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."

Comments

Chained to IE6

[Sique]

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).

Re:Chained to IE6

[zonky]

Lets talk again when group policies are present in Firefox/Chrome?

Like it or not, for big IT, these are must haves:
Ability to specify proxy servers and prevent users from modifying them?
Ability to restrict settings, etc etc etc
Ability for Firefox to use the internal windows cert store

The problem is not that IE6 sucks, it is that there are barriers preventing Firefox/Chrome from having a place on the corporate desktop. Why they don't address these I'll never understand.

Re:This is news?

[TheRaven64]

Java appeared a year before ActiveX. It's not exactly a direct competitor though, because Java is a cross-platform distribution mechanism, while ActiveX is a way of packaging Windows applications for Internet distribution. To say it had no legitimate competitors is somewhat misleading, because it doesn't really have a legitimate use either. It's not a web technology, it's a Windows technology. It allows Internet Explorer to be used as a platform for easily deploying Windows binaries to workstations. There are a lot of other tools for doing that, including some quite successful ones from Novell that were widely deployed before ActiveX was introduced.

Re:So why can't they..

[houstonbofh]

Because it is not fully compatible, and with some old applications it just does not work. (Mostly custom apps)

Re:Old Standards Never Die

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an urban legend.

Re:chrome frame

[CharlyFoxtrot]

I just use Firefox Portable with IETab for the internal POS (not talking about point of sale folks) applications that won't work in anything but internet exploder. Oh and Hidetab comes in handy from time to time too.