to see to a need someone else can step up.

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

it would be like infecting a cancer patient with AIDS and praying it goes away.

Re:Good riddance!

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

AFAIK IE7 also changed the security setup such that legacy ActiveX controls may not work? Also, IE7 doesn't run on Windows 2000.... which is less an issue today since support for that OS is about to end, but it meant there was no MS supported upgrade path.

The UI changes aren't such a biggie, but corporates do bleat about any changes since it affects training.

So i'm not seeing what such a IE6.1 would've accomplished.

My point is that whilst IE6 didn't support newer CSS features (or PNGs) properly, and whilst it used a different box model, it also had huge bugs. The former problems are "features" and I wouldn't expect MS to change them, but the bugs were clearly bugs. They were just less apparent in 2001 because most websites used tables - not CSS - for layout.

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much ActiveX, but that many companies followed the Microsoft refrain of "I don't give a damn for standards".

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Many medical practices are stuck with IE6 for the time being because when IE6 was still a viable browser they signed up to use AllScripts. Core functionality (dictation especially) doesn't work properly.

I take every opportunity to mention this so that if they do AllScripts vanity searches they'll eventually find people bitching about the fact that they're worthless because they only support IE6.

Re:Good riddance!

[Rich0]

Look at it from the company's perspective.

You sell widgets. Somebody offers you a new widget processing application for $3M. It runs on IE6 - great, that's the corporate standard (in 2005)! Sure, the price seems high, but then again if we save $500k per year for 10 years even with time-value-of-money it works out as a great deal.

Now we're in year 5, and just starting to make money back on the deal, and a bunch of IT geeks tell us that we can't use IE6, but we don't have an upgrade path. Oh, the company that sold us the original software is still around, and for another $2M we can upgrade and fix the browser problem. But, the whole basis for selling the original project to management was the 10-year investment, and now it looks like a 5-year investment. Plus, the original product still "works fine," so how exactly are we supposed to sell them on an upgrade?

Now, consider that in addition to the widget processing app you have a general ledger app, an HR app, a bunch of sales CRM apps, some widget R&D apps, and 47 other things like that which all cost a fortune to deploy and are now obsolete - but only technically.

At our company they had a similar mess with win2k and NT. Company buys a dozen $500k machines whose controllers run on NT (slightly stale, but still pretty common back then). Those machines have 15-year depreciation schedules. 5-7 years later the company that makes the machines doesn't offer new controller software - so you're stuck on NT. IT points out, hey - we checked and you can just buy their newer $500k machines and those work great with XP. Only problem is that the machines were financed based on a 15-year investment and the ONLY reason for getting rid of them is the controller OS. So, we firewall the network they are on and cross our fingers. What are we going to do - get into the machine business?

Before you ask - of course we try to avoid this stuff when we make buying decisions! However, when you get into serious amounts of capital you'll find you have 2-3 serious vendors at best, and it is in their interest to build in technical obsolescence. Then you add in the fact that the buying decision usually rests with the people using the machines, which is almost never IT. They'll listen to you, but given a choice between having more features now, or not leaving their successor's successor a big problem, they'll pick the former.

Re:Good riddance!

[Rich0]

Nothing wrong with thin clients - however they really NEED to be thin. The less you depend on fancy browser tricks the less likely your app will be to break when you upgrade the browser.

Alternatively, consider that perhaps using the same software to interface with your ERP and CRM systems and the hotmail.com website might not be a great choice either.

In theory companies could avoid a lot of these problems by:

Deploying both IE6 and firefox on local machines. IE6 points to a proxy that keeps it away from the internet in general. Firefox points to a proxy that allows internet access. Install some helper app that becomes the default for URLs and launches either app as appropriate based on the URL.

Or they could only buy web-based apps that stick to xhtml 1.0 strict and use minimal javascript/ ajax/ etc. Honestly, the more web developers push the envelope with the rendering engines, the more trouble it causes everybody down the road. Your app needs to receive input and display output. That doesn't really require drag-and-drop or whatever. Or, use Citrix or some other platform other than your browser to run the app.

Re:Good riddance!

[ClosedSource]

Part of the problem was that companies converted to browser-based apps without any real need to do so.

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's what Google thought. And made it easy to get them via the IE 6 exploit.
People should start to understand that particularly on Windows if _any_ OS component is exploitable your computer is exploitable, no matter how much you delude yourself that "you don't use it".

Re:Good riddance!

[thetoadwarrior]

Any company that is stuck with their backwards software can stay off the internet if they're too tight to buy software they can't modify and was clearly coded like utter shit or upgrade from that software.

They're at work, they don' need to use most Google services, Youtube, Ebay, etc. As far as I'm concerned no one should be catering to these losers.

Re:Good riddance!

[gbjbaanb]

just wait - the re-implementation will be 'one-click' .net apps, and the problems will simply continue from one broken MS technology into another.

Re:Good riddance!

[The End Of Days]

Redesigning a web interface is NOT that hard, even if it's all activeX shit

Everything is easy when there's no chance you'll ever have to be the one to do it.

Re:Good riddance!

[thetoadwarrior]

Exactly, they should pay not the rest of the world so most major sites can clearly tell IE6 to fuck off and it shouldn't affect those companies because they don't to do online shopping or watch youtube videos.

Fuck 'em and leave them in the stone age where they belong.

Re:Good riddance!

[dkf]

If Google or Mozilla would spend some time/money on re-architecting their patching model and their deployment of settings they would be very viable in the corporate space.

Have you offered to help them do that? Or are you just going to sit on your ass and bitch about it without doing anything at all to deal with it? (No, coding is not the only thing that would need to be done so protesting that you're not a programmer is no excuse!) That's the thing about open source software; if it's wrong for what you care about then help make it right.

(Me? I work at a place where using non-IE is fully viable anyway due to different installation rules.)

Re:Good riddance!

[John Hasler]

> So, we firewall the network they are on and cross our fingers.

Hold on a minute. The network these $500k machines are on was not firewalled from day one?

Re:Good riddance!

[thetoadwarrior]

It took exactly 2 seconds to find a solution on Google. Firefox MSI installer: http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

Read before replying. I even mentioned Frontmotion by name.

Re:Good riddance!

[thetoadwarrior]

Firefox has already been sorted out with an MSI installer and the ability to use group policies. Non-lazy admins are finding ways to deploy Chrome.

Some admins are proactive and protect their users. Then there are others who have to pushed into doing something other than looking at Digg. These are the people maintaining all the IE6 machines.

Re:Good riddance!

[vbraga]

Replying to undo moderation.

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

Or are you just going to sit on your ass and bitch about it without doing anything at all to deal with it?

No one is bitching and whining. I deploy IE because it works, i can update it securely without repackaging security updates over reliable, known infrastructure (WSUS).

IE8 is good enough and doesn't require additional effort. People are whining that companies aren't using Firefox and Chrome - there's a perfectly logical explanation for that.

Re:Good riddance!

[mstahl]

Why not force an upgrade to IE7 or 8 and separate the ActiveX functionality into a plugin IT personnel at companies that depend on that functionality can install. That way ordinary users who don't have the plugin installed don't have the security headaches ActiveX implies, and companies get to keep their ancient software.

Re:Good riddance!

[mstahl]

We don't let horse and buggy on the interstate anymore, no matter HOW rich the idiot is. There's no reason to put up with IE6's shit anymore either.

I'm amish, you insensitive clod!!!

Seriously though, that's just about the most eloquent way I've heard it being put. I didn't have mod points so I decided to go with the above comment instead. Enjoy.

Re:Good riddance!

[Rich0]

Well, they're obviously going to be firewalled from the internet at large. However, extra steps were taken to minimize their communication with the internal network in general. The goal is to isolate any virus breakouts so that they don't take out every sort of system like this in a whole company.

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

You should mention that Citrix is a fucking nightmare.. :-/

Also, posting as AC, because slashdot cant seem to bother with Konqueror.
About time to leave this place..

Re:Good riddance!

[kanad]

Not only in house software but vendor softwares as well. We have a huge investment in HP Quality Centre, a test management software. The UI is ActiveX but works in IE 7 though. But only the devs have installed IE7 as we have local admin access, everyone else is IE6. And this will possibly stay for ever.

Re:Good riddance!

[shutdown -p now]

The problem is that many large companies have internal systems that were written back when Microsoft pushed ActiveX as the solution to all the world's problems.

Why would ActiveX be a problem, given that IE7 (and IE8) still supports it?

Re:Good riddance!

[shutdown -p now]

Firefox comes with it's own installer, but doesn't bring any update tools for large enterprises, and it doesn't use the standard MSI format.

Opera can't be updated by non-admin users either.

Can you explain what this "updated by non-admin users" is about, and why would you even want one in an enterprise environment?

So far as I can tell, with respect to Opera, it comes packaged in an MSI, which is as good as it gets for any third-party software on Windows from administration perspective. What am I missing?

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

Well, there are different environments to consider - a really big enterprise with 10'000s of users can easily repackage software for deployment.

But lets think of smaller companies - 100 users with an IT dept consisting of one or two persons.

With Internet Explorer, providing security updates is easy, as they're the same as Windows updates - just point the clients at a WSUS server, approve the updates, and the users can install them at their leisure (until the deadline runs out). WSUS is essentially free in a Windows environment.

Now, if you want to do the same with a third party browser, you'll need to start packaging your own update - not a problem in a 50'000 people shop with a 10 person "desktop software" team.

But a big problem in a 100 person shop with a single guy that handles all aspects of IT - the free tools to do this (GPO software assignments, computer startup scripts) have severe limitations and don't work right with todays mobile users. So you'll need to purchase additional software to handle deployment - like System Center Essentials.

Of course, you already have this issue with Adobe Reader, which also needs to be patched and updated constantly and isn't easily upgraded. But the point remains: Keeping IE up to date is simple and cost effective. Keeping third party browsers up to date is expensive and requires work for each security fix.

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

Why?

My experiences with Citrix so far have been good - most of the issues i've had stemmed from shitty applications and the fact that those shitty applications need 32bit TS.

Re:Good riddance!

[Just Some Guy]

I know one Very Large company that just upgraded its internal users from IE4 to IE6. IE7 isn't feasible, and IE8 even less so.

Vista ships with IE7. So how long will Very Large Company be able to buy XP site licenses, and how long will XP continue to support new hardware? I could imagine "legacy-free" machines coming out that no longer boot anything older than Vista.

Re:Good riddance!

[richlv]

I know one Very Large company that just upgraded its internal users from IE4 to IE6.

ergh. could you name the company ? as an ac, if required. just so that... you know... i could avoid their products as much as possible.
"serious mismanagement" doesn't even sound right for that decision.

Re:Good riddance!

[dirkdodgers]

Firefox/Chrome/Operate are not alternatives only in environments managed by fucking incompetent MSCEs who think being a system administrator means being really good at clicking around in group policy editor.

Firefox will run from read-only binaries on a network mounted volume, and will store its profile in a network mounted user home directory.

You can't figure out how to deploy and manage Firefox in your environment? Doesn't bring any update tools for large enterprises? THAT'S YOUR FUCKING JOB, to deploy the apps to your users that are best for them, not the ones that give you the most shiny integration with group policy editor. Hands down, by every independent assessment, any of these browsers beat the pants off of IE in meeting the needs of end users.

Educate and apply yourself, man. How do you think we got by before group policy editor and deep freeze? If you can't deploy and manage Firefox, you're doing something wrong.

Re:Good riddance!

[Blakey Rat]

Ok so we gave the IT people at these companies, what, 5 solid years of goodwill? (A little less, I guess... IE7 came out in October of 2006.)

At what point does the goodwill run out and we all collectively say, "hey, get your fucking act together al-fucking-ready!!" I know personally, I've been saying that at least the last year.

If you work at one of these companies "stuck" on IE6: Get your fucking act together al-fucking-ready!" You've slacked enough, get to work.

Re:Good riddance!

[antdude]

Yeah, SP2 ends MS' support this July 13th, 2010. IE6 should be the same and require IE7+ for SP3. Or maybe add IE7+ for SP4 (if ever gets made).

Re:Good riddance!

[arth1]

The IT people can't just "get their act together". They have no means to replace complete systems. If a company depends on systems that only works with IE6, not only do they need replacement systems, but they also need data migration paths. That's not something IT can do, and in the case of "black box" type producs, it can be exceedingly difficult, time consuming and costly.
The inconvenience of some users who browse the internet isn't enough for the CEOs to open the wallets and fund replacements, as long as the old systems still work. The IT departments don't get a vote on this.

Legacy systems will only be replaced when they become too costly to maintain or lack needed functionality that can't be patched on. Which is why you not only find IE6 in many companies, but quite likely a bunch of old NT machines in a corner that run specific vital functions, not to mention 3270/CICS and old COBOL apps with code from the 70s.

And interestingly enough, one of the main reasons for virtualization (like VMware, citrix, xen, kvm, qm, 370-compatible LPARs) isn't better resource management or consolidation, but because the legacy systems won't run on new hardware, and you just can't buy the old hardware anymore.

Re:Good riddance!

[lukas84]

Firefox will run from read-only binaries on a network mounted volume, and will store its profile in a network mounted user home directory.

Great idea for laptops.

Seriously, you don't get it. Why reinvent the wheel when IE already works well, and you don't have to do much to deploy security updates?

Users aren't demanding Firefox/Chrome/whatever. Management isn't either. Developers are, but they have local admin rights and can install them if they want to.

It's my job to make sure that stuff is running well, not waste money and time deploying alternative browsers when the ones we have right now already work well.

Do a simple analysis - time & money required to deploy IE, time & money required to deploy IE _AND_ Firefox.

IE wins. That's why we use it.

Re:Good riddance!

[yuhong]

FOUR FULL OPERATING SYSTEMS BEHIND

Actually two full versions of Windows behind.

Re:Good riddance!

[Anonymous Coward]

But what are these companies expecting? Just how long to they want to cling on IE6? Decades? Centuries? Millenia?

Re:Good riddance!

[arth1]

But what are these companies expecting? Just how long to they want to cling on IE6? Decades? Centuries? Millenia?

They don't know. When businesses install new systems, they seldom make obsolescence plans and set aside money for replacing them. Yes, that's what depreciation is, and why they get a tax break on it. But in the IT world, you can't make plans years ahead, because there's no knowing what will be available then. Think about it -- when you buy a piece of software, do you make plans for what to replace it with five years down the road, and start setting aside money now?

In short, the companies won't allocate any funds for replacements until the costs of maintenance exceeds the costs of replacement, or there's new functionality that the old systems don't provide that is absolutely vital to have.

So an IT application may last for five years, ten years, twenty, or even longer. And Microsoft is in the business of business, and will continue to provide premium support for IE6 for as long as there are enough customers who are willing to pay the premium support prices.

Re:Good riddance!

[mikechant]

You know that premuim versions of Win7 include 'XP mode'? This solves the license and hardware issues.

Re:Good riddance!

[Just Some Guy]

And does XP mode ship with IE6?

Re:Good riddance!

[jhaygood86]

It does.

All I can say is...

[Uranium-238]

about fucking time!

Epitaph

[johnw]

upgrade their browsers to pretty much anything else

What an appropriate assessment of IE6.

Re:Epitaph

[Anonymous Coward]

Today, certainly, but as Ballmer once said, you'll miss Vista when it's gone.

(Well, really, I think the quote was something like, when everyone uses Windows 7, it will be easier to appreciate the changes that were introduced in Vista. But anyway.)

Consider ye poor, scrawny IE6 in the light of its predecessors—IE5 and 5.5. IE6 at least gets cred, despite its awfulness, for having a pop-up blocker.

Re:Epitaph

[Anonymous Coward]

I have windows 2000, with IE6. IE7 and IE8 can't be installed. Moreover, the latest version of google toolbar won't install anyhow since during install it complains that it can't find some DLL interface name.

Re:Epitaph

[lukas84]

Windows 2000 security updates will cease in Juni/Juli 2010, so you _need_ to upgrade your OS anyway.

Re:Epitaph

[jellomizer]

I am sure you get get firefox at least to work with it and you are still better off then ie6

Re:Epitaph

[dissy]

I have windows 2000, with IE6. IE7 and IE8 can't be installed. Moreover, the latest version of google toolbar won't install anyhow since during install it complains that it can't find some DLL interface name.

I think I see the root of your problem...

Now I'm the last person to knock old hardware and software, but comon dude, you are willingly running 10 year old software!
That complaint is about as valid as being angry an Apple//e from the 80s can't do that new fangled 'http' thing.

Re:Epitaph

[Hurricane78]

I was very impressed, that nowadays links2/elinks does JavaScript, can use CSS, has tabbed browsing, and even includes a BitTorrent client! One of them also does UTF-8. (Oh, and if you need it, you even get a graphics mode!)

So switching from IE6 to those, would definitely be an upgrade. :)

I wonder if we could define standard APIs for all the components of browsers... HTML parsers with DOM trees, CSS interpreters, JS machines, renderers, plugin-interfaces... So that everyone could glue his own browser together... That would be really cool. (Take Google’s JS engine, the KHTML engine, etc, and make your perfect browser.)

Re:Epitaph

[CohibaVancouver]

I have windows 2000, with IE6

On a volunteer basis I manage an older PC running Windows 2000. I recently installed Firefox on it to replace IE 6. It runs fine. To prevent user-confusion I deleted all the IE icons she could see, and changed the Firefox icon to the "Blue E" (sacrilege, I know, but what're you gonna do?)

She barely realized she wasn't using IE anymore.

Re:Epitaph

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I'm the last person to knock old hardware and software, but comon dude, you are willingly running 10 year old software!

That's like saying unix is over 30 years old.

Windows 2000 is a solid, reliable, well-known, well-documented & supported operating system. Businesses like that kind of stability. None of that DRM or activation crap.

Parts of windows 2000 are 10 years old, but many are not. It has been upgraded extensively over the years.

Re:Epitaph

[Anonymous Coward]

Try running a 30 year old unix online without any updates.

Re:Epitaph

[mister_playboy]

Firefox and Opera both support Windows 2000 and run great on it.

Re:Epitaph

[thetoadwarrior]

Little to no new Windows software will run on your system and MS won't even support it after the summer. You'd be much better off installing Linux and if for some reason you need W2k, run it in a VM or on its own partition when needed. There is no legit reason to be running such outdated software all the time when Linux run fine on old hardware.

Re:Epitaph

[Anonymous Coward]

Try running a 30 year old unix online without any updates.

The point of the statement is that even though unix is more than 30 years old, it has been updated extensively over that time period, and is still updated & patched today.

Even though windows 2000 was released more than 10 years ago, it has been updated extensively over that time period, and is still updated & patched today.

Age is not a determining factor in software quality & reliability.

Re:Epitaph

[Radhruin]

Interestingly, this is still supported by Microsoft. Presumably there are a few customers out there with IE5 on Win2000 machines yet.

Re:Epitaph

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there are not updates to all 30 year old unix operating systems. There are newer versions available of some of them, just as there newer versions of Windows. If you choose not to upgrade once your product is no longer supported with security updates, unix or windows, you will be fucked.

Re:Epitaph

[Anonymous Coward]

Install Ubuntu. It's not like anything new is going to be compatible with your OS anyway.

Re:Epitaph

[gunpowder]

On the one hand I fully agree with you. Don't complain if your computer is not working with the latest software/websites/hardware if you don't bother to keep it up-to-date.
On the other hand sometimes you don't have any other choice, as you might not be in the position to change the OS.

I am a working for an insurance company (one of the BIG ones), and all PCs in our agencies in Germany are still running Windows 2000.
The company's failure to have a proper upgrade strategy in place, it's NIH syndrome combined with the lack of (well trained) software developers and it's officialism caused massive delays in rolling out a sucessor platform/product.

Luckily they finally started this year with the roll-out on all agencies PCs - ie. manual install of a new OS and apps, and we're talking about 8000 machines ... that process should be finished by Q4.

Oh BTW, they're updating to Windows XP.

Re:Epitaph

[dissy]

On the one hand I fully agree with you. Don't complain if your computer is not working with the latest software/websites/hardware if you don't bother to keep it up-to-date.
On the other hand sometimes you don't have any other choice, as you might not be in the position to change the OS.

Oh yes, I am aware that can be the case (and usually is.)

The GP however used two phrases to indicate to me that was not the case. "I run" and "my computer".

Granted, he could be referring to the computer assigned to him at work, and is just referring to it in a horribly confusing and incorrect way (It does happen, a lot!)

But even if that was the case, he was blaming microsoft for this. If it is a work computer, and the persons in charge are keeping it in that configuration, then clearly that is where the blame lies, no matter if the reason is good or not.

You can't blame microsoft for not upgrading IE6. They did, it's called IE7 (and now IE8)

I do have a bit more sympathy for those who are stuck with that combo due to someone else maintaining the machine that way. It does suck. But jumping the gun and blaming everyone right down to microsoft is not helping anything.

As you say, some times there are reasons unavoidable.
Where I work, we use an ERP package that makes us dependent on XP (32 bit no less!), which at this point in time is not so bad as XP is still pretty common, and Vista really was enough of a failure to deserve being skipped.
Sadly, Windows 7 requires beefier hardware than XP did, and companies love making things easier on them by ordering OEM machines just powerful enough to run the OS that came on them (if that)

So upgrades will cost in hardware, software for the OSs, software on the backend to go with the new workstations, and cost in updating all that older software that made everything a dependency in the first place. That's some big dollars. It won't happen all that quickly.

Subject line is way too broad

[shoppa]

I personally use Lynx and for 99% of my Google use, it works just as well as it did 14 years ago.

I know that for some, Google = Google Docs or Google Site, but honestly I don't even know what those are.

Google, to me, is just Google search.

Re:Subject line is way too broad

[Anonymous Coward]

BAH! I use telnet on port 80 and type in my own request headers.

Re:Subject line is way too broad

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, too cool for school, eh? This has to be a troll.

Re:Subject line is way too broad

[aflag]

Google docs is sort like a web version of MS Word (or openoffice writer). I use google in Google Chrome and/or Mozilla Firefox. I think they provide far better experience than lynx. They are capable of rendering figures, have good support for a web scripting language (called javascript and, sometimes, ECMAscript; though nobody knows the difference) they even have capabilities to allow you to watch a video right off your browser. There are a lot of other nice features as well.

Re:Subject line is way too broad

[Anonymous Coward]

You can say what you want about IE6, but lynx is worse GPL crap. When I tried my HTML5 site with all browsers I could get, the only one to be unable to keep up was lynx(I have to use anchors, really?). IE6 didn't support the CSS but semantically, everything worked right. If the Web wasn't controlled by homosexuals and retards who cannot program in real programming languages, IE6 would be a pretty decent browser.

Re:Subject line is way too broad

[Anonymous Coward]

BAH! I use telnet on port 80 and type in my own request headers.

Noob.

I telnet into port 443 and also do key exchange and encrytion by hand.

Re:Subject line is way too broad

[syockit]

-whoosh-

Re:Subject line is way too broad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I also love the "night view" option that Lynx supports for google maps. :p

IE6: key functionality won't work properly

[Anonymous Coward]

How will anyone tell the difference?

I think Google is being reactionary here

[bogaboga]

Just deciding to end support for a product in a month's time after a major hack is being reactionary. This move will definitely wreck havoc in [large] organizations that typically take more than a month to implement change. Google should know this because they are seeking to support these same organizations with their various products.

I am a little disappointed that Google would do this. If I were Google, my alternative would be to offer "a final" one year of support so that companies which rely on IE6 can plot strategies.

Google dropped the ball here. I expected better from them.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a little disappointed that Google would do this. If I were Google, my alternative would be to offer "a final" one year of support so that companies which rely on IE6 can plot strategies.

Google dropped the ball here. I expected better from them.

Any company still relying on IE6 dropped the ball long before Google.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[Anonymous Coward]

They say they had this planned before the hack.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[sourcerror]

Nothing can stop you installing Firefox besides IE. They can have IE for their legacy ActiveX intranet stuff, Firefox for anything else.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[olsmeister]

IE6 has long been known to be non-standards compliant and insecure, and quite frankly these companies should have had the foresight to be moving away from it years ago.

Microsoft themselves wants companies to abandon IE6.

Consider it a little tough love from Google. If they announced they'd end support for IE6 in 18 months, nobody would do anything for the next 15 months.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[el_tedward]

If a company has to move a bit faster because they haven't had the brains to move away from IE6, then that's their problem, not Google's.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[AdmiralXyz]

No way. The writing has been on the wall for IE6 for years, both from Google (many of their more advanced products, like Wave, state very explicitly that something more modern than IE6 is needed if you want to partake), and across the internet (Digg, YouTube, etc.). Any IT shop that hasn't already begun plans to migrate away from IE6 by now is just being stubborn, and needs a kick in the pants.

I know why there are so many businesses that won't upgrade from IE6, with their legacy web apps that they refuse to upgrade, but for God's sake, IE8 has compatibility mode. For the good of humanity, upgrade!

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[Arimus]

Corporate policies can - or are you suggesting ingore your company's policy?

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[Anonymous Coward]

how about changing the policy then?

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but they didn't tell anyone.

Moving away from IE6 is a fine thing, but giving people using IE6 a little more of a heads-up (remember, most of the people using IE6 aren't reading slashdot, or announcements from Google, etc) is an even finer thing.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[bobdinkel]

It may seem reactionary, but I suspect the debate about whether to end support for IE6 has been going on for quite some time.

I would be very interested to know what percentage of Google Docs users are still using IE6. I would also be very interested in knowing how much it costs Google to support IE6 (the recent attacks notwithstanding). The development costs of supporting IE6 in any sort of web application are not insignificant. I suspect the percentage of the development budget that Google uses to support IE6 is disproportionate to the percentage of IE6 users.

Dropping IE6 is inevitable. Sure it leaves some people behind, but I'll bet the benefits of doing so significantly outweigh the drawbacks.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[kbrasee]

Corporate policies can - or are you suggesting ingore your company's policy?

If a company has issues with you "breaking corporate policy" because you install Firefox on your machine, then that's one more reason to quit.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[mixmatch]

And that is why all the arguments being made that the IT departments aren't responsible for companies sticking with IE6 are nonsensical.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[jafiwam]

They have had a "heads up" that IE is shit since forever. If your IT folk are so asleep at the switch that "IE6 sucks and is going away" is a surprise, they need to go back to flipping burgers.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[b4dc0d3r]

If your business plan means you use one proprietary system (IE) to access another proprietary system, and your support contract doesn't ensure both parties are in lock step, you fucked up.

Any time someone says "don't take away that functionality, I need it for these third party apps", that's a fuck up.

If access is business-critical, don't use a proprietary system where you're at the whim of the vendor. We've all learned that at one point or another, some businesses are slow to learn.

So it might be company policy to depend on a vendor that doesn't care about you - time to change the policy, and expose the fuck up. Worst case, they fire you for complaining, and you get to tell an interviewer you got fired for raising the alarm on an inevitable failure. There's a chance you won't change anything. Anything better than that is an improvement you can probably live with.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[espamo]

I know why there are so many businesses that won't upgrade from IE6, with their legacy web apps that they refuse to upgrade, but for God's sake, IE8 has compatibility mode. For the good of humanity, upgrade!

If by compatibibility mode, you mean compatibility view, according to Microsoft it will "display the website as viewed in Internet Explorer 7", not ie6.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually did tell people, large corporate users of google apps (Those same slow moving companies that stupidly use IE6 still) got a notification letter while ago.

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[John Hasler]

Why should it take more than a month to change such a policy?

Re:I think Google is being reactionary here

[thetoadwarrior]

No, we've held the hands of these losers long enough and they're still on IE6. Everyone should tell these companies to either get left behind and die or move forward with the times.

Everyone should do this

[bhunachchicken]

Seriously, it might sound really "anti-Microsoft" or being pathetic, but everyone should really either be blacklisting or reducing the available functionality of websites to users still browsing with MSIE 6.0

Reducing functionality and putting up a message to let users know that they need to upgrade, would be the best decision.

After all, it's not as if there aren't any alternatives available...

Re:Everyone should do this

[AdmiralXyz]

It's not "anti-Microsoft", it's common sense. Microsoft wants IE6 to go away as much as, if not more than, anyone else. Every day that people keep using IE6 is one more day that they have to spend writing/testing security updates for an ancient product, and dealing with embarrassing stories like this Chinese hacking situation. It's a testament to the stubbornness of many corporate IT shops that even when the rest of the world, including Microsoft, screams "GET RID OF THIS BROWSER!", they don't budge. I was in favor of a slow, phased migration 2-3 years ago, but now I think websites should just start dropping IE6 support with no warning. People need to get the message.

Re:Everyone should do this

[Tim C]

everyone should really either be blacklisting or reducing the available functionality of websites to users still browsing with MSIE 6.0

Reducing functionality and putting up a message to let users know that they need to upgrade, would be the best decision.

I disagree. I think everyone should just stop considering IE 6 when implementing new features or creating new websites. Just stop worrying about whether it'll work in IE 6.

That requires less effort on our part, but achieves the same end - IE 6 eventually dies. Though the article isn't clear, I strongly suspect that that's what Google is doing; it looks to me as though March 1st is the planned release date for a new version of their web apps, and they aren't going to care if it breaks in IE 6. I'd be surprised if they're actively breaking it for IE 6; it's not worth the effort.

Re:Everyone should do this

[tokul]

After all, it's not as if there aren't any [microsoft.com] alternatives [mozilla.com] available [google.com]...

Your "any" link is broken. It does not list alternative. Only other version of same piece of sh*t that calls itself a browser.

Re:Everyone should do this

[ClosedSource]

It depends if you think pissing off some of your customers is better than supporting IE6. I suspect that developers say "yes" and management says "no". Guess who gets the final word?

Re:Everyone should do this

[MattBD]

I'm in the process of building a personal website as I'm planning a new career in web development and I can point to that as evidence I know what I'm doing. I'm thinking that the best thing to do is include the code from http://www.ie6nomore.com/ to notify IE6 users that they need to upgrade to be able to use the site properly, but I'm interested to know what others would do.

Re:Everyone should do this

[shutdown -p now]

Seriously, it might sound really "anti-Microsoft" or being pathetic, but everyone should really either be blacklisting or reducing the available functionality of websites to users still browsing with MSIE 6.0

It's not anti-Microsoft in the slightest. Practically everyone I know working on web applications in here would be ecstatic to be able to finally drop IE6 support.

The fact that IE7 and IE8 were "recommended" updates on Windows Update might also give a hint.

So, bring it on!

Re:Everyone should do this

[drinkypoo]

It would make more sense to print a notice, because if your site fails your users will think you're an idiot. At the extreme end, there are users [like me] who think you're a schmuck if your website won't degrade gracefully if javascript is disabled; but most people will think you're a tard if your website doesn't work in the browser that comes with their shitty windows.

Re:Everyone should do this

[WeatherGod]

I would agree with this, but with a caveat. I was recently in a reversed situation where a website could not recognize my developer's version of Firefox 3.5 and forced me into a reduced features mode. For a fellow worker who was using a up-to-date version of Firefox 2.x (I forget which version), it absolutely refused to let him onto the website because the browser was "not compatible". I then noticed that it refused other "browsers" like elinks (as opposed to offering a compatibility mode).

They told me that they don't support official versions and that Firefox 2.x was "horribly outdated" (note that they still supported IE6 in reduced mode). And also that they wouldn't support "obscure" browsers.

The lesson is to not outright *prevent* users from entering the website in whichever mode they liked. It is impossible to maintain a complete list of supported browsers and false identification of custom browsers is a bitch. If anything, if yo have a list of browsers that you know works fine, then for any browser that doesn't match that list, make a notice that the browser is not officially supported and that the user may experience issues (or *recommend* that the user go into reduced mode).

Re:Everyone should do this

[WeatherGod]

s/support official versions/support unofficial versions/

Re:Everyone should do this

[tokul]

The fact that IE7 and IE8 were "recommended" updates on Windows Update might also give a hint.

They are not listed recommended updates. They are listed as security updates. Such way of updating does not give hints. It raises questions why company abuses system update functions to push new major versions.

Re:Everyone should do this

[arth1]

If I were a company recruiter, and saw your web page bitching at me for my company's choice of browser, I would probably move your resume into circular storage.

One thing is not actively supporting. Another is to actively deny.

Re:Everyone should do this

[MattBD]

It's kind of hard to decide which way to go, precisely for that reason. If I was freelancing I would be inclined to make IE6 support an optional extra and charge a little more for it (maybe 10-20%).

Upgrade to pretty much anything else.

[psYchotic87]

Does "pretty much anything else" include IE5?

Re:Upgrade to pretty much anything else.

[orique]

That would be *down*grading.

Re:Upgrade to pretty much anything else.

[dsavi]

Speaking of that, to quote the article, Google is telling users to "upgrade to pretty much anything else". I find this interesting. Is there any browser better than IE6 that Google does not want people upgrading to?

Re:Upgrade to pretty much anything else.

[TheRaven64]

Opera didn't seem to be on the list.

Re:Upgrade to pretty much anything else.

[jones_supa]

Would moving to Chrome then be "sidegrading"? ;)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Be evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Do a genocide of IE6 users. If we can kill 6 million jews, 800,000 tutsis, 50 million communists, 1 million armenians, over 9000 Serbians and others then we can kill the millions of IE6 users. Heil Google, der Internetfuerer.

Firefox 3.6 works just fine with windows 2000

[voss]

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requirements.html

I think this is just great.

[Rexdude]

We keep hearing how IE6 has remained in corporate use because of legacy applications that won't run on anything else. Now considering Google's popularity, all the holdovers will be forced to upgrade if they want to keep using it.
Alternately, we may see an increase in use of other search engines like Bing.

Re:I think this is just great.

[night_flyer]

except that most corporate holdovers arent using googledocs anyway...

Re:I think this is just great.

[Rexdude]

TFA says even regular search may not work properly
with IE6 going forward, and that would still be important.

Re:I think this is just great.

[milnivlek]

TFA says even regular search may not work properly with IE6 going forward, and that would still be important.

Where does it say this? Google's blog entry only mentions Google Docs and Google Sites specifically, and there's no indication that this dropping of IE6 support is planned to extend beyond Google Apps (seeing as how the entry was posted by the Google Apps Product Manager). There's no word on the main search interface--and I very much doubt that Google is going to risk losing ~10% of its users to Bing and other alternatives.

Re:I think this is just great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to read you paki cunt.

Microsoft phases out support for Netscape 4

[David Gerard]

Microsoft is phasing out support for Netscape 4, in retaliation for Google declaring Internet Explorer 6 a "pustulent syphilitic drunken crack whore with no mates. And bad breath. Who smells funny."

Google has given up bothering to support IE6 on its sites, directing the doubtless hideously virus-infected users of the browser to download another browser. Any other browser. "Lynx will give you a vastly superior YouTube experience. Now it will, anyway."

"The Mozilla Foundation has completely failed to fix problems in Netscape 4 that have been around for years," said Microsoft marketing marketer Jonathan Ness. "Furthermore, Firefox gets just as many hacks as Internet Explorer, and pay no attention to my lengthening nose."

In December, Chinese hackers exploited a weak spot in IE6 that Microsoft had only known about since September. Following this, governments worldwide told people to get the hell off IE6, except Britain, which relies on IE6 to leak data when there are insufficient funds for USB sticks or train journeys for civil servants.

Web designers around the world welcomed Google's move, but have not given up their Bill Gates dartboards just yet. "'That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.' Steve Ballmer said that, you know."

Why not run two browsers?

[irid77]

It's so confusing to me that this is a problem at all. Why can't these companies that have some legacy requirement for IE6 for some internal company database just keep IE6 for that purpose, and have any other browser installed for browsing the actual internet? You could even restrict IE6's access to the local network if needed to direct users.

Re:Why not run two browsers?

[ClosedSource]

I suspect that this problem has been exaggerated on Slashdot because people here want to see IE6 die. Businesses that still use IE6 are probably satisfied with it or do exactly what you suggest if they have apps that depend on it.

Huge developer time savings.

[Anonymous Coward]

During 2009, I asked my web dev team to track, in our bug tracker, how long they spend fixing issues for each browser. Most of our web development is for internal users, and we have to support some old systems running IE6.

The total amount of time varied between the different developers, as expected. The average for the web developers was just under 60 hours.

One developer put in 325 hours fixing bugs relating to IE6 alone. I don't think that number is due to a lack of skill on his part. He's actually one of the better developers, and so he often took the more difficult bugs.

That doesn't look like a lot of time at a quick glance, but do the math. For our typical 40 hour workweek, that one developer spent over two full months last year alone fixing problems due to IE6. That's many thousands of dollars that were basically wasted, and that doesn't include the time and money the other devs also wasted supporting IE6.

So now that we had some real data that we could use to show the financial cost of IE6, management was willing to listen. We took our data nearly to the top, and successfully got our company to drop IE6. Not only that, but we talked them into dropping support for IE completely, including IE7 and IE8. We got them to standardize on Chrome, and we're currently in the process of deploying it company-wide. Our lives will be much more enjoyable from this point onwards, I think.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm calling bullshit on this one.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[mister_playboy]

Not only that, but we talked them into dropping support for IE completely, including IE7 and IE8. We got them to standardize on Chrome, and we're currently in the process of deploying it company-wide. Our lives will be much more enjoyable from this point onwards, I think.

It was believable up until this part. No IE support at all? That seems wildly unlikely.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you've ever worked in a large corporate environment. Just because they officially support Chrome for their internal applications doesn't mean that users won't have Internet Explorer or some other browser installed.

It probably doesn't even mean that they have to use Chrome, just that they won't get help from the developers if they're using IE, and that the developers won't go out of their way to make sure that their web applications work in anything but Chrome.

I worked at a place like that a few years ago, where they standardized on Netscape Navigator 8 for some reason. That version of Netscape was particularly shitty, so some of us used Firefox. The app mostly worked, but IT wouldn't help us if we had problems.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Idimmu Xul]

Exactly. Completely FUD from the GP. And still moderators modded it up.. sad.

For non general Internet facing sites not supporting IE isn't that uncommon. For the web services that we resell we only support Firefox and our clients are happy with that.

The general reason for the IE 6 problem isn't home users scared to upgrade but that mega corporations have an existing outdated Intranet that works with IE6 and are slow at trumping up cash for R&D on redeveloping their sites and workstation environments.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[John Hasler]

> We got them to standardize on Chrome...

But did you get them to standardize on standards?

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[6Yankee]

Like the developer mentioned in the parent post, I tend to get the horrible stuff. I'm the "UI guy" on the project, and most experienced in HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

I knew IE6 was bad news and was sucking up far too much of my time, and kept saying this to those above me. But we "had to" support it. So I started keeping track of just how much time it was costing me. It did vary but, for a given issue or work package, I would spend anywhere between 30 and 70 percent of my time on IE6 work-arounds, kludges, hacks. Then you factor in that someone has usually struggled with the problem before bringing it to me...

Those numbers, writ large in PowerPoint and projected in front of the people who pay my wages, finally convinced them to drop IE6 support. I'd said it was a problem for two years, but it took actual numbers to convince them of the cost.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother discussing anything serious with sopssa. He's a 12-year-old who has no idea about how anything works in the corporate world.

He used to post here as TripMaster Monkey, but had to start his new sopssa account after he repeatedly made too many stupid statements and ruined his reputation.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[schnablebg]

Unfortunately, not all developers can drop IE6 support. If you have an e-commerce site, especially one that might target older or less tech savvy customers, any unsupported browser is a lost sale, and IE6 use is still high enough that this is significant.

I also question the wisdom of targeting a single browser. What if there is a huge security vulnerability in Chrome, a showstopper bug (like, it stops working on the next Windows service pack or OS X update), or Google drops development for some reason? This is almost as bad as back in the old days when devs targeted IE6 exclusively.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are very, very few home users of IE 6 these days. We're talking down towards 2% to 3% of the market. They're negligible at this point, and you won't lose sales if you don't support them. It's mainly corporations who are slow to upgrade, and they're typically only using it for ancient internal apps that use ActiveX controls.

I can see why they'd choose Google and Chrome as their standard browser. They're the only browser developer willing to pay good money for anyone who reports security issues. In the past, even minor issues get patched very quickly, much faster than we see with IE or even Firefox. And it's doubtful that Google will stop development of Chrome. Even if they did, at least their sites will work with Firefox, Opera and Safari, since Chrome actually follows the standards very well. That's still much better than depending on IE 6.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, maybe for an intranet.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was believable up until this part. No IE support at all? That seems wildly unlikely.

What's so unbelievable about it? Where I work, we code to standards. We don't "support" browsers. As a result, our product only works on webkit. So, fuck y'all on IE. Seriously, and we'll tell you that to your face. The product we're working on will be free in an industry that is trying to charge ~$10,000 per seat per year. Browsers are free. Want to use our free solution? Get a decent fucking browser, champ. Want to use IE? Go spend $10000/year/seat. Your choice.

We write to standards and test it all on Safari. It's not hard to 'support' Mozilla and Opera for HTML, but we're doing a lot of animated SVG too and Mozilla fails that completely. Opera sorta works for the animated SVG, but its animation is jerky and doesn't support the <set> element... so no Opera for now. Sorry. When they improve their browsers, feel free to use them.

Re:Huge developer time savings.

[Ngarrang]

My company has zero support for IE. We support FireFox and Chrome on our desktops only. And our web site is guaranteed to work in Firefox and Chrome, only. Outside vendors that bring in products that require IE are simply not purchased.

Since we instituted this policy, I've had fewer occurences of malware to contend with.

ie6nomore ftw!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ie6nomore.com/

Support for legacy technology, a necessary evil.

[mmell]

It's a common enough trap. I won't fault Microsoft for evolving their own standards with Internet Explorer, it makes perfect sense when considering the proprietary software model. Here's the trap - when software is obliged to evolve (due to exploits, demands for new functionality, etc.) there's an inevitable question of "pay now or pay later". Every organization I've ever worked for, large and small alike, invariably answer with "Pay later!". You can point out the "interest" associated with that choice and the answer is still "PAY LATER!!". In the opensource world there's certainly a mindset oriented towards staying compatible with the latest stable release of anything, but the proprietary model involves money. Nothing's free, not even an upgrade - if you get it free, it just means they built the cost into something else. Hence the lockin on a legacy technology which is now quite obsolete - hell, even Microsoft themselves have been screaming at everyone to please update to the latest-and-most-mediocre version of Internet Explorer for years now.

Microsoft is like McDonald's - it's not their fault we're stuck with the pain of getting rid of a legacy application - all they did was make us the offer "Pay now or pay later". It's not their fault Corporate America couldn't put down the cheeseburger and back their fat(-cat) butts away from the table.

Why there is no virtual IE6 in sandboxes?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I am probably asking a dumb question. Why is not there a product that will run IE6 inside a virtual machine? So all those companies that had written software specifically targetting IE6 will run this application, that will watch all the net connections and disk access and permit only very specific whitelisted activity to go on. A real modern browser will be available and slowly they can transition out of IE6. There is money to be made doing this. Why no body is doing this? Or are they doing it already without much publicity?

IBM has always shipped emulators for its previous versions. These emulators are so comprehensive they would run the entire emulator of the previous version in it. Thus there used to be codes written long ago, without source code, without original coders around, that will run inside an emulator for 360 running inside an emulator for 360/155 which runs inside an emulator for 3090 which runs inside an emulator for ....

Why such a solution is impossible for ActiveX application using IE6 as its GUI?

Re:Why there is no virtual IE6 in sandboxes?

[lukas84]

Why is not there a product that will run IE6 inside a virtual machine?

There are plenty of tools to do this (MED-V, XP Mode, etc.), but there's no business case for it, except "being more secure".

This can be very hard to sell, so it's not only a technology problem but an organizational one too, because upgrading from "IE6 on XP" to "IE6 in a VM accessed by XP" or "IE6 on a TS accessed by XP" means you'll need to spend a lot of money. You'll need a very good CIO to sell this to the rest of management why this should be done. And if the CIO doesn't think this is a good idea, then there's no chance in hell that this will ever happen.

Re:Why there is no virtual IE6 in sandboxes?

[VortexCortex]

Does it have to be virtual? If you just want to sandbox IE why not just use Sandboxie?

Re:Why there is no virtual IE6 in sandboxes?

[davester666]

I thought Microsoft has a VM available on their web site that just has IE6 in it [so it's WinXP + IE6, and you can't install other apps in it], as least for testing web sites. And they are free.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&DisplayLang=en

Re:Why there is no virtual IE6 in sandboxes?

[lukas84]

Look at the licensing terms - those are for App Compat testing, not for running production workloads.

First

[goldaryn]

First Google came for IE, and I said nothing, cos Fuck IE. Then Google came for Firefox, and I said nothing, cos Fuck Firefox. Then Google came for Opera, and I said nothing, cos Fuck Opera. Then Google came for Chrome, no wait Then Google came for me, and when I came to my butt hurt a lot but I found a Droid in my shirt pocket. Result

I suspect

[ClosedSource]

that IE6 users have a low participation percentage in Google services such as Docs.

For that reason it won't put much pressure on them to switch.

Search isn't done until IE6 won't run?

[ClosedSource]

If it's true, it would be a huge mistake on Google's part. It would be far more convenient to start using Bing than downloading a new browser.

There's also potential antitrust issues here if IE6 were blocked from search.

Some companies will consider this change a bonus

[Goldenhawk]

Some large corporation sysadmins will be thrilled that certain Google apps won't work correctly anymore.

My computing environment is heavily managed with group policy and very few user rights, and my company has many many thousands of users worldwide. We cannot even use thumb drives or install any software or hardware. For web connection, we are firmly stuck with IE6 and other outdated web software, mainly because of poorly-programmed corporate web apps with ultra-high security requirements (ironically) that the admins cannot afford to update for fear of the unknowns in new browsers. (For crying out loud, we still have a mandatory installation of Netscape!)

So the admins are always blocking off as many non-work-related sites as possible, and having such sites NOT work correctly will only further discourage users from trying them. For example, we can't use GMail or any other popular webmail sites. And I'm honestly surprised they haven't blocked Google Docs or Google Calendar yet, as they could "leak" data to the outside world.

I'd be that most large corporations are also in a similar fight against their users' desires for newer browsers and freer internet access. So I doubt that this move will really encourage many companies to ditch IE6 faster, and may in fact have the opposite effect in some cases.

IE4 to IE6 now?!

[ScottCooperDotNet]

I know one Very Large company that just upgraded its internal users from IE4 to IE6. IE7 isn't feasible, and IE8 even less so.

I can barely imagine the fail that would have caused that. What OS were they on? Windows 2000 included IE5, XP had IE6, so they are on NT or 9x?

That's a huge sacrifice of security to avoid paying for developers to modernize things.

Re:IE4 to IE6 now?!

[Caesar Tjalbo]

Last August, a company I know moved from Windows ME (+ IE 5.5) to XP. Only because of failing hardware, I might add.

You need to rethink your priorities

[ClosedSource]

"Worst case, they fire you for complaining, and you get to tell an interviewer you got fired for raising the alarm on an inevitable failure."

Sure, I can just imagine telling my wife I got fired from my job but it was worth it because I helped save the world from IE6.

I myself

[Anonymous Coward]

have never used IE6 to access Google.
(only Firefox, Seamonkey, or , in the distant past, Opera.

Maybe The New Google Home Page Will Look Like This

[DorkRawk]

(Unforgiving) Google

I built this a little while ago, just for fun. Check it out in IE and in other browsers (FF, Safari, Chrome, etc)

one would think

[Gary W. Longsine]

"You'd think that a company with an $8 billion R&D budget could build a web browser that is 100% standards compliant, performs well, and adds enough value for their users to make it the browser of choice on Windows."

Sure, they could, but the easiest way to do it would be to base it on WebKit. That would be too humiliating.

Re:Some companies will consider this change a bonu

[ElVee]

I swear, we must work for the same faceless corporate overlords.

The huge, supposedly tech-savvy corporation I slave away for has reacted to the mass abandonment of IE6 with outright fear and panic. The upper management of our Data Security division came straight out of the mainframe era, and act like the word 'Firefox' is a horribly offensive expletive. It's just not an option.

As could be expected, we have some rather important corporate systems that were developed back in the big-budget heyday of the prior decade and, of course, only work on IE6. There's no money to pay for a rework, and the original vendor has long since gone bust. We have Citrix in-house, but, again, there's mass fear and panic going on there about having a mass influx of users for these outdated corporate systems, when there's no money for new servers.

We're testing IE8 for 'select' users (i.e. upper management, sales and marketing), but most of those users are poor choices for testing, as most of the important work they do seems to involve ESPN, Facebook and Craigslist.

Google to end support for Chrome 3.0

[azuretongue]

Seems like the the real story is that Google is no longer supporting their own browser that came out less than six months ago.

Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not only that, but we talked them into dropping support for IE completely, including IE7 and IE8. We got them to standardize on Chrome, and we're currently in the process of deploying it company-wide. Our lives will be much more enjoyable from this point onwards, I think."

Yes your lives, who gives a fuck about people trying to see it - ok, so its just for internal use - but it is incompetent webdesign from the start if it only works in some browsers.. works in all browsers.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No the problem is you add all kinds of javascript stylesheet crap, which just slows down peoples browsers. If you had stuck to normal and proper html, it wouldn't have taken you long. The problem is that you like most "webdevelopers" don't know how to make proper resolution independently websites (hence most can only be read if one has your eyes and your monitor).
The web was really fucked the day they invented those stupid stylesheets.

Re:No

[Low Ranked Craig]

Clue. Get one.

Hurrah!

[legio_noctis]

Title's basically all there is to it.

However, I was rather amused to find this on Bill Gates' new site:

<!--[if lt IE 7]> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/unitpngfix.js"> < /script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/ie6.css" /> <![endif]-->

It seems rather fitting that he must now suffer the problem he created.

Am I the only one..

[niktesla]

Am I the only one who read the title as Google To End Support for IP6? That would have been quite a shock!

Yes

[6Yankee]

There there. Now run along and play with your tags, and leave the discussion to the grown-ups.

Re:Yes

[metrix007]

Instead of being a condescending prick, you may want to acknowledge that AC has a point.

Re:Yes

[6Yankee]

And instead of calling me names, you might have taken the time to explain what that point was. ;)

OK, yes. AC has a point. And indeed, much of the grief in my current job comes from the fact that we're writing a web-based application, forcing web pages to do things that it was never envisaged they would do. But the world has moved on, and that's how it is; you move with it, or you stick to the old ways and you die. Regardless, that has little or nothing to do with whether the page is "resolution independently [sic]" - and my HTML is semantic and valid, which is as close to "normal and proper" as it's ever likely to get.

And AC's assertion that the problem began with the invention of stylesheets is laughable. People were slapping "Best viewed with Netscape 3 at 800x600" icons on their pages long before those came along. Table-based layout, anyone? Whatever the tools available, some people will use them well and others won't. (You should have seen some of my hideous creations in high-school woodwork.)

The kind of "webdevelopers" AC is so angry about get right up my nose, too. They give the rest of us a bad name. I get very annoyed when I'm tarred with the same brush - especially when it's by someone who's never seen my work and doesn't have the balls to identify himself.

Better Yet!

[esmrg]

A drive by remote code execution for IE that replaces mshtml.dll with a compatible wrapper for the gecko engine. Problem solved! Now all those IE6 users are using firefox without even knowing it.

Worsed use of the word already

[SmallFurryCreature]

Already in the certification process for IE8?

Skip it. Honestly, this process is so trustworthy, it had you use IE6 all these years.

Always cracks me up, people claiming they are stuck with IE6, for security reasons... no, it because you outsourced your IT to a crap company, that doesn't want to spend a penny on keeping up to date because they know you will pay them anyway.

Re:Worsed use of the word already

[DJRumpy]

Who said anything about security? IE6 came with XP, and we had no pressing reason to upgrade, combined with in-house apps written specifically for IE6 that would require testing of thousands of pages and/or apps on a newer version.

Pointless to wait

[SmallFurryCreature]

If you are still waiting on a strategy to move away from IE6, you will NEVER develop a strategy.

Why would google spend costly resources to support an inferior product from a company that is using said product to fight them and everyone else who wants to do business on the web?

IE6 is not a market for Google, if you use IE6, you are NOT a google user.

This has been very long in coming and nobody remotely competent enough to tie his or her own shoe laces still uses IE6 for the web. And companies that got some horrid activex, they can use IE6 as much as they want, just install another browser next to it to access the web.

Really, just how much time do you need to upgrade software anyway. I could have audited Firefox's sourcecode in this time.

not exactly

[r00t]

Microsoft was rightly terrified that a software ecosystem would develop around Java. At the time, many people expected Java to displace C++ and more.

Java was being shipped via the web, but it's not quite right to say that Java is the web or even that Java is a subset of the web. Java could run stand-alone, and it made apps portable to non-Win32.

Re:not exactly

[ClosedSource]

"Java could run stand-alone, and it made apps portable to non-Win32."

I'm not sure what you mean by "stand-alone", given that a hefty JVM had to be installed on every platform.

Re:not exactly

[SenseiLeNoir]

Considering now that .net apps need the hefty .net runtime, I think people are more happier to download a jvm in the same way to run applications.

in a LAN-only VM hopefully

[r00t]

Microsoft even provides a free IE-only VM (IE6 and XP) for web compatibility, so you have no excuse for IE6 as your normal browser.

A certain level of corporate stupidity and inertia is to be expected. Beyond that, you need to realize that there are other employers.

why have the net connection?

[r00t]

If you have "ultra-high security requirements" then you need to get those computers off the net.

Physically unplug them. Uninstall any wireless drivers and remove any wireless antennas.

Somebody needs the internet? Get them an iPhone.

corruptor's remorse

[epine]

Microsoft wants IE6 to go away as much as, if not more than, anyone else.

Do you mean that Microsoft now wants to rid the world of IE 6 as badly as they once wanted their corporate customers to permanently indenture themselves by writing IE 6 specific in-house web applications? Or twice as badly?

When you sell your soul for a fixed price, no matter how much you get up front, eventually you begin to think "maybe I could have gotten a bit more". Seller's remorse.

Ignaz Semmelweis

Some doctors, for instance, were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands; they felt that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.

Did they want to cure their patients or were they more concerned with their own dignity and status? One or the other. I don't recall the verse in the Hipocratic Oath about "doing no harm in so far as it's consistent with my social status". Doesn't strike me the vow leaves much scope for weighing one against the other.

Microsoft built this thing knowing what it was from the outset, in fact, so far as I can tell, wanting it to be exactly what it was. I suppose we all wish to shed the lies of our past in favour of the shinier lies of the present.

YHBT

[drinkypoo]

Dude, don't feed the trolls. Nobody on slashdot is unaware of the existence of other operating systems and browsers. YHBT, HTH, HAND.

Re:Some companies will consider this change a bonu

[gunpowder]

Your company just sounds like the company I'm working at!

Re:Some companies will consider this change a bonu

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we work at the same company? I really thought we did until you mentioned the mandatory netscape thing.

Congratulations to the University of Ulster

[Anonymous Coward]

They require IE7 for some features.

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[account_deleted]

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