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Why You Can't Pry IE6 Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
Esther Schindler writes "It's easy for techies to enumerate the reasons that Internet Explorer 6 should die. Although the percentage of users who use IE6 has dropped to about 12%, many web developers are forced to make sure their websites work with the ancient browser (which presents additional problems, such as keeping their companies from upgrading to newer versions of Windows). But rather than indulge in an emotional rant, in 'Why You Can't Pry IE6 Out Of Their Cold Dead Hands,' I set about to find out why the companies that remain standardized on IE6 haven't upgraded (never mind to what). In short: user and business-owner ignorance and/or disinterest in new technology; being stuck with a critical business app that relies on IE6; finding a budget to update internal IE6 apps that will work the same as they used to; and keeping users away from newer Web 2.0 sites."
install chrome frame and problem is solved until such businesses get their head out of their collective asses.
It's not a secret that lock-in was why IIS and IE were designed to complement each other. The objective was to kill Netscape and Java by any means necessary. Active-X was a tool to this end.
And now we see the same tools who bought these chains exchanging them for IE8 and Sharepoint when they can. Because that won't be hard to get rid of.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
No, they are not. They might want to, but they're not FORCED to do this. This means they are part of the problem, because if IE6 didn't work with most sites it would provide another reason to make the free upgrade.
Sorry, but having RTFA, I still can come back to just one reason for still using IE6: Ignorance.
Okay, so there's companies that have IE6-only apps. That's no reason to not upgrade: Nobody forces you to have only one browser. Even if you don't want to have IE6 and Firefox, you can have two versions of IE itself installed. You can set up the hideously-insecure IE6 to only be able to access the company intranet where you need it, and use IE7 or 8 for the rest of the world where having a more-modern, more-secure browser is useful.
Multiple versions of IE can be done courtesy of here or here
Old hardware can run Firefox just fine - I used Portable Firefox for years when I was working for an IE-only company. You don't have to use the browser your company installs on your machine if you don't want to.
And as for IE6 keeping people away from sites like YouTube.. I'm not even going to dignify that with a refutation. Anyone who wants to get around that problem could do so without the slightest difficulty in the space of about ten minutes. This sounds more like a fairy story from the IT depertments to clueless PHB's: "Don't worry, boss, we don't need to block YouTube, it doesn't work with our browser. Not get out of my cubicle so I can watch the latest Foamy the Squirrel video, wouldya?"
So.. it has come to this
My corporate laptop is chained to IE6 because lots of the systems I administer have Java and JavaScript based configuration interfaces which only works with IE6. It fails on alternate browsers and even IE8 has issues (not to mention the fact that you have to have Java 1.4, Java 1.5 and Java 1.6 installed in parallel and switch to the right one for each machine).
Reminds me of this old story of how the design of the Space Shuttle was influenced by the width of a horses butt
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Maybe it's because they aren't dead yet?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Is the author suggesting that we try to solve the problem by killing anyone who still uses IE6?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Microsoft designed IE6 with all sorts of cool interfaces for corporate developers. They then unleashed a wave of evangelists to encourage people to exploit those non-standard extensions, and encourage them to exploit the non-standard quirks. It was a deliberate strategy to gain and hold market share.
It worked. IE6 is unstoppable, even by Microsoft.
I'm the husband of a senior exec in a Fortune 500 company which will remain nameless (but you use their products every day anywhere in the world - it's a big one) I have noticed that they still use Windows XP and IE 6. Although my better half isn't in the IT department I have made this observation to her and the apparent reason is that IT is "waiting" to upgrade to Windows 7 (ie, they skipped Vista entirely) and they plan on doing "all the upgrades at the same time". The internet browser is not the key feature for their staff anyway (what really gets used is office and outlook 2007 plus a custom "IM" program). In fact, large chunks of the internet are blacklisted by the IT department. You just can't get there from the company VPN which is the only way to connect on the "company laptop" (good thing they don't know about "Ubuntu" so my wife and I can skype each other when she travels).
My understand is that it's not "ignorance" that is holding back the switch - rather the economic problems set back upgrades of company hardware that were planned for last year and have been pushed forwards to 2011 and the tech boys decided that if they're going to upgrade they'll do everything at once, including the browser.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The trend of companies/sites dropping IE6 support seems to be gaining momentum. From various Norwegian sites to Google/YouTube.
A few years ago, the feasibility threshold for supporting FireFox (nee standards) seemed to be about 10%; is the reverse true for dropping IE6? Every outdated browser before it seemed to go away much more quietly. When should the FOSS community help to pull this trigger?
You clearly haven't seen the sort of people who run these companies.
The LedgerSMB project made a decision not to support projects which didn't properly support button elements.
This meant IE6 support and even IE7 support were not going to happen. Finally, we can support IE8.
Really, you only have to support the browsers you think actually need to be supported in order to help your users. Sometimes this includes IE6 (public ecommerce sites, for example). For internal business tools though, there is no justification for supporting that browser.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Why can't they use IE8 with IE6 compatibility? That way companies have no reason to be using IE6 for applications where a modern browser would work, and nothing should break. I realize this is too obvious to be a new suggestion, and I know IE8 has a compatibility mode (not sure what version it works with), so either Microsoft has dropped the ball or the higher-ups are more immune to logic and reason than I thought.
My webcomic
... and just start BLOCKING IT.
A lot of companies get themselves into a nice little rut where they will refuse to budge, unless their security / profits are affected. Give them a helping hand by forcing them to drop IE 6. After a while, the number of websites that will be throwing up road blocks in their faces will force them to upgrade.
Or migrate to Firefox, which would probably be better.
If you administer an Apache server, it's more-or-less as easy as,
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} MSIE\ ([56])\. /denied.php [R=302,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/denied.php$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$
Okay, I realise it's often more complicated than that, since they need to test / upgrade from WinXP, etc., there are costs and man power involved, but unless webmasters act on this, we could still be asking people to upgrade IE6 in 2015. Yes, even 9 months after official support ends on XP.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Managers at less than optimally run companies are too busy putting out brush fires or "doing golf".
Anyone in his right mind would figure a way to eventually migrate out of a Windows platform by one method or another JUST TO STAY marginally more safe in the Internet Security arena.
Moving to MacOS X give the opportunity to do work in MacOSX whenever possible and only revert to Windows as needed. What a gift.
Been using both Windows and Mac together for over a decade, since Win 3.11 (if I remember). It just is not that much different to get used to one OS or another or BOTH.
JUST DO IT!
Stop supporting it. Problem solved. Some people have all day to catch the train. They'll figure it out as sites start rendering incorrectly and giving them a notification to upgrade.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
Well there's nothing wrong with that really, Web 2.0 sucks. It invades your privacy and is a huge waste of bandwidth/CPU
With the ubiquitous availability of virtualization, even those who are locked into a legacy web application can upgrade the OS and the browser. A stripped-down OS image with just IE6 can be used to access the legacy app. Nobody can claim they have no way away from IE6, so it is time to end support for it. The burden of supporting an environment for IE6 only software must shift from the web developers to the people who made the mistake of allowing themselves to get locked into that ancient platform. Their complacency can not be our concern any longer. If we don't move on, they never will.
Afterwards the pieces of M$ should be given to the free software movements so interoperability can be acheived.
I know you're trolling, but that's the problem. You want everyone to switch to linux, and then you expect interoperability to be developed. It's not going to happen. The interoperability must come first, and then and ONLY then will linux even be considered for anything more than running the servers.\
Linux is like the DVORAK keyboard - apparently it was/is faster and apparently the layout was more "well thought out" than QWERTY. However you can't expect the whole world to suddenly switch unless there is a clear decisive advantage to investing hours of training and downtime to transition to the new standard. Dvorak is only "marginally" better than QWERTY - and even that small margin in speed is disputed, so it ends up being just not worth the up front cost of switching and retraining.
The same for linux. Yes it has come far. Yes ubuntu can be run by just about anyone. Yes there are similar apps available in linux. However by design, by omission and due to copyright/patent laws, they are different enough to require substantial investments in switching. Also very few of them have ALL the features available in current Windows software. And big business is showing you that even at X hundred dollars/product cycle, Microsoft products (and products designed only for Windows) are still "cheaper". It's not enough to "clone" current Windows software in linux. Something has to be made that is CLEARLY BETTER. Until then linux will remain the toy OS for nerds, or the stable OS quietly running things in the background invisible to Joe Average.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Plenty of stuff is still done on Windows 2000. If your business-critical stuff works just fine on Win2K, and you don't NEED a newer machine, then why spend the money to replace the box?
And the fact that your employees can't waste their time goofing off on Web 2.0 sites is just a bonus. Although I do feel sorry for the 1-2 people at my office to whom IT gave a Win2K box instead of XP.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Why should businesses keep "upgrading"? Really, Microsoft's OS hasn't changed much in the last decade. Almost everything runs under Windows 2000. Even ".NET" and Direct-X applications tend to work, and all the major open-source applications do. Why pay Microsoft more money? Most of this "upgrading" is planned obsolescence, not progress.
It was different in the 1990s. In the 1990s, Microsoft went from Windows 3.0/DOS, which was awful, to Windows 2000, which was a good OS. Desktop computing made great strides in the 1990s. But by 2000, the problems were solved. In Windows 2000, networking worked, 3D graphics worked, and the system was stable after the first service packs. For most businesses, that was good enough.
In the last decade, Microsoft went through Windows 2000, XP (which was really to pull the Win 95/98/ME crowd onto a decent platform), Vista (enough said), and now Windows 7 (the new, improved Vista.) At the end of this, we have an OS which offers essentially the same API as ten years ago. Not much has really changed.
Most commercial and open source applications work on Windows 2000, and almost all work on Windows XP. Load up the latest Firefox, and all the "Web 2.0" stuff works on Windows 2000. If you don't get too cute with tricky HTML and Javascript, the same code works on IE6 and later browsers.
Worse, Microsoft's newer OSs are oinkers. They need more CPU and more RAM to do the same thing. They phone home to Redmond constantly. They have activation problems. They're constantly getting updates, some of which make things worse. Why should companies pay for this? Where's the return on investment?
Yes, that was the absurd reason that my company decided they would send out to us all the other day. Whilst I'm sure that our company systems have reasonable defences they're not bullet proof or immune to 0-day attacks.
Plus I expect that CSC (who manage our systems) would love to charge us a fortune for updating to IE[78]...
I still use IE6 on my personal desktop (Win2000) at home. I've tried others, and keep coming back to IE6 for a few reasons:
(1) It starts instantaneously, while any other browser takes a distractingly long time to start up.
(2) It's the only browser I can get to put all the toolbars I need (including address bar) on one single row under the title bar.
(3) Any other browser insists on throwing tabbed-browsing in my face at some point.
I've never had a virus as long as I've been running it. I understand that it's not standards-compliant, and I'm highly sympathetic to those who need to deal with that pain, but I personally don't. Sites that stop working with IE6 I just go "eh", and stop visiting. It's lightweight and snappy-responsive, and I can't bring myself to let go of that.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Oh, come on. You're willing to tell 12% of your potential customer to screw off? Just because they're not tech-savvy doesn't mean they don't have money.
The Institute of Incomplete Research has determined that 9 of out 10
Or who wrote the original software. I've been programming long enough to see my old software being scrapped a few times, and to see the results of new software forced to follow old standards. Even when I would have preferred to use more oopen standards, small differences in appearance or usability for non-technical people forced design choices I disliked, and which have effectively cast in bronze as the specification for the same tools going forward.
Upgrading IE6 could cost a lot of money which is probably why a lot of companies aren't upgrading it (e.g. applications that depend on it). Wouldn't IE6 cost a lot of money on the long run?
No, it's because they've always been both cold and dead.
Yes, they are. If you work for a company with more than 10,000 employees (as I do), and if the company's standard browser (deployed and supported by Desktop services) is IE6 (as it is with us), and they pay you to develop a new internal web application (to go along with the 20 others that are already in use and designed for IE6 only) - well... you make it work with IE6 or you find a new job.
OK, let's look at this in a business perspective.
You have technology which works "good enough". Why change? If you change you then have to upgrade to newer versions of software, either vendor supplied or developed in-house. You can end up on the "upgrade treadmill". This means you must rewrite software and upgrade hardware in a cascading manner all across you business.
Writing software can be a crap shoot and ERP software does not have a good reputation. Why fix what isn't broken? Software rewrites can be very expensive and a business must focus on sales and their products. If the upgrade only gives the same functionality and costs $$$$$$ to upgrade, why do it? Software development can be a big risk. There's no guarantee it will work without lost time and years of fixes.
Can the IT department assure a very high level of success and cost control? Can their new whiz bang technology work better than what has developed over years, perhaps a decade or more? IT projects like this have a huge possibility of failure, from an empirical POV. Also there is the risk of introducing *more* security risks by deploying untestd software.
It also is ironic that the consultants which sold the IE6 only apps, now probably long gone, have locked the customer out of upgrades.
So let's look at site lock out. Most security breaches are *not* done by crackers. They are done by employees either being stupid or malicious. Blocking off social networking sites makes sense. This isn't a bad form of risk control.
Let's look at ignorance. the reason many people don't know is that they don't have to know. If it doesn't require fixing, then it doesn't exists. Sort of like the old sayings "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" and "out of sight out of mind.
Note that many of these reasons are the same reasons there is so much COBOL running around.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Is it me or has Firefox got clunky lately? I used to use IE6 for my sins and converted over to FF but that is now heavy... Thought about Chrome but don't like giving the big G too much data or power than it already has..
Something has to be made that is CLEARLY BETTER.
You mean like the security model and the virus / malware protection? (And no the virus problem is not just a market share thing. It also has to do with not running as admin by default.)
If they want to use it internally, that's fine. Just don't use it for general net access. To accomplish that end, web sites should reject attempts to access using IE6 to make it so unworkable as an internet browser that people/companies will at least let their users that should be accessing the internet have an alternate better browser to do so with (never mind what that is). Redirect to a browser upgrade page or something.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Opera supports Win2k.
It's like puking on a pile of shit!
I'd love to ditch IE6, but we can't because of this one app. Our version is outdated, yes, but with the buyout by Oracle it's a mess and the costs and upgrade almost impossible. Our hands are tied. Large sweeping generalized comments always sound simple, but the reality is that we are not alone.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
migrate out of a Windows platform by one method or another JUST TO STAY marginally more safe in the Internet Security arena.
From what I've seen out of Apple and Microsoft lately, I don't see conclusive evidence that OS X is any more secure than Windows. At best, you'd get a short reprieve until the malware writers figure out there's a ton more Macs now, and start attacking them.
And in the meantime, you're dealing with a company which has way more lock-in and higher costs than Microsoft.
Why wouldn't they move to something actually better, like Linux? Or Solaris, or FreeBSD, or...
Moving to MacOS X give the opportunity to do work in MacOSX whenever possible and only revert to Windows as needed. What a gift.
Sure, if you happen to like OS X. I know plenty of people who actually prefer Windows.
Been using both Windows and Mac together for over a decade, since Win 3.11 (if I remember). It just is not that much different to get used to one OS or another or BOTH.
You're not in a position to really say much about that, then. I've been using Windows, Mac, and Linux on and off for years now. It's easy for me to get used to multiple OSes.
But most users are used to learning things by rote, and learning all the fiddly little details of what they use. I've seen users completely disoriented because their emails weren't colored correctly, because we upgraded them from one version of Outlook to another, or switched them to Thunderbird. I've seen my English professor have trouble launching a PowerPoint in OpenOffice, because she couldn't find the SlideShow button where she expected it -- she didn't think to look under the "SlideShow" menu, at the first item, called "SlideShow".
Companies look at these, and basically have to weigh the costs of firing a bunch of otherwise-useful employees who simply refuse to improve their computer skills to what we'd expect, or paying to retrain them on a new system, or continuing to throw money at the old system.
Frankly, I think they should just bite the bullet and upgrade, and pay attention to how technologically-adept new hires are in any field. I don't care if your job isn't to program the computer -- your job is to use the computer, so you should be good at that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The company I work for creates web based software used by large (by UK standards) banks and I can tell you that the vast majority of their userbase is stuck on IE6. The usual reason for this is compatability with old apps, and IE6 is not as backwards as they get - one of the mortgage processing/calculating apps used when I was sorting the paperwork for my flat was DOS based.
But compatability is *not* a valid excuse for not installing something newer. It *is* a reason for not installing IE8 (you can't run IE8 and IE6 on the same machine without virtualisation of some completely unsupported hack), but it doesn't stop them putting on Firefox/Chrome/Opera/... alongside IE6 and just letting IE6 live for as long as the older apps live (which may be some time given my witnessing of a DOS based app in business-as-usual use two-ana-half years ago).
They will not upgrade from "IE6 and only IE6" until the cost of doing so (design/testing/roll-out of new desktop builds, extra support time needed because if they go for the two browser stop-gap it will confuse many of their should-sacked-from-jobs-that-are-well-documented-to-require-computer-competence-for-not-being-able-understanding-such-things staff, paying for old software to be fixed/upgraded, and so on) is outweighed by the cost of staying where they are (those costs basically amounting to not being able to use certain software/sites (but they are big enough that saying "we'll consider your app if you support IE6" neatly sorts that) and looking like neanderthals (but the general public will never know and is doesn't really matter to them what us techies-in-the-know think)).
Well, the boomers will eventually have to retire, even if the great recession has delayed that somewhat. When they do, the newer generations that have grown up with this stuff will be more adaptable and more willing to cast off those bronze shackles.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
M$ Internet Exploder, M$ Windoze, and all M$ products.
M$ should be taken apart by the governments of the world, piece by piece. Afterwards the pieces of M$ should be given to the free software movements.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk. Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.
None of this plays well to anyone in management - or to anyone over the age of consent.
Many custom corporate apps built between 2002-2006 were called "Web apps" but were really "IE6 apps". In the late 90's they would have been Windows apps built with Visual Basic. Companies thought they were modernizing to the Web but really just got a different kind of Windows app.
It continues with IE7 and IE8 ... these browsers are so incapable that, for example, a rich text editor for them is done as ActiveX instead of as HTML5, so you can't run the app anywhere but IE. Now that these companies are often running multiple platforms (Windows XP, Windows Vista/7, Mac OS, iPhone, Blackberry) they are getting bitten on the ass. It's like Y2K in that the future was never supposed to happen.
Microsoft succeeded in forking the Web. This is the aftermath. That's why HTML5 compatibility is so important, the focus on browser vendors in the spec means that Apple WebKit and Mozilla Gecko engineers do a lot of work to make their browsers compatible with each other. You have WebKit redoing canvas in the standard way, redoing Gears in the standard way. If you're locked into any one browser or one hardware that is not the Web, it is by definition only what's completely universal. If it's not universal (IE, Flash) it's not part of the Web.
For quite a while, IE 6 was Microsoft's flagship browser. We knew it was insecure. Somebody (Secunia?) even recommended that we *_strongly_* consider switching away from IE6 to *_any_* other browser.
But important sites like my bank standardized on it. Several years after Firefox came out and Netscape became SeaMonkey, I still got warning pages that "Netscape is not really supported on our site" or similar. Did my bank's web developers fall asleep and miss the name change? Did AOL give the outdated Netscape broswer to their users and this warning was directed at them?
Then Microsoft came out with IE7. Even larger and more complicated (just like the bug-fixes that MS had to follow up with). Then IE 8. More of the same. Microsoft talked about the improved customer experience, but I was more interested in the security settings, and after years of Netscape/Firefox, I barely understand some of them ("medium-high" security, "third-party" cookies, "zones" and so forth).
I don't visit questionable sites, I use the hosts file at hosts-file.net and I don't click on every random e-mail attachment (open it first in linux to verify the audio/video/pdf or whatever), and I use Firefox 99 percent of the time in XP (and 100 percent in linux). And banks don't *_require_* MSIE anymore.
Now, add the usual Microsoft bashing on slashdot ("Seven is just as insecure as Vista", "MS played a role in the SCO affair", "IE is still insecure", "activation/WGA is a hassle", "security features are easily defeated").
Why don't I upgrade? I don't see a reason or a need.
I worked for a Fortune 500 company that migrated from IE 6 to IE 7 about a year and a half ago. The migration was done in a very heavy-handed way, and most internal sites were fixed to work with IE 7. Some sites still have problems with IE 7, but oddly work with Firefox which is the other supported browser.
I also worked recently for a medium-sized Canadian bank that was very conservative with technology but was still slowly moving toward IE 7, installing it on any workstation optionally for any developer who wasn't doing web development for their important intranet sites.
So, in my experience, companies that are conservative but still well run are able to see the writing on the wall with regard to IE 6. IE still seems to be the corporate browser of choice because Microsoft is the browser vendor that's apparently most sensitive to enterprise needs (not sure if this is true, but that's the explanation).
This space left intentionally blank.
I kid you not, I have been building a new website for a customer that demanded lots of bells and whistles and eye candy (Interactive dynamic Flash pulling photos and images) - so I did it the best way I could with proper XHTML/CSS. I tested the site along the way to ensure cross browser compatibility from IE6 to IE8, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox and on PC and Mac platforms before asking him to try it out last week. He called back saying some of the dynamic content wasn't loading. After a long time of talking to him on the phone where we seemed to be having two different conversations I finally realized he was using AOL and I suspect the AOL proxies or tweaked browser are messing up the caching for the dynamic content.
AOL in 2010!!! He has a fiber internet connection and the latest greatest computer but refuses to let go of AOL as that is what he equates with the Internet! ARGHHHHHHH
I talked to his office tech guy who says he would be willing to upgrade his boss to a newer version of AOL, but getting the top man to switch browsers was impossible. I'm still recovering from that incident.
So, yeah - I'm a little bothered, and at least in this instance, would have been fine with the known aggravations that a regular IE6 browser would bring.
Thats an internet myth. Look it up.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp
My old high school, North Middlesex district high school, in Canade, Ontario
Only has IE6 installed on all the computers, the reason why: The others including IE7/8 make the machines unstable.
Having watched many tech decisions come to pass over my years their, in my opinion, they are just unwilling to learn anything new and prefer working with outdated methods and software. Not that the rest of the board are any better in their respective fields.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
(And no the virus problem is not just a market share thing. It also has to do with not running as admin by default.)
Windows Vista and Windows 7 do not run as admin by default. The UAC popups that people liked to complain about in early 2007 are just sudo.
You fucking idiotic corporate I.T. wankers.
This is all your fault. It's no wonder the world if failing. It's run but idiotic corporate executives that don't know shit from their next gourmet corporate meal.
I've built and maintained a web app for use in enterprise. Fortunately, all my users access the app using decent browsers. In the last month, we have only had ONE visitor who uses IE6, even though the majority of users are on Windows XP. I still build in IE6 compatibility using the IE8.js script, but don't go out of my way to support IE6. If someone has a problem, my general line of advice is to upgrade to Firefox or a later IE version.
The browser is the least of the corporate IT failures I see though. Complete incompetence with e-mail seems the main failing. I recently had to patiently explain that if you want to keep e-mail in sync between two laptops and an iPhone, POP3 is not suitable. You'd think that if you had Exchange server, you'd actually let it use the Exchange ActiveSync protocol. Of course not. No ActiveSync. No IMAP. Just POP3. When management were interrogated about this, the problem of keeping three e-mail clients in sync using POP3 didn't arise: they read their e-mail and then just delete them. When they need to read an e-mail that they have deleted, they phone up one of the people who is trying to juggle their three clients who forwards it on.
The persistence of IE6 is only one of many, many ways corporate IT can suck. Unfortunately, it is one which has the negative externality of making the lives of web developers suck. Once IE6 disappears, corporate IT will still suck. It'll go back to being comedy rather than tragedy.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
If they are happy with IE6, that means THEY DON'T WANT ANYTHING TO CHANGE, EVER...
They do not care about your new app! they just want their old apps forever. I used to work at a company that still had to support Windows 3.1 in 2005!!! Yes, travel agencies would not give up Windows 3.1, and you know what, no matter what we developed for them, they did not want it, no mater how much better it was. The problem was that anything new is different, and therein lies the rub.
This is the reason why most users use Windows in general, they don't want to learn anything different.
So, if they still want their ancient versions of IE, chances are that they will not be very interested in you shiny new app!, and you should not waste your time trying to develop something for them.
Not running as admin by default does not really help. I once thought that the Linux model, where you only log in as root to change system settings was clearly superior until I had to explain it to someone who did not understand it. I summed it up like this: "Well, a virus or some malicious program if launched by the standard user cannot change any of the system settings or delete system files. The worst it can do is erase all of the users files, but the OS will still work." Then I thought that losing all user files is just as bad as erasing every file on the computer, unless the computer is used by more than one user (not likely).
The way many companies roll out new upgrades is to replace the hardware and software and apps all at once. Say you are a 1k people company with offices scattered in 20 locations. What does a roll out of a totally tested and cookie cutter tested solution to all upgrades cost every 5 years versus the same upgrades performed every 6 months. In disruption, training, lost productivity, support costs, testing time, shipping, etc. And the pace of hardware improvements have slowed enough and the work has become network hosted enough that you don't have to chase every generation of hardware any more...except for a select few where speed translates into profits.
It is a business decision and all you have to do is look at hardware sales to see it is happening at a slower pace.
IT departments aren't there to chase the latest flavor of the day or the techies fondest desires...they are there to support the business of making money. And rollouts cost big bucks so they get budget line scrutiny at the highest level of the corporation. Now if the recent penetrations cause CEOs to ask how well their IP is protected..there could be some acceleration. But when CEOs are worried about this weeks layoffs..it is hard to get their attention on a revision of software that is working..but which might cost 5 more jobs.
It's really simple: I still use IE6 because I'm using Windows 2000 - which means no upgrade to IE7/8. Firefox leaks memory like a bastard (and has done since FF1). I can't get the W2K hack to work in order to install Chrome (and believe me, I've tried, oh how I've tried). Far and away the best contender to replace IE6 is Opera - except there are a few sites which plain don't work properly under Opera (for some reason, you can't click on the links). So, I use IE6. A lot.
As for why I'm still using Windows 2000, well that's another kettle of fish...
There are several comments here that suggest developers are _forced_ to support IE6 because of their company or clients.
And you call yourselves professionals?
Am I the only one who quit his job over IE6 and MS junkie mgmt!? I can't be the only one. There have to be other people who take their profession seriously.
With my knowledge and expertise I create efficient computer systems for my clients. With my help, their lives become easier, their jobs become more productive.
This is what I do.
(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
Does anyone else find it ironic that an article on standards compliance doesn't display in Google Chrome? As soon as the page finishes loading, the entire screen turns white. I had to open IE in order to read it.
| You don't have to use the browser your company installs on your machine if you don't want to.
Er, No. Many companies, e.g. Lockheed Martin, insist their choice of browser Indeed, PHB*-dictated softwareis quite common.
Hell, as a LM SkunkWorks employee, I had to throw a hissy fit to keep Matlab after a Mathsoft Marketing drone told some corporate PHB* that they could replace their expensive Matlab seats seats with with cheaper Mathcad! Anyone who has used them knows that they are designed for radically different jobs even if they both "grind numbers". Strikes me as much like deciding to replace expensive concrete mixers with cheap pickups. There was no way I could have installed Firefox no matter how many hissy fits I threw. But, Hell, I only have a technical PhD from a big name school and >30 years experience in scientific computing, I'm not management, what the flip do I know?
*Pointy hair Boss nach Dilbert
Subordinating your business interests to the business interests of your vendor seems like a pretty stupid move, and one that should have consequences.
No, it was not completely "stupid", just very convenient to use these technologies--at least in the short term.
Jon Udell once remarked (ages ago) that Windows gets you from 0-60 quicker than Unix, but you need need Unix to get from 60-100 (at least at the time, mid-1990s). Some people only need to get to 60 (or less) and then just move onto other things without considering things more closely.
The past two big corporations that I worked for still deploy standard workstation images based on WinXP + IE6. They generally have their IT sh*t together, but it still takes them about a year to create and test and deploy images throughout the company. And since Vista was broadly decried as "skippable", that's exactly what they did. Now that Win7 is finally out and has better acceptance, I'd say it'll take about a year to get everything packaged and tested and documented and deployed.
Also, both companies had plenty of intranet timecard and expense and training systems that required IE6. Yes, they didn't adhere to standards back in the day, and they're paying for it now. But that's sort of the price of being on the bleeding edge of technology most of the time... you get locked into immature tech. Heck, Boeing even still uses a mainframe for all its employee timecards! The current web-based front-end is merely a thin front-end to the old mainframe timekeeping terminal. But it works... even despite managers griping about not being able to submit timecards from their blackberries.
I don't think they'll be under much pressure to fix all their old legacy "IE6-only" webapps, since win7 should include the old XP-compatiblity mode that will hopefully allow them to still run their old but tested crap under IE6. So at least their's a way forward, even though it's not ideal.
Fortunately for those poor users, IE 8 runs as the equivalent of Nobody on Vista and 7 and can only read/write in a small sandbox.
- Ability to specify proxy servers and prevent users from modifying them?
Do this at the perimeter, not on the client.
- Ability to restrict settings, etc etc etc
You can centralize Firefox about:config, you can also push it as an MSI. FrontMotion has a policy kit for FF as well. The policy settings aren't as extensive as IE but then there aren't as many holes that need to be accounted for either.
- Ability for Firefox to use the internal windows cert store
This one I have no answer for other than some logon scripting. Also, IE Tab though that is a suboptimal solution because you now need to support two environments.
Dude, have you ever heard of Hanlon's law? If ActiveX was designed to create lock-in, why did Microsoft abandon it?
Imputing collective motives to a company as disorganized and political as MS is like imputing malice to a cockroach infestation. Yes, they often use underhanded methods to screw over their competition. But that's marketing, not engineering. The engineering side of MS has this bit-twiddler's love of doing things its own way. People mostly notice this when they introduce some incompatible technology that screws over the rest of the computing industry. But in fact, this BS often has one group in MS screwing over the rest of the company.
Have you ever worked on a poorly managed engineering team where one or more engineers keeps insisting on doing things a certain way, even if it screws over the project as a whole? It's always been obvious to me that most of the people who work at Microsoft are like that. IE is a mess because the company that produced it is a mess — too much of a mess to carry out the complicated conspiracies everyone likes to believe in.
there are some boomers who saw their retirement saving (or second houses) drop in value and will postpone retirement. However, there's also 20% unemployment (10% official, 10% people who stopped looking for work and no longer count). Some boomers who got laid off decided to retire early.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
How about this...
I seem to remember that Linksys/Cisco SRW series switches REQUIRE MSIE v6 for management. Anyone else have more info on this? Yes, Cisco is still selling these today. This isn't an old product.
And this is great, but we are using Linux where I work. "It is fully compatible with MS Office .doc and .xls files, can browse the web, there are less viruses made for it and we won't need to pay for it and it will be legal". This is a small company with a few computers and no custom software, people are mostly using OpenOffice, Opera/Firefox and almost nothing else.
I can honestly say the only time I used IE6 at home was right after a new install to download {insert you choice of replacement browser of the last decade}.
At work, the majority of our internal corporate software is "customized" for IE6, and the teams responsible for it (and even the IT folks) seem to be in no hurry to "upgrade" to something that will break the existing system. What's worse - our remote employees and anyone that needs to access work-related materials from home has to keep a copy of IE6 around. We can use some of the features of the system on other browsers, but some critical items simply don't work. [It's outside of my programming responsibilities, else I would've pushed the issue to "fix" and standardize things ages ago.]
And of course it's a violation of the 11th Commandment to install any other browser on our work boxes. And traffic outside of our intranet is forbidden by the 12th Commandment, except for those in the corporate "priesthood." And a few of us Systems Programmers, like me.....
I dti'r na ndall is ri' fear na leathshu'ile.
I'm all for moving off IE6, however several bits of equipment I use have embedded HTML control panels that only work with IE6 and/or ActiveX.
If I don't leave IE6 on the machine, how can I use these control panels? There is zero chance of upgrading them without replacing lots of expensive specialist hardware.
Is there an IE6 emulator? Would I need a VM just for this?
And the worst part being, all these web apps were written for IE6. Some will function in Firefox/Chrome/Opera/etc but the primary ones we use the most every day, don't.
AND, they will never update it. Why? The hired a third party programmer to write the primary web app we use, and it was basically contract work. He wrote it, gave X amount of troubleshooting help with it, and that was it. If we need major fixes to it or additions to it, we can't. And if this software goes down, which it does on a weekly basis, we end up having to schedule a ton of call backs with customers we're speaking with on the phone since we can't help them without this piece of software generally.
Now, we all have personal directories on a virtual server we can use for storage of work related files (guides for routers, phone manuals, etc) and most people do in fact install Portable FireFox here and use it for their casual browsing of the internet between calls. Even our supervisors and managers do this as well as us peons. BUT, it is technically against company policy to install outside software of any kind and use it.. even if it is by far more secure and easier to use than what they offer. No one has gotten fired for it but my point being that there was grounds for it, compared to using the shitacular IE6. And trust me, you should see the spyware scan logs of the massive network of user pc's we have.. It just amazes me a company is so cheap it won't pay to have its software updated to accomodate security. It'd hate to be in the actual IT department at this place, their entire day must be spyware/virus removal.
Aw Frell this
Don't underestimate the impact of Windows 95/98. It still runs on old hardware, is compatible-enough it can still run most applications businesses need, etc. IE6 is the newest browser available.
If anyone has any suggestion for a full-featured browser that still runs on Windows 98, I could probably reduce the count of IE6 users by a few thousand. Don't bother mentioning Firefox. Mozilla.org gave-up Windows 9x compatibility with v3, so you're still left with an unsupported browser. That "EX"-something-or-other (to run XP apps on 9x) sounds clever, but is an overwhelming no-go in a business.
And suggesting hardware upgrades for everyone, when their needs are absolutely trivial, and already met, will similarly get met with extreme resistance in the "more frugal" (read: cheap as hell) organizations, such as mine.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
no, it's not a joke...
If you knowingly use a known insecure browser,and there are far more browsers that are secure,secure known vulnerabilities, don't they run the risk of being sued if a client looses money or whatever because of using a know security risk?
Jack of all trades,master of none
I just got a brand new Netbook (Dell Inspirion 10) as part of a deal with my TV provider (got it for free) and out of the box it had Windows XP and IE 6.
Perhaps once Microsoft decides to stop distributing it as part of their OEM package, it can be sure of a faster death.
Sometimes, even in the new browsers, non-backward compatible issues occur. For example: many websites break in Firefox 3.6 due to some .isReadOnly javascript change. Thus holding the sysadmin to upgrade.
Browser should, just like IE8 does, have a 'backward engine mode'. This way a user can still use his latest and greatest browser, but still access that vital app.
I think in 3 of the 4 scenario's above would have been non-issues at all if IE7 and IE8 would have supported a 'do this site in IE6 render' mode. Sysadmins could upgrade without problems, and WebDevelopers could than just always build for the latest version.
Why can't these companies just use two browsers, an old one for their intranet and a new one for everything else?
I mean, neither sticking to an old browser, nor updating your intranet apps makes any sense to me. Why not two browsers?
Internet explorer? What is that?
a new internal web application
But my question would be how many people in this type of situation are developing said applications internally.
At my last job, we had several ActiveX apps that were used, but they were all hosted by outside parties. As the cost of making those apps compatible with IE7 or IE8 would be taken on by a different company, it makes more sense to me that IT departments could demand newer browser compatibility from those vendors instead.
If an app is completely internal, developed and used in house, then couldn't compatibility with multiple browsers be demanded from the programmers by the IT admins? Is working in an upgrade path that allows multiple client browsers for a period of 1-3 years so costly that it can't be considered a reasonable expenditure? Do these companies see no benefit to allowing themselves to upgrade away from XP with their next desktop refresh?
Just things to think about, I suppose.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
In general, malware can also run just fine from a user account. And there is also that privilege escalation thing.
What the Linux/Windows security model was originally designed to do was to keep non-malicious users out of each other's files. It's quite good at that ... really it is. AFAICS, that's all it is good at.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Uh, yes, we do have to support IE6. If your feature/fix doesn't pass QA, it is failed back to you until it works. This is largely because our biggest clients are still on IE6. But the bottom line is, if you want to keep your job as a developer, you are, in fact, forced to support it. If management and sales decide to drop support, developers would welcome it, but until then, we have to get the job done.
Welcome to the real world.
So the problem is that the PHBs don't see a need to upgrade. This is a perception problem. We can fix this.
Let's start adding this to the top of every web page we have access to. If the public web gets flooded with these, the PHBs are going to believe their jobs are on the line if they don't insist on an upgrade:
<!--[if lt IE 7]>
<div id="ie6message">
<p id="ie6warning"><strong>Warning!</strong> The browser you are running is insecure and is putting your computer and network at risk. For more details, see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6#Security_issues">this reference</a>.</p>
<p id="ie6replacements">We strongly recommend upgrading to <a href="http://www.getfirefox.com/">Firefox</a>, <a href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/safari/">Safari</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome">Google Chrome</a>, or a more recent version of <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx">Internet Explorer</a>.</p>
</div>
<![endif]-->
IIS is an HTTP server. It has no ties with IE.
Any apps that are IE6-specific are certain to be very, very old. At some point you have to lose sympathy for the customers who refuse to update. Unfortunately, MS is committed to support IE6 well into 2014
I just checked when the patch for that issue was issued.
November of 2007......
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I can't remember what movie it's from, but whenever I hear things like "You'll have to pry IE6 from our cold, dead hands," all I can think of is:
"I find your conditions... acceptable."
You mean like the security model and the virus / malware protection?
Dude, please. Could you describe things that exist outside of your head?
I have wondered why microsoft don't provide a way of running IE6 in an application virtualized environment easily, so that IE6 and later browsers can co-exist.
I'm sorry, I love Firefox (and to a lesser extent Opera, Safari & Chrome), but until they come distributed as MSIs with support for (or even provided with) ADMX templates for Group Policy you're simply not going to see widespread adoption in Windows-based corporate environments. I hate MSIs as much as the next guy (really, you need the installer to uninstall, why exactly?), but that's how it is.
I work in a medium sized organisation (3,000ish machines) and if our support team was willing to make the effort to figure out how to push out Firefox to every machine we manage and set it as the default browser it would result in an epic cluster fuck. Half the users wouldn't be able to access the internet because they wouldn't have the right proxy settings and the other half would be whinging about how none of the "web" apps they use work any more (3rd party, out of our control - we've been trying for 2 years to get vaguely modern support for any of them but nobody seems to care).
I'll say it again, however much you might dislike it, if you want to make inroads into Windows-based corporate environments you have to support MSIs and GPOs - no excuses.
Lets talk again when group policies are present in Firefox/Chrome
I came in to say this myself. I can't believe the article didn't even really hit this point. It's a huge issue once your organization scales past a few dozen machines.
I think it's kindof a systemic open source blind spot, actually, a product of the fact that most open source developers are (a) unlikely to have an itch involving centralized administration and (b) probably not keen on the principle of centralized administration in general, since software freedom in the end means control of your own machine.
Of course, at work, it's not your *own* machine, and it serves the purpose of software freedom if free software can circulate more broadly. Plus, Firefox is just a better too. So people have been talking about this very point for years. And amazingly, nobody at Mozilla seems to get it. I'd bet Firefox could have another 10-15% of browsershare if they did.
There is at least one project out there which is aiming to change this, but I think it's going to take more than one isolated and barely known project to get around this issue.
Tweet, tweet.
Just because it is old tech to you doesn't make it useless.
Upgrading to new stuff often wastes precious time and attention.
Vendors need to take responsibility for forward and backward compatibility.
I've got some HP slim client devices that I use for RDP / Web terminals. They are fine for most web sessions, and have a real advantage in that they don't store user data on their local file system, so are pretty impervious to what a user may do. The disadvantage is that it's hard to upgrade a web browser without looking at the entire system, and usually easier to just take what the manufacturer issues as an update. Because of the age, flash size, and memory in some of these systems there are no updates to the latest and greatest web browser.
Wim.
In a world where rootkits and malware infest nearly half of Windows desktops and deliver a tranparent proxy with encrypted tunnels into your precious LAN, all servers are web facing servers. The security of the firewall is a myth serious professionals no longer subscribe to, and many never did. Secure your intranet server and your desktops as if they were in your DMZ because for all practical purposes that's where they are.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
As a senior web developer for an ecommerce company, we're required to ensure anything we develop will work with IE6. While < 10% of our visitors use IE6, those are still potential customers. Should they upgrade? Of course they should. Do I like having to test and tweak my code to ensure IE6 compatibility? It's definitely not the highlight of my day... but if it helps the company in the long run then it's worth a little extra hassle on my part.
has their POS based on IE6, and some even more ancient software. LOL, for a "high tech" company you'd think that they'd be a little more up to date. Uhh, could I interest you in a cell phone??
I work for a company that supplies the medical industry, and 68% of our customers are using IE6. I have no idea what we can do about this. I consider any company that deals with sensitive data and uses IE6 to be highly unethical. I certainly wouldn't want to store my medical data with them!
A lot of folks did not like the interface changes from IE6 to 7 & 8. I didn't like the changes at all, but gave in after a few months because of security concerns.
If the techies realized how many companies still rely on software that needs a VT/220 emulator to work, they would just give up on the whole IE6 thing.
1) Lots of our internal web pages don't work in Safari (or Firefox)
2) I don't like tabs
3) If you disable tabs in IE7 or IE8, you lose the ability to specify what happens when a link is clicked on in another app (replace the contents of the current window or open a new window)
My experience (SOE engineering) in corporate environments - is that whenever we argue that the applications that the SOE have to support should be brought into the modern day are over-ruled by the client. The client prefers to listen to their developers (read AB**E/B*S) who, apparently have the "bigger picture".
Which, at the very least, should make the shareholders question the value of ITIL training and Security models.
In several instances I can trace the verbatim refutations of management to "word for word" requoting of "supportive" emails sent to the clients developers.
The developers are not actual employees of the client (read government departments) but rather, coders for hire employed by Sph*r**n (formerly Computer Training *nst*tute, formerly etc etc).
When we (the support, administrators, and engineers) argue that the SLAs are unsupportable (I used the words "nailing snot to the wall" in one memo) we are told that "the experts don't agree", "that's what the client wants", "if we don't do it we'll lose the contract"
Damn Moens Law of Bicycles.
It's a long and sordid history. Start here Or if you prefer the short story, here. Hanlon's razor does not apply.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The Tale of Wise Master Sun and the Production Network
Master Sun was visiting with his friend Willow Blossom, who ran a mission critical network for a large E-commerce site. Blossom complained, "I hate software these days; I cannot trust that my system will work from one day to the next because code is so buggy. I am losing sleep, and my hair is falling out." Master Sun opined that this was tragic because Willow Blossom's hair was a gorgeous cascade of deep black - as black and shiny and deep as a null device on a spring morning. He bowed and excused himself, and asked for an audience with Prince Ciao (pronounced "Cee Eye Oh") who was lord of Willow Blossom's castle. He took a brush, and on the floor of the audience chamber wrote in ink:
1) Set up the production systems
2) Make them work
3) Test them
4) While true; do
If they are working; Continue; Endif
If they are not working; GOTO 2; Endif
5) Done
Prince Ciao studied Master Sun's writing for weeks even to the point of missing his golf games, and was finally enlightened. He summoned Willow Blossom and explained Tzu's wisdom, then had her head and its beautiful hair mounted on a stick in the NOC as an example to the others, even though it was his own policy that Willow install patches as fast as they came from the vendors. The next time Master Sun was invited to the castle, he politely declined.
During the 90's we were assaulted with a welter of products, the majority of which were half-assed and largely useless. And during that time, because Prince Ciao read all the marketing literature and WIRED magazine, network and system administrators were forced or "encouraged" to field beta-test code at an absolutely insane rate. The mainframe programmers of the 70's and 80's used to write of a practice called "Change Control" - in which production systems were managed with care and forethought. During the late 90's the last of the Change Control believers were taken out and shot, and their cubicles were given to the consultants who were there to mark everything up in XML in order to make everything better in some manner nobody understands yet. During that time, security practitioners were forced to repeatedly bend over and grip their ankles by business units that had already spent good money on bad products so by golly they were going to field them because otherwise Prince Ciao would have their heads. Of course nobody wanted to admit that. In 2000 I was Prince Ciao for a small start-up. Our sales VP went over my head to the CEO and bought the company Seibel's sales/customer management tool at the incredibly low price of only $500,000. Of course, it required 3 consultants working for 9 months to learn that it actually needed 5 consultants working for 12 months to make it work. I began to sharpen my stake. The icing on the cake was the discovery that Seibel required the use of Internet Explorer in order to function properly. Guess what happened? Explorer went in, of course. Where was Master Sun when I needed him?
More importantly, they left it alone for many years, so that it became a stable target. They've only recently produced IE7 and IE8 to halt the slide in market-share of IE.
Here's an idea that might solve some headaches - maintaining compatibility with legacy internal applications, and enabling newer browsers to view the actual WWW at the same time...
Why don't we use Terminal Server to use those sites that require IE6, and install a better browser for everything else? Corporates are using those legacy web sites more as "applications" anyway - so it's pretty natural to double-click on the relevant icon on the Desktop and have a Terminal Server session start up with just that application.
i keep ie6 on my xp system for using the windows updates webpage, but firefox is my main browser. other than that i have it blocked off from accessing the internet in about 5 different ways. i have no interest in installing ie7 or ie8 because they take up even more hd space and install more files on my system for a browser i don't even use anyway except for updates which ms unfortunately requires. i wish ms made a standalone updating program for xp, then i'd remove ie completely.
People don't like sudden changes, subtle changes like an extra sentence or box on the site would give less angryness among those not accepting big changes like such.
Who DOES like a popup in the first place?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
2 of those three features are possible which you described through firefox and additional tools; it's not because it requires an extra step that it's impossible to do so.
I've used to run a cybercafe for +10 years, where the software on our mirrors had an extra tool especially to lock down Windows & Firefox settings.
I blame lazyness, not standards for this matter.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
How exactly is the home-kitchen-and-garden PC user going to use multiple browsers? It's too difficult to explain WHY to switch browsers; let stand WHEN to switch.
I think addons are a solution here; by using one browser, but an addon which switches to another version of mode when needed. A list could be made where the preferred version of IE gets pre-selected. There are already addons available to run native MSIE in a firefox session.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I used to manage four networks where one half had only access through the proxy and the rest had full access to anywhere.
Some of these PC's had exclusive access towards the net; wether they choose to use the proxy or not.
I could have done this with a transparant proxy, although, by using a proxy PAC file, users had their own choice of disabling the proxy whenever they wanted; while those not allowed were forced to go through the proxy. There were plenty of times when I disabled/enabled my proxy connection for web development.
Squid was set that our cybercafe did not have any access, between closing hours by adding extensive ACL and firewalling within closing hours.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
you know, I would at least 50% of Korea is still on IE6. The online cafes, social networking sites, government sites, et al., all use the old technology.
it's terribly frustrating. i carry around portable apps suite on a USB drive to insure i can fully access my own web sites.
Indeed ActiveX, IE, IIS, .net, ms-java, directx, exchange, outlook, visual studio, msn messenger, etc were all designed to create a big windows-lock. And it works - locks very well. Allied to their openly admitted strategy of charging for it whenever possible, if not encouraging it to be used and pirated comfortably. Until this basic dual-legality strategy is attacked somehow, it will be very hard to dethrone windows. Hard to admit, but Apple is actually making more headway than Linux on the desktop, competing based on good design, good experience for users. I love open source, but unfortunately there is still more work to do to match the desktop experience. As for price, well, counting piracy reality, open source costs the same. As for features, all good open-source apps generally work on windows too, but the opposite is not true. So people format their store-bought cheaper Linux boxes and install whatever runs their apps and is easy and free. Piratows works great, like it or not. And to be honest, I think to compete Piratinux will be necessary. Allowing integration of Linux with piratewarez even more easily and comfortably. Otherwise it simply becomes incompatible with users reality, which is what it is now. Wine isn't good enough yet, nope, and probably will never be.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/