Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requirements.html
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
The bigger question which I think everyone's missing is, why was Google using IE6 inhouse when it hacked???
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.
- Pithy comment goes here.
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.