Google Kills Apps Support For Internet Explorer 8

An anonymous reader writes "Google today [Friday] announced it is discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 8 in Google Apps, including its Business, Education, and Government editions. The kill date is November 15, 2012. After that, IE8 users accessing Google Apps will see a message recommending that they upgrade their browser."

Comments

Lucky bastards

[maroberts]

I still have to support IE6 :-(

Re:Lucky bastards

[siddesu]

What's the big deal? Someone I know has to support several COBOL business applications. A lot of the codebase he works with was probably written around the time he was still a youngling.

Re:Lucky bastards

[nedlohs]

The codebase he supports is supposed to work with a given COBOL system.

Whereas said web crap that has to support IE6, also has to work with IE7, and IE8, and IE9, and Firefox, and Chrome, and Safari. And it has to "look good" in the recent browsers without looking like crap in IE6.

Re:Lucky bastards

[toejam13]

Our company still supports older browsers such as IE5 - IE7, but we strip a huge amount of functionality away. No CSS, no images and as little scripting on the client-side as possible. It is basically provided as-is. And people use it.

The next big thing for us is to switch from bitmap (PNG, JPG) to vector (SVG) graphics for static images. That means that IE8 and Android Browser 2.x are on the chopping block unless we want to use <object> tags to embed bitmaps as a fallback.

We're aware that means the end of support for IE on XP. But the OS is over a decade old. Windows 7 is fairly reliable and can run on some fairly geriatric hardware (I've gotten to a W7 desktop with both P2/450 and K6-2/500 systems). The corporate sector is slowly being pushed to W7 kicking and screaming because XP driver support for new laptops is starting to wither. For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap. If they can't fork out for an OS upgrade once a decade, how else will they be like on the consumer side?

But then you have the Android issue. I'm using Cyanogenmod 7.1 on my own handset, but that's still Gingerbread 2.3.7. And I consider myself lucky to be even that far. There are some fairly recent handsets that are still using Gingerbread. So do we want to relegate them to the legacy site or keep Gingerbread support? Most of those devices are too small to take advantage of SVG anyways. The tablets could, and most of them run 3.x or 4.x which includes full SVG support in the Android Browser.

Eventually it'll come down to numbers. Is SVG worth it? How much do we save by no longer certifying those legacy browsers? What other gains do we get from retiring support for legacy browsers? How many people are willing to use the legacy site? We just don't know yet.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Moby Cock]

At work, I still have to use IE6. It's just dreadful. Practically no websites render correctly and it is painstakingly slow.

Re:Lucky bastards

[shutdown -p now]

You don't need to migrate them off XP. You just need to migrate them off IE and to Chrome.

But, frankly, if you're still on XP, the only lazy around is you. Stop bitching about people not bothering to support your antique setup - they don't have any obligation to do so, and I've heard enough from web developers to know just how painful supporting IE below 9 is.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

IE 8 is not the only browser that runs on XP

Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera...

Google is choosing to require a modern environment so that they can deliver a quality user experience.

IE 8 is three years old, HTML 5 support is wonky, and it's javascript engine is slow. All reasons why Google released Chrome, to provide an environment that delivers a quality experience to their users.

Re:Lucky bastards

[hairyfeet]

You ran Win 7 on a Pentium 2? Why man good God why? Did you lose a bet or something?

While frankly nobody should be using something THAT old as a day to day system i can say that I've thrown Win 7 on several systems that are more likely what you are gonna find in the wild, socket 754 Semprons and socket 478 P4s and it runs just fine and is pleasant to use on those 7+ year old systems. No Aero of course but its not like you need Aero for anything.

But the fact that you have to run a non MSFT browser on products that are still under support just shows why IE is doomed, they have really shot themselves in the foot by fragmenting the hell out of the userbase. Hell I can't even keep up with what runs on where, is it 7 is the last XP version or 8? And isn't IE 10 supposedly to be for 7 and 8, thus screwing over the Vista users?

IE is just too much of a fragmented mess anymore and I'm just glad I've gotten my customers off the damned thing. Now I give them Comodo Dragon and Firefox (although recently I've started using IceDragon, I like the layout a little better than standard FF) and tell them if they insist on using IE just don't expect any support for it, with Dragon it doesn't matter which OS they are on its just one browser, but IE is just too much of a mess. If you have to support IE? I pity you, I really do.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Some Bitch]

Whereas said web crap that has to support IE6, also has to work with IE7, and IE8, and IE9, and Firefox, and Chrome, and Safari. And it has to "look good" in the recent browsers without looking like crap in IE6.

A lot of the web crap that needs to work on IE6 doesn't need to work on anything else, it's antique ActiveX that doesn't and never will work on something other than IE6.

Re:Lucky bastards

[hairyfeet]

Actually Win 7 is the first one since Win2K Pro (great OS that one was) where I can point to real honest to God improvements and say "THAT, that right there, that's worth upgrading for", such as MUCH better memory management where Windows will actually use available memory for caching instead of slamming the page file when you still have memory free, jumplists and breadcrumbs make it butt simple to get back to where you were working the day before, readyboost can give a real kick in the pants to older systems by moving small I/Os onto a spare flash stick, its simply a much better OS all around.

So if you are keeping your users on XP you really are doing them a disservice, it was alright back in the day but its over a decade old now and the tech has made it obsolete, time to move on. Heck I've got several customers running it on a midrange (2.2GHz-3.2GHz) P4 with 2Gb of RAM so it isn't like you even have to toss the boxes. Just let it go man, let it go.

Re:Lucky bastards

[GNious]

For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap.

I bought a Win 7 Home Premium based PC - it is a decision I've come to regret; I'm not cheap, but that has been a waste of money and of a lot of time trying to get it to update, backup, get on network .. basically everything I've tried has resulted in messages that something unknown failed, or that it isn't supported in Win 7 Home Premium.

Win XP works, works pretty well, and doesn't have a stupid UI that goes in circles when trying to get to network settings.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

We're aware that means the end of support for IE on XP. But the OS is over a decade old.

And Linux is even older. The software's age is irrelevant, what matters is its marketshare.

I've gotten to a W7 desktop with both P2/450 and K6-2/500 systems

Windows 7 is way too bloated for old machines. A lightweight Linux would run much better, you might even get to run some programs too.

Re:Lucky bastards

[toejam13]

XP runs just fine thank you very much! Why change for the sake of change ... XP runs fine and perfectly well on computers and it makes no sense to upgrade such a great system for eye candy.

Except that it does not. Try using Windows XP on a recent Thinkpad or Inspiron laptop. Constant issues with power saving, USB devices and wireless connectivity, just to name a few. Hardware developers simply are not putting their XP drivers through the same level of QA as their W7 drivers, and it shows.

And if you want to use more than 4GB of memory, you're put in something of an awkward position with XP. The x86-64 edition was based on Server 2003 and not XP Professional. It is the red-headed stepchild of the Windows world. I used it for a couple of years with my desktop and it had its share of... quirks.

Then you have the problem with security updates for XP coming to an end. That isn't eye candy, that's core stability.

There is no reason why IE 9 can't work on XP nor why IE 8 can't do everything other browsers can do.

Lazy just plain lazy. IE 8 is something still so cutting edge and new that companies are spending 10s of millions upgrading from IE 6 as I write this! You are telling them they can't even support the browser they spend 10 million porting their apps to?!! WTF

Google is out of touch

I don't think you understand. Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. They want you to move off of XP and onto W7 or W8. Porting DX11 and IE10 back to XP removes incentives for you to upgrade. That isn't lazy, that's just smart business sense.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Pieroxy]

Whereas said web crap that has to support IE6, also has to work with IE7, and IE8, and IE9, and Firefox, and Chrome, and Safari. And it has to "look good" in the recent browsers without looking like crap in IE6.

A lot of the web crap that needs to work on IE6 doesn't need to work on anything else, it's antique ActiveX that doesn't and never will work on something other than IE6.

You haven't paid much attention to the web in the last decade have you?

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

And Linux is even older.

But very rarely the Kernel and software (versions) that are used.

Re:Lucky bastards

[justforgetme]

IMHO chrome has become too much of a behemoth. I'd migrate them to Firefox. A fresh OS with chrome on a 7 year old laptop grinds to a halt on the first page. The same setup is perfectly usable with an up to date Firefox

Re:Lucky bastards

[justforgetme]

My guess is that IE8 users will just get a huge chrome browser ad when their support gets cut of.

Re:Lucky bastards

[cyber-vandal]

Maybe he doesn't feel like paying Microsoft a lot of money for no real advantage. If the Win 7 upgrade was a reasonable price you might have a point but here in the UK it's 83 GBP and there's no guarantee that his perfectly functioning computer will be able to run Win 7 given that manufacturers often haven't provided Win 7 drivers for older hardware. So your remedy is potentially for the parent poster to buy himself or herself a new computer that they don't really need.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I work there are dozens of COBOL programmers, it's abanking system, very old.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Calydor]

If they can't fork out for an OS upgrade once a decade, how else will they be like on the consumer side?

Not nearly as consuming and more like using?

Seriously, for most people Windows XP -just works- at this point, which is what is important to the average user. They see no need to upgrade so long as they can browse the net, write letters, send and receive email, play their favorite games, all of which XP does perfectly.

That said I upgraded to Win7 myself just a few months back and I'm never returning to XP. I had no clue how big a difference DirectX11 made over DirectX9 in games - it's like a whole new experience. Of course, without actually SEEING this difference with their own eyes I'm guessing most people will consider it marketing hype if they were told.

Yes, Win7 is an improvement, the same way a ... BMW is an improvement over a Volvo, but as long as your Volvo gets you to and from work without ever breaking down in the middle of traffic with an 18 wheeler right behind you why would you get rid of the Volvo? It works.

Re:Lucky bastards

[RabidReindeer]

Where I work there are dozens of COBOL programmers, it's abanking system, very old.

Unlike IE, COBOL is a standards-compliant platform designed for a long lifespan.

Re:Lucky bastards

[mr_jrt]

..or Apache multiviews using the content-accept header. :)

URLs should identify resources, not files anyway, so "/images/background10.jpg" should have the URL "/images/background10" anyway, then you're free to have multiple formats that can supply said resource on the server and vary depending on the client's preferences.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Hadlock]

Can you outline this in more detail? Everyone I know that was dragged kicking and screaming in to using Win7 stopped bickering within a day or so of using it. Win7 was the first Microsoft OS my linux buddy liked enough to switch back from linux to Windows for. Your experience is the complete opposite of every other story I've heard out there. I dislike Microsoft for the most part just as much as most people on this site.... but Win 7 is actually pretty nice... reliable even.

Re:Lucky bastards

[siddesu]

web crap that has to support IE6, also has to work with IE7, and IE8, and IE9, and Firefox, and Chrome, and Safari.

Very doubtful. The only places I have heard of that still suport IE6 are legacy intranet systems, usually in banks or somesuch, where all the terminals use the same browser version, ie. the same situation you have with an obsolete COBOL system that is still working for various "business reasons".

Outside of such intranet installation scenarios, everybody and their dog have dropped IE6 support long time ago. If they haven't, they should, as I doubt it has even 1% share these days.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Guppy06]

Windows 7 is fairly reliable and can run on some fairly geriatric hardware (I've gotten to a W7 desktop with both P2/450 and K6-2/500 systems).

Except the published specs for Windows 7 require at least a gigahertz. In fact, that right there is why I'm not using Windows 7 on my netbook; XP does more with less, and it shows.

I find it funny that you suggest an unsupported OS installation as a solution to a lack of support for an application.

Re:Lucky bastards

[MightyYar]

For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap.

I have an XP machine (mainly for my wife). Cost is not the issue - it's time. I'd probably have to dedicate about 8 hours to installing the new OS, moving the data, setting up all of the applications, verifying backups still work, etc. At that point, I might as well just get a new computer... which is exactly what I will do when the XP security updates keep flowing. Then I just have to make the age-old Mac vs. PC decision :)

Re:Lucky bastards

[vlueboy]

For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap. If they can't fork out for an OS upgrade once a decade, how else will they be like on the consumer side?

Home users do not differentiate an OS from their TANGIBLE hardware enough to care to upgrade it separately from their ancient machines; they just settle for whatever new one pops up with a new purchase. The fact is you rarely see noob users looking for an OS to buy in a software store anyway. Part of the issue is that OS's are *not* sold on TV --think of the I'm a Mac ads aimed at selling new machines and the Droid campaign, at selling NEW cell subscriptions. The few that upgrade the ancient Windows machines I mentioned up top see OS versions as akin to over-the-air IOS upgrades, and won't feel the need to pay a cent for change. They'll pirate only half-aware that the are supposed to go to a computer store.

Re:Lucky bastards

[foniksonik]

Unless said user needs access to Google Apps and wants to also run IE or any of a number of other services that will follow in their footsteps.

If not then its a non issue for that person.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience is the exact opposite. FF churns where Chrome moves with no problem.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Billly Gates]

Not where I have seen. School districts still use IE 6 and do do hospitals because the medical equipment that outputs MS css costs $300k each!

So now you are an average website catering to children. This means they can't view it as you no longer support IE 6. That is a problem. It is dying slowly but still millions support it. In the UK the whole goverment still uses IE 6 on new images for all its computers as they are in austerity. That means if you have a british audience you still need to support it.

Re:Lucky bastards

[JDG1980]

But, frankly, if you're still on XP, the only lazy around is you. Stop bitching about people not bothering to support your antique setup

To the average user, a computer is an appliance: why should they have to replace it when it's not broken? And, frankly, this position has quite a bit going for it. Why should users have to pay more money just because MS decided they couldn't be bothered to keep their browser up to date in XP?

Re:Lucky bastards

[Compaqt]

Why would you run XP on a recent Thinkpad? That doesn't even make sense. Your Thinkpad already came with Win7, why install XP over it?

People are talking about XP on old machines, where it's just fine (in some circumstances).

Anyway, if MS doesn't want to release a new browser for XP, Moz and Goog are ready and willing to oblige.

Re:Lucky bastards

[ColdWetDog]

You must have been very, very bad in your previous life.

Re:Lucky bastards

[toejam13]

You ran Win 7 on a Pentium 2? Why man good God why? Did you lose a bet or something?

Boredom. I just wanted to see if I could.

IE is just too much of a fragmented mess

Microsoft does seem to be cleaning house as to what they'll support. Had early versions of Vista been more reliable, I don't think we'd be having this discussion about XP support over a decade later. And they do seem to be aware of issues with earlier browsers regarding standards and are trying to retire them.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Firefox of 7 versions ago...
http://www.itworld.com/sites/default/files/figure2_browserfootprint.jpg

Or maybe you had a badly behaving addon, but Firefox 15 fixed almost all the addon memory leaks too.

http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/09/05/memshrink-progress-week-63-64/

These days, Chrome is the hog, hands down. I've tested on OX, Windows and Linux.

Re:Lucky bastards

[toejam13]

And Linux is even older.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make. Of course Linux is older than Windows XP. But in turn, the NT series is older than Linux. So what?

The software's age is irrelevant, what matters is its marketshare

Tell that to Amiga users after Commodore fell. Continued software support and development are equally as important as market share, if not more so.

Windows 7 is way too bloated for old machines. A lightweight Linux would run much better, you might even get to run some programs too.

FreeBSD 8 + Xfce 4.8 was only slightly faster than Windows 7. W7 was actually faster than KDE 4.1. This was even with 1GB of memory on the P2.

If you disable Aero, Windows 7 isn't that bad as long as you have enough memory.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather not even support IE9. There's a number of java/css3/html5 problems with their 'most-complient browser' to-date.

at least ie10 doesn't suck.

on the sites i develop ie6 users get a big windows that forwards them to http://www.ie6countdown.com/

Re:Lucky bastards

[cheesybagel]

That must be some really nasty austerity if they don't have the money for Firefox or Chromium.

Re:Lucky bastards

[GNious]

Sure - lets see what I still remember...

Setting up network:
Got into a new dialog in Windows, trying to change a setting (DHCP -> Fixed IP) on a NIC (dont remember if was wired or wireless).
The dialog basically had various options, and in the bottom said something like "To do X, click here". This led me to another, similar dialog, which again ended with "To do X, click here". Clicking there led me to the 3rd dialog, similar to the last two, and with "To do X, click here". Clicking led me back to the first dialog.
I verified this, going through the 3 dialogs a couple of times, re-reading everything to ensure I wasn't misunderstanding it or imagining it or something; Nopes, it was literally leading me in loops in my attempt to set a fixed IP on a NIC.
So, issue 1: Recursive and asinine dialogs

Running Windows Update:
Windows would constantly nag me about updates. I tried to let it update, but always got the message that it couldn't update.
I tried going to update.windows.com (or similar), since this worked on WinXP, but this just launched the same process as the regular update, and failed.
Eventually I dug into it, getting an error-code and offer to see what the error-code meant; Turned out that the specific error-code was not in the lists of error-codes Microsoft provided in the documentation. It was an error-code that Microsoft seemingly didn't know.
Issue 2: Useless and undocumented error-codes

Using FixIt:
Microsoft dialogs relating to the failing update suggested downloading and running Microsoft FixIt.
I downloaded this tool and ran it; It (Microsoft FixIt) reported that it could not download and run Microsoft FixIt - I could down and run the tool, but the tool apparently needed to download and run itself, which it could not do. As a solution to this, it (Microsoft FixIt) suggested that I download Microsoft FixIt and run it to fix Microsoft FixIt ... Ca here I decided to not use the computer for an extended period.
Issue 3: Stupendously poor and user-unfriendly system design

Setting up Media Center:
(I'll skip the total confusion that was installing drivers for a DVB card, and how it had to be set up ... I hope this was due to the specific vendor)
While setting up Media Center, I was twice told it would download some kind of software for (1) handling EPG (tv guides) and (2) something with TV cards.
Both downloads would hang for over an hour, and then report that they were unable to download. Retrying caused the exact same behavior, indicating that nothing was cached from previous downloads, or that it had simply hung for >1 hour without actually downloading anything.
I manage to google and download 1 of these, which made that step in the Media Center go away; this took 15 minutes, i.e. notably less than the time Media Center spent on not downloading it. The second tool is still missing, but Media Center appears to run without it. It cannot, however, use the DVB card.
Issue 4: Unable to determine problems with downloads, and possibly offer alternatives, during setup

Running games:
The PC is an Shuttle Atom D525, 4 gigabyes RAM, some nVidia onboard graphics and a 60 gigabytes SSD. Part of the intent is to run some minor games on it.
It failed to run a game because of some texturing issue in nVidia's driver. Turns out Shuttle is using an older nVidia driver with a known bug, and have not updated past it. Going to Microsoft's update-page is useless (update doesn't work, Microsoft doesn't know why), and downloading the appropriate driver directly from nVidia doesn't work, as the driver reports it cannot be used on the system.
Issue 5: Unable to use generic or OS provided drivers for common graphics system.

Getting on Network:
Every so often the computer will report that it doesn't recognize what network it is on, particularly if switching between wired and wireless.
When this occurs, it thinks it is on a public network, and basically disallows most any network access. It

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using an 8 year-old laptop, XP, 1GB RAM, 2.4GHz P4 and chrome and chromium run just fine with - get this - more than one tab open. OMIGAWSH! I know.

tl;dr: stfu

Re:Lucky bastards

[justforgetme]

OMG!!!! ACs are getting all over my posts pulling fantasies out of their behinds! The end of the world must be here!

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have to support IE6 :-(

Meh, that's hardly a challenge.... as long as you don't also have to also support modern browsers with the same system! :)

But seriously, if they're paying you enough for working with IE6, then quit complaining. If they're not paying you enough to do it, then quit.

Re:Lucky bastards

[hairyfeet]

Wow the IE fans must be out today, seeing as I got modded down for daring to point out IE is fragmented all to hell.

The way I look at it is VERY simple: Is the product still under support? If yes then your flagship products should still run on it, especially when you consider that businesses don't change their entire systems in a day and therefor there is gonna have to be transition times.

I mean if I'm a corp with XP and 7 boxes in the middle of a switchover, why would I want to use IE when I can't even use one version? Answer I probably wouldn't, I'd just use Chrome or Firefox or one of the variants like Dragon. I can tell you its a HELL of a lot easier to support users when you have them all on the same page, as you don't have to deal with which quirks are browser A and which are browser B, if they are all on the same page that is eliminated. With Dragon or IceDragon it doesn't matter whether my users are XP/Vista/7/8 it is the same browser system wide, which is one less hassle for me.

I still can't figure out WTF they were thinking on this one, its like they think its still 2003 and they can do whatever because IE has no competition instead of being 2012 where there is over a dozen mainstream browsers and more websites are coded to work for them than IE. Just one more stupid move from Ballmer and CO, why am I not surprised.

Re:Lucky bastards

[shutdown -p now]

To the average user, a computer is an appliance: why should they have to replace it when it's not broken? And, frankly, this position has quite a bit going for it.

This is not a sustainable position unless and until we learn to write software that works perfectly out of the box, has no bugs, and, most importantly, has no security issues.

Why should users have to pay more money just because MS decided they couldn't be bothered to keep their browser up to date in XP?

The users don't have to pay more money. They can stick with the old browser, or they can use another browser the maker of which has decided to maintain XP support.

The reason why your question doesn't really make sense is that it can be equally applied to, say Win95. Or Mac OS 9. Or Gnome 1.

Re:Lucky bastards

[shutdown -p now]

He doesn't have to pay anyone any money. He can keep running XP (or 2K, or 98, or whatever) for as long as he wants - it's still there, he strill owns it, and it still works. What he can't do is demand that others keep supporting his setup for free in their new developments, essentially indefinitely. Such support is not free to implement and QA.

Re:Lucky bastards

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not a web developer myself so I don't know the intricacies. But a friend of mine was actually complaining not so much about compliance of IE8, but more about its performance, especially on JS side of things. Apparently, once you have enough event handlers all around, things slow down to the crawl - and the only workaround is to simplify.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

[anonymous cause I don't want these related back to me]
From a large company site:
Hits: ~30 mil/month
Unique Visitors: ~55k
IE 9 1%
IE 8 25%
IE 7 37%
IE 6 28%
Chrome 4%
Firefox 2%
Safari 2%
Other 1%

Just considering IE6 vs. IE 7 vs. IE 8, the situation sucks.
Add in all the various version of Chrome/FF/Safari/Other (mobile, opera, etc), and it sucks harder, but the real bastard is IE 6 (which had over 60% just 2 years ago for this same company/site).

Not everyone has this usage profile, but it's not accurate to use traffic stats from a site that doesn't support IE6, because those users won't be going back there. We don't have the option of abandoning more than 1 in 4 people, or about 15,000 users, and we lack the authority to force all those upgrades (or migrations to a different browser). We'll reduce IE 6 usage below 2% eventually (my personal target for when we can drop support), but IE 7 is already 7 years old and will probably be a decade old by that time.

These situations do indeed exist, are common, are a PITA to deal with, and are depressing (no light at the end of the tunnel).

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it is a ntlm compatibility issue which is Microsoft's fault because they went with security instead of reverse compatibility with the default settings.

Re:Lucky bastards

[TheoMurpse]

IMHO chrome has become too much of a behemoth. I'd migrate them to Firefox.

What? My experience is that Firefox is slower, uses more RAM, and has other problems Chrome does not. I switched from Opera to FF because Opera stopped handling Japanese input correctly. Then I switched from FF to Chrome because FF was so slow compared to Opera and Chrome was not.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't. Upgrading your apps is not free. THey wont render if it is not IE 6. If you use those apps you must use XP and IE 6 and tax payers do not have the money to upgrade as Wall Street wants their return.

People really do not know how proprietary IE 6 is. Code for that browser will not work in any other. You must throw your existing infrastructure away that still works fine so why upgrade?

Re:Lucky bastards

[toejam13]

The way I look at it is VERY simple: Is the product still under support? If yes then your flagship products should still run on it

Many companies have three stages of support for their software products. In the first, new features are added and bugs are fixed. In the second, only bugs are fixed. In the third, their support center will help determine if you hit a bug, then tell you to upgrade.

Microsoft has two problems. The first is that they do not do a good job of communicating when a software product has moved out of development mode and into maintenance mode. The second is that they like to withhold major new features from a product near the end of its development mode if a newer product is out. In short, they seem to be a poor job of communicating expectations. The result is that they get angry customers such as yourself who are frustrated that they can't get IE9 under XP (since XP is still "supported").

They get away with it because they're the only game in town in the PC world. Even if they weren't, there is a risk in publicly saying that your product has reached one of its EOL stages before the other guy. It ends up being a stupid game that we have to play.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?
 
We've been doing just the opposite at the shop where I work, migrating people off Firefox and onto Chrome. On the older refurbished machines we frequent (Think like Dell D610s), Firefox's startup and page load times have gotten so bad as of late that we've switched from installing Firefox as the default browser to Chrome instead. It seems much more snappy, especially with opening new tabs.

Re:Lucky bastards

[cavreader]

Your are so full of BS, If you can't install and configure Win7 in under 15 minutes you should probably step back and let someone more knowledgeable do it for you. And if by some remote chance you are a little knowledgeable you should already be aware the UI can be bypassed to configure a machine running a MS OS product.

Re:Lucky bastards

[toejam13]

Many companies have not yet certified Windows 7 for corporate deployment. So even if the laptop came with Windows 7, they'll reinstall with the corporate XP build. Keep in mind that corporations are a LOT more sensitive about certification. They won't run a version of software unless it is certified. That takes time and money to do.

Another issue is that some third party products are built to work with older versions of software and they puke when you come along with something newer. Stuff built to work only with IE6 is a prime example. You can yell and scream at the manufacturers of those products all you want, but when you're a captive audience, quite often they'll take their sweet time getting to the issue because they realize the cost it'll be for you to switch to something else.

Re:Lucky bastards

[jroysdon]

Single reason to stop using WinXP: end of vendor security patch support on April 8, 2014. Unless you have air-gapped systems with no sneakernet either, you need to have plans to remove WinXP by that date.

Re:Lucky bastards

[cpu6502]

Maybe instead of acting like a highschooler & insulting people, you should read the message directly above your own, in which the GP explains how badly Win7 is designed:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3118949&cid=41346997

Re:Lucky bastards

[hairyfeet]

That would be fine...if we were talking about Cupertino, but we are talking Redmond.

The problem is, and whether Ballmer really would rather be working at Cupertino is irrelevant for this, that MSFT whether they like it or not gets a LOT of their money from the small business and enterprise markets and they haven't bothered to actually listen and see what is going on.

As someone who works in the trenches I'll pretend you're from Redmond and tell you what EXACTLY is going on: The MHz wars are over, the 3 year upgrade cycle is dead and rotting on the dustbin of history, and PCs years ago went from being good enough to insanely overpowered and so the OSes that run on those PCs need to reflect that reality.

I mean look at the systems I was selling FIVE years ago, we are talking Phenom I X3 and X4 with 3-4Gb of RAM and 300Gb+ HDDs. Is there ANYTHING you average office runs that won't be smoking fast on that? Hell I have businesses running Solidworks on Phenom I X3s and they are happy as clams, I simply slapped in a 1gb GPU to offload some of the load on rotation and its smooth as butter.

So office aren't gonna toss every three years and they don't turn on a dime, it takes testing and tweaking and limited rollouts...its a fucking hard job man. Even sticking with small businesses like I do I can tell you that an OS change is about as fun as getting your nuts hit with a hammer, you are talking thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in software that has to be tested. Try getting an older version of QB Enterprise to run on Win 7...yeah...good luck with that pal!

Which brings me to my point which is MSFT desperately NEEDS users on IE, because it gives them a way to promote their products as well as get users for related services like Live Mail and Bing. If they wanted to make a "light" version that would be fine, but fragmenting a fricking platform that you control is beyond retarded and right into the middle of snooker loopy. what did it gain them? Did it speed Win 7 adoption? Nope all it did was hand all those users to Chrome and FF on a silver platter, how fucking stupid can you get?

Which is why I've said before and I'll say again Ballmer and Sinofsky have GOT to go. They need to bring back someone like Ozzie or Allchin, someone who actually thinks they work at Redmond instead of Cupertino, and right the ship. Because all they are doing now is flushing millions down the shitter by giving their customers every reason NOT to use their products!

Re:Lucky bastards

[cavreader]

High Schooler? I have been in the development world for 25+ years and beleive the choice of technology should always be based on it's ability to address the actual requirements. Plus how in the hell would he be in a position to pass judgment of the Win7 design or any other OS for that matter. Like most wannabes they equate OS development to app development and there is vast difference in those 2 distinct areas.

Re:Lucky bastards

[hairyfeet]

The thing I don't get is...why would you still WANT to use XP? I've put Win 7 Home and pro on systems as weak as socket 754 semprons and Athlons and late model P4s and Pentium Ds and you know what? It runs great, better than XP in fact because we just slapped little cheap ass 2Gb thumbdrives in the back for Readyboost and that gave load times a serious kick in the pants.

Out of all my customers I had ONE, just one, where we had to set up a dual boot and that was because he was running a seriously ancient version of Quickbooks (which was tied to fricking Flash 7, talk about a security nightmare) and a scanner from 1997 that would barely run in XP but nothing else. Within a year he had upgraded to QB 09 and had tossed that ancient scanner for a nice all in one and now that XP sits there unused.

So I don't know why anyone would keep hanging onto XP, its not only old and creaky, not only is its security piss poor, but frankly side by side Win 7 gives a better end user experience with all the work related improvements like the memory manager, readyboost, jumplists and breadcrumbs, its just a better system. Now every time I'm forced to work on an XP system I feel like I'm stuck on a Win 95 box, its just awful.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Compaqt]

OK, so what are we talking about: 1) running the already-installed (but not certified) Win7, or 2) installing XP, which won't even run. At least with #1 you've got an OS that is able to exercise the functions of the laptop.

Anyway, the only ones who do imaging is huge corporations. But most people in the US (and world) work for small businesses, who are much more adhoc in their IT, basically using what's already installed and never upgrading.

Re:Lucky bastards

[GNious]

High Schooler?

cpu6502 didn't call you a highschooler - he said you acted like one.

I have been in the development world for 25+ years and [...]

Some background:
It is ca 25 years since I wrote my first program on a C64.
I programmed a bit on on various Commodore Amigas (500, 1200, 4000) in Basic, C/C++ and Assembler.
In Linux, I used primarily C++ and Perl, and on Windows machines I've used C/C++ and C#.
The only program I've ever released on OSX was writting in C++, since I was too lazy to learn Obj-C.
Studied electronics, software development and business at various stages of my education.
Currently deploying computer-systems in SCM.

If you can't install and configure Win7 in under 15 minutes [....]

I did (re)install Win7 in ca 25 minutes (15 is less time than the installer itself took..), and setting it up for the bare minimum can be done in another 5-10 minutes. Your experience may vary.
My requirements did differ for the basics, which is where the card-house came down.

[...] you should probably step back and let someone more knowledgeable do it for you.

Seeing as I'm a retard and you're a genius, please indicate how to turn off powersaving on NICs. This is one problem I've not been able to solve, since it causes Win7 to report that no cable is attached to the NIC (the dLAN it is connected to is also using powersaving, waiting for a signal for the PC). The vendor of the machine and the manufacturer of the devices involved have not been able to provide an answer so far.

Plus how in the hell would he be in a position to pass judgment of the Win7 design or any other OS for that matter. Like most wannabes they equate OS development to app development and there is vast difference in those 2 distinct areas.

Poor UI is poor UI is poor UI. Whether it is an app on a phone, a 2.000.000USD bespoke system or an OS, a UI that doesn't help the user do what is needed, is a bad UI.
Likewise, providing error-codes in your system, any system, which you then cannot/will not document, is hostile to the user.

You're allowed your opinion, your high horse and the rest of it - but I think you're wrong. As a user, I know what I want and need - if the OS and OS manufacturer cannot or will not give that to me, I'll take my business elsewhere.

Re:Lucky bastards

[justforgetme]

No, Chrome is a behemoth. In my recent experience Basic Firefox is more responsive and more efficient across all hw configs you can do.

Re:Lucky bastards

[hardwarefreak]

For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap. If they can't fork out for an OS upgrade once a decade, how else will they be like on the consumer side?

For many it has nothing to do with money, but usability. Post WinXP, Microsoft has gone out of their way to break the UI functionality that is actually good and works. They spent hundreds of milllions of dollars researching and designing the Start Menu for Windows 95. Then NT and W2K got the same interface, and Windows XP has an option to re-enable it. It is intuitive, worked well, and everyone became accustomed to it. Then, in Microsoft fashion, they changed it simply to make it different. The reason? People won't pay for an upgrade if they feel they're not getting something for their money. How do you convey this better than chainging the UI function that people use more than any other?

In the US (and many countries) the clutch is on the left, the brake in the center, the gas pedal on the right, and the tranny shifter on right. For automatic trannies the clutch is deleted. This layout hasn't changed since the 1920s. It works well and is universally understood.

Like the driving conrols in automobiles, the UI "program menu" is something that should never need to be fundamentally changed. All changes to it since W2K have been detrimental, not beneficial. They have been made for profit reasons, not usability reasons. Microsoft Windows is a utilitarian tool, just like an automobile. What if screw manufacturers suddenly one day switched to counter clockwise threads when screws have been clockwise for over a century? Wall clocks? How about changing the road system overnight so we now drive on the left instead of the right?

For those who will inevitably, ignorantly, reply that "technology must more forward and that requires change", you miss the salient point that change is only progress when it makes something better, more usable, more intuitive. None of Microsoft's "Start Menu" changes since W2K have done so. They're done the opposite.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Not GP, but I'd like to respond.

No classic start menu. I have my stuff organised thusly:

\Accessories, \Dev, \Games, \Hardware (related to drivers and so forth), \Multimedia, \OfficeApps, \Toolkit, \Web. All very quickly navigable via keyboard. For instance, to launch Goldwave it's [Win | Ctrl+Esc], P M G G. To launch Keepass, it's [Win | Ctrl+Esc] P T K.

The abortion that Microsoft replaced that with is just a pain in the arse. Ok, you have the search bar - which behaves a bit like the Run dialog. Except when it doesn't - like when you're launching an MSC snap-in. Yes, I know you have shell replacements which restore the classic start menu but that's hardly the point.

Navigating the filesystem - particularly the user profile - from command prompt, is a considerable arse pain due to shimming. Take a good look at the contents of %userprofile% and try to discern which of those are actual directories and which are shims provided via explorer. No chance.

I use Win 7 at work in a support role. Try launching a console prompt under different credentials while picking up an administrative token. Lol, no. You can either use run-as on cmd.exe and get a command prompt with no admin token under your admin prompt (how the fuck is that useful) or use Run as Administrator on cmd.exe. Sometimes this prompts you for admin creds. At other times it doesn't. I can't tell what the difference is. Furthermore, why isn't the a console utility to grab an admin token from a console window with the appropriate privileges?

At home I have a server upon which I store my documents, firefox / thunderbird profile, and so forth. Under Windows 2000, XP, 2003 it's fantastic. You can just point the my documents folder at a UNC path. Try that with Windows 7 and unless you have Microsoft Search (IIRC) installed, it starts complaining like a beaten stepchild. No you fucker, I don't want or need search as I know where my stuff is. Just relocate the goddamn docs folder.

Windows XP may have been quirky - particularly when recently released. However it's now stable and effective. My XP64 machines haven't given me a moment's trouble in years - there was a PSU failure on one of them in 2009, but that's hardly down to software. They get the fuck out of my way and allow me to get on with work. OTOH, whenever I'm on a Windows 7 box it's like it's desperate to wave its hideous, blinged-up arse* in my face. It's nothing but an aggravating example of style over substance.

* Yes, I've turned off a considerable amount of the shit present in Windows 7 off. By comparison, I run XP on a pretty bare-metal configuration - for instance, I currently have 26 processes running on the machine I'm typing this from.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Celarnor]

Do you do anything special after the install to get it to get more speed out of it?

Because of the automated updating in Chrome, we'd rather not support it, but its getting to the point where we're having so many issues with FF that the tradeoff is acceptable.

I've got two D610s with fresh XP installs from work here for a side-by-side comparison, and in a vanilla FF vs vanilla Chrome test with both at their current versions (FF 15.0.1 and Chrome 21.0.1180.89), FF takes about 3-5 seconds to startup, spawn its first tab and finish loading the contents, while Chrome loads and spawns its default tab pretty much instantly in less than a second, with far less of the hard drive thrashing.

Additionally, Firefox vis a vis doesn't load its UI 'cleanly' (toolbar, tabs appear haphazardly at different times), and in some instances, actually gets classified as 'unresponsive' by windows for a bit before its done loading. These last two are especially problematic for our more naive users, as they perceive it as a problem in need of our attention rather than normal program behavior.

Re:Lucky bastards

[justforgetme]

I have no idea about windows. Sorry.

Also the best way to measure a browser's responsiveness is after you have done a bit of work and expanded your session to more than ten tabs.

Startup times are pretty much irrelevant.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel your pain. We're at least on IE7 in our shop but it is still a headache.

I'm with a small enterprise with a number of specialized internal systems, many of which have outdated Web interfaces that won't work on either IE8 or Java 6 above, say, version 20.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Celarnor]

Startup times are not irrelevant, they are very important to many users. Our biggest complaint from FF-using clients is "It takes too long to open a web link in Outlook". They don't leave the browser open because it isn't a critical or oft-used part of their workflow, and will seldom if ever have more than one tab open simultaneously,so performance after running a few hours or under extreme load doesn't have much bearing on our usage scenario.

Re:Lucky bastards

[itkelly]

Very doubtful. The only places I have heard of that still suport IE6 are legacy intranet systems, usually in banks or somesuch, where all the terminals use the same browser version, ie. the same situation you have with an obsolete COBOL system that is still working for various "business reasons".

I would have believed like you until a few months ago - but have now done some work for a very large financial organization that supports IE6 on its customer facing platforms - the reason I was given was that they are legally obligated to do so. Everyone I met would love to drop IE6 and they know all the arguments for why their customers should not use it.

Just because a browser has nearly zero share, doesn't mean some poor person isn't obligated by their business to make sure that any changes they make to a site continue to work in it.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Meski]

Microsoft are 2 major versions ahead of IE 8 - cutting edge it is not. I'll laugh when Hotmail make the same decision after you've ported those hundreds of users over.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo. IE was dead to me, seven plus years ago. Begone, useless browser!

Re:Lucky bastards

[afidel]

The answer to that kind of problem is Win7 XP mode, basically it runs XP in a VM and you can tell it to only expose one app or the whole environment. With a modern laptop with 8GB+ of ram it runs well unless you do something stupid like put AV in the XP mode and have both environments running scheduled scans.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

There has got to be an svg/canvas shim out there

Re:Lucky bastards

[tedgyz]

Yes, it is a QA nightmare testing for all flavors of browsers.

Re:Lucky bastards

[tedgyz]

Sorry bro - but you wish it was only 1%. Business users are notoriously slow to upgrade. We are seeing about 6% users with IE6. The majority of our users are IE7 with about 30%.

Re:Lucky bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have to use IE6 :((

Re:Lucky bastards

[aesiamun]

Why should developers spend more to support a browser because users don't want to spend more money?

As they should

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, wait, forgot to read the summary, let alone the FA. Yes, IE8 support should be stopped. Only support current browsers. Some day we'll all realize what browsers are, little mini OS's.

Re:As they should

[cultiv8]

once we get api access.

Re:As they should

[Sir_Sri]

Only support current browsers

8 was released in 2009. IE9 last year. I'm not really sure it matters for google, but if you do custom web applications 3 years isn't really a long time to have to keep it alive.

The big thing with IE8 is that it's the last IE for windows XP. Which is why it has a larger markeshare than IE9 still. marketshare from June and more marketshare by a lot. (25% vs 18%).

If windows 8 looked like it was about to take off like a rocket and Windows XP was on a rapid trajectory to obsolescence then sure, but that isn't really what's happening. Windows XP is slowly dying away, but it's still slowly, and especially in the business market lots of potential customers are locked into the browser on XP for the moment.

Granted, google probably has a lot of metrics and they probably know this isn't a problem for *their* products, but for the us little guys it's a different problem.

Re:As they should

[HJED]

Hm, its going to be fun in NSW government schools for a while when this happens, student email is provided by Google apps and currently the government issue laptops (all students in year9+ have them) are running IE 8, with the only way to upgrade to recall and reimage all of the laptops (because they are so locked down).
Many of the schools still have desktop computers running XP, because of this I doubt that google did look at a lot of metrics because creating that kind of issue for one of its largest Australian customers is probably not a good idea.

Re:As they should

[sjames]

XP users do have the option to install the latest and greatest Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

Re:As they should

[FirephoxRising]

I was just thinking this, the Medicare side of DHS (Dept Human Services in Australia) has Firefox built into their images as they are XP based and IE8 is crap. Lots of internal stuff uses IE, but Firefox is their for newer sites and some internal stuff.

Re:As they should

[tokul]

They'll just load google chrome plugin for IE. Which is what google probably wants. Yet another workstation with google stack on it.

Re:As they should

[hairyfeet]

Well if this doesn't help XP finally be put to rest maybe the announcement that the next photoshop won't run on XP will finally do it.

The ones I feel sorry for are the Vista users, they get no love at all even though their OS is supported until 2017. All the ones I've seen that have killed XP support seem to go from XP straight to 7, no Vista support at all. Poor Vista users, first you get a crappy OS then everyone ignores you.

Re:As they should

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if your computer is locked down by your IT department.

Re:As they should

[Anonymous Coward]

The big thing with IE8 is that it's the last IE for windows XP. Which is why it has a larger markeshare than IE9 still. marketshare from June and more marketshare by a lot. (25% vs 18%).

Worse, its the last IE that works in Server 2003, which is still used (insanely) in a lot of RDP/Citrix thin client installations.

Re:As they should

[secondhand_Buddah]

Not if the poor buggers are using ActiveX objects in IE on their intranets....

Re:As they should

[mrbester]

Nothing, apart from no more updates, is stopping intranet applications from continuing to be used. That isn't the issue. It's the "I want everyone to use the same outdated, buggy software that runs the outdated, buggy intranet applications to run web apps that use HTML 5 functionality like I use on my iPad / home PC and if you peon developers can't do that you're fired" mentality that is the issue. Upgrade or GTFO.

Re:As they should

[HJED]

The way the system is set up that would also require reimaging, (no executable that are not part of original image can be run on the laptops - IE plugins run installers which are executables)

Re:As they should

[Anonymous Coward]

If you design such an idiotic system any pain you get is more than deserved. I think it's justified to not expect more from Google than _not_ say "well, you got exactly what you deserve".

Re:As they should

[tokul]

The way the system is set up that would also require reimaging, (no executable that are not part of original image can be run on the laptops - IE plugins run installers which are executables)

Then it is not the problem as such system is designed be reimaged every month after MS releases their patches. One day they just reimage it to Win7 or newer MS flick.

Re:As they should

[asdf7890]

Only support current browsers

8 was released in 2009. IE9 last year. I'm not really sure it matters for google, but if you do custom web applications 3 years isn't really a long time to have to keep it alive.

IE8, while a significant improvement of 7 and 6 in a number of respects, was already seriously out of date on the day of release. The difference in testing and fixing effort associated with supporting IE8 compared to supporting IE9 is much larger than the two year difference in release dates would suggest.

Unfortunately for some of us, refusing to supporting IE8 is not a luxury we can currently afford. Hopefully the likes of Google taking this step will help push out corporate clients into the right decade (some of the largest banks in the UK have only upgraded to IE8 (from IE6) in their offices in the last year, in fact one that we deal with hasn't yet completed the transition).

The big thing with IE8 is that it's the last IE for windows XP. Which is why it has a larger markeshare than IE9 still.

If you are supporting corporates who are unworried about being embarrassingly behind the times, and other organizations like educational establishments (who also have legacy apps that won't work on decent browsers, and who (unlike the banks who are the bane of my work life) genuinely can't afford the time/investment required to fix that situation), the significant factor here is not the relationship between IE8 and XP, but the fact that IE8 will be officially supported from the point of view of security updates and fixes for other show-stopping bugs for as long as Windows 7 is (which will be supported in that way until something like 2022 IIRC). As our clients migrate away from XP in order to not be left vulnerable when XP falls out of support (or left having to pay MS large chunks of money if they don't upgrade in time and need fixes to problems found outside the final support window) I fully expect them to standardise on Windows 7 with IE8 for most of the next decade even if other big players follow Google's example.

Re:As they should

[Voyager529]

Well if this doesn't help XP finally be put to rest maybe the announcement that the next photoshop won't run on XP will finally do it.

What surprises me is the fact that Adobe is making a "next plastic disc version" of Photoshop as opposed to forcing "Creative Cloud" on everyone. I wouldn't have bet a counterfeit wooden nickel against Adobe making CS6 the last version of the suite that didn't use their rolling updates/monthly activation DRM scheme. I now make that statement for the CS7 editions - I don't think there will be a plastic disc successor to CS7.

Re:As they should

[sjames]

Sure they can. Then they can use their broken down old IE to access their even more broken down and old intranet and use a browser from this century when they're out in public.

Re:As they should

[sjames]

If the company is that into self flagellation, that's not =Google's fault. The rest of the world isn't interested in supporting weird corporat6e fetishes.

Re:As they should

[ColdWetDog]

Way too much pushback from people that give Adobe a lot of money.

That's a problem when your products costs thousands of dollars. You end up having to, at least on occasion, listen to your customers.

Not that Adobe doesn't try to get away with stuff that anyone short of Larry Ellison would be proud of...

Re:As they should

[Sir_Sri]

Who cares about fault? What matters is if customers have access to your service. If you have 100 million potential customers who can't access your service because they have bad IT departments you have to either build your system to work around that blocking, or give up on 100 million customers.

Re:As they should

[hairyfeet]

Won't happen because there is too many places where Internet is hit or miss and when they are paying you big piles of money? As another below you wrote they DO have to listen on occasion.

They also don't have a monopoly, the new Corel products are actually quite nice and have nearly as many plugin as PS without having near the cost so Adobe is probably scared of giving their clients an excuse to pick up a few Corel licenses and give it a real spin, afraid they may find that they don't really need PS.

I know I've already seen that with a couple of my clients, they didn't like the way Adobe was going with PS so they picked up Corel and found it really wasn't hard to switch.

Re:As they should

[sjames]

Fault decides who should take corrective action. Perhaps Google figures that the sort of company that would be that locked down and backward at the same time is unlikely to allow access to Google apps anyway.

Re:As they should

[Sir_Sri]

Fault decides who should take corrective action.

No, it decides who idealists complain about.

People who want money worry about solving problems not placing blame.

But yes, google has probably done the metrics and figured it's not worth it to their bottom line, my point was those of us who are smaller outfits won't be able to jump on the 'ditch anything 3 years old' bandwagon quite as easily.

Re:As they should

[sjames]

So you're saying the courts are crammed with complaining idealists while people who want money shun them?

Re:As they should

[exomondo]

XP users do have the option to install the latest and greatest Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

Safari really?

Re:As they should

[sjames]

Yes

Re:As they should

[yuhong]

And Server 2003 ends support a bit later (in July 2015).

Re:As they should

[exomondo]

Yes

It would seem your definition of latest and greatest differs from mine given the Post Date: February 12, 2009. Fairly sure Safari on Windows has been canned.

Re:As they should

[sjames]

Everything I see about it is rumour and guessing.

Re:As they should

[exomondo]

Everything I see about it is rumour and guessing.

Well the latest and greatest version of Safari is 6.x, and that isn't on anything but OSX.

Another nail for XP

[juventasone]

The summary leaves out the interesting part: IE8 is the latest version available for Windows XP. And there's no place that XP exists more than business, education, and government. This is Google's way to get sysadmins comfortable with Chrome in the workplace.

Re:Another nail for XP

[mkraft]

Or Firefox or Safari.

Most businesses are starting or have already switched to Windows 7 since support for XP officially ends in 18 months.

Re:Another nail for XP

[Jimme Blue]

The summary leaves out the interesting part: IE8 is the latest version available for Windows XP. And there's no place that XP exists more than business, education, and government. This is Google's way to get sysadmins comfortable with Chrome in the workplace.

Having read the FA (hanging my head in shame (which is stressing my youvh yypinh dkilld) ), it looks like this is only touching upon the web-access apps.

Does anyone know if there are Google Appliance apps, similar to Google Search appliances? I know that I've run across Google search appliances on small & large scales (various gov-controlled, closed networks), but I've not seen (or recognized) any implementations of their apps on these aforementioned appliances.

It seems to me that affecting _those_ networks would really be turning the screws on XP.

Re:Another nail for XP

[pspahn]

Yeah, but what is support anymore? In a world where your device is not much more than a dumb | smart client (browser as OS, essentially), the device is replaceable. Simply. No more worrying about an entire hardware stack, all you care about is the browser and the web.

I think it has been highly insightful of Googoo to develop the apps they have. I use them fairly often, and mostly because of the convenience. And hey, if it enlightens some M$ drone to the benefits of an alternative back office, the all the better.

Re:Another nail for XP

[rudy_wayne]

Or Firefox or Safari.

Most businesses are starting or have already switched to Windows 7 since support for XP officially ends in 18 months.

The ending of support is irrelevant. What "support" could you possibly need for XP? Anyone who is currently running XP will continue to do so until their last computer dies and cannot be repaired.

Businesses are switching to Windows 7 only because all the new computers they buy come with Windows 7 installed. If they could still get new computers with Windows XP installed, they would buy them.

Re:Another nail for XP

[viperidaenz]

Businesses don't tend to use the OS install that comes with the machine, they load their own builds they have made and tested themselves.

Support = security fixes.Come 11 April 2014, no more security fixes for XP. Good luck getting Office 2014* that will install on XP as well.

* or 2015, 2016, 2017....

Re:Another nail for XP

[repvik]

Businesses are switching to Windows 7 only because all the new computers they buy come with Windows 7 installed. If they could still get new computers with Windows XP installed, they would buy them.

What kind of business would do that? The brand new Dells we purchase are reimaged with a ready-made XP-image. We don't care about what OS the computer comes with. This is pretty common, and you apparently know nothing about enterprise management.

Re:Another nail for XP

[jimicus]

Depends on the size of the business. You can't do that (roll out a standard image) without buying a separate license for Windows, which means that it's pretty much limited to larger businesses. Small businesses tend to take what the computer comes with.

Re:Another nail for XP

[Grishnakh]

Depends on the business. A company with 20,000 to 200,000 employees? Yes, they have their own custom builds. A mom-n-pop retail shop? No, they use whatever comes installed on the machine, or whatever the IT business they've contracted with installs on it.

Re:Another nail for XP

[Bert64]

Support is required because even tho you might be using the device as a dumb client, it's really an extremely complex piece of equipment with plenty of places where security holes could be found, and with no support from the one vendor capable of supporting it those holes will never be fixed.

On the other hand, if that's what you're using it for them it's ridiculous to run such a complex system... Run something as simple as possible which is still being actively updated, plenty of lightweight linux distros, chromeos, firefox os etc.

Re:Another nail for XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you regarding security fixes. However, each successive release of Office is a more bloated, maddening annoyance than the last. Would someone please tell me what real, benefit it provides any large fraction of user. What does the typical business or education user do with Office that they could not do more productively with Office 2000? Not to mention that my statistician friends have a saying: "Friends don't let friends do statistics with Excel."

Re:Another nail for XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Win7 pro comes with downgrade rights. No seperate license needed. Even companies with a couple hundred employees do this.

Re:Another nail for XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Firefox or Safari.

Most businesses are starting or have already switched to Windows 7 since support for XP officially ends in 18 months.

The ending of support is irrelevant. What "support" could you possibly need for XP? Anyone who is currently running XP will continue to do so until their last computer dies and cannot be repaired.

Businesses are switching to Windows 7 only because all the new computers they buy come with Windows 7 installed. If they could still get new computers with Windows XP installed, they would buy them.

The support you need with XP and IE6 is the same support you need for all other software that has any kind of connection to the internet -- security patches.

XP and IE6 may be horribly insecure products, but Microsoft is currently still providing security patches for them, up to a point. When support ends, that will be the end of it. If a major security hole is found in IE6 or XP after support for them ends, it won't be patched.

My bet is that hackers around the world already know of a number of holes that could easily be used to compromise them, but are holding the cards to their chest until support ends. I would therefore predict that virtually within days of the end of support, pretty much every XP/IE6 system that is still running will be hacked wide open.

Given this, and the predictability of it, anyone who hasn't already made plans for their upgrade before the cut-off date could be considered grossly negligent.

Re:Another nail for XP

[viperidaenz]

My last full time job was at a company with 1200 employees. They had custom builds. Before that, with less than 50 employees, we didn't have custom builds but we manually reinstalled on each new machine.

Re:Another nail for XP

[yuhong]

AFAIK Stuxnet did target Win2000 and was *discovered* within days of end of support of Win2000.

The article seemed somewhat negative...

[gQuigs]

whereas I am quite positive about this move. It was Microsoft's choice to not port their more recent browser to XP in an attempt to kill it.

It's quite amazing how much marketshare IE has lost over the last 4 years (http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-200807-201209). Firefox has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 4%, while IE has lost 30%+ mostly to Chrome.

It's moslty the US, Australia, and China holding up IE usage (http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201209-201209-map)

*Note all of this is according to statcounter, while other sources give different results, still with the same trends though.

Re:The article seemed somewhat negative...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying all of the browsers available for several years and I have to admit that IE 9 isn't really all that bad. It does what it is supposed to do, and it does it fairly well.

I mean, I can view just about every website on the internet with it. It seems to serve its purpose. It has a reason to exist.

As far as I'm concerned, the only major downside is that it doesn't have an option to automatically "save" your progress so you can resume from where you left off when you closed the browser. But aside from that, it does the job of web browsing quite well.

IE 8 does kinda suck, though.

Re:The article seemed somewhat negative...

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 also has XP mode, so I'm not entirely sure what the excuse is these days, aside from just being cheap.

Re:The article seemed somewhat negative...

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of parity with Firefox and Chrome, IE9 is pretty meh on the CSS3/HTML5/fast JS front. A huge jump over IE8, but still fairly limiting.

IE10 on the other hand is a whole 'nother ballgame. Apart from webgl which they are opposed to out of their general OpenGL-must-die stance (same as CSS shaders using GLES2), IE10 covers basically the same featureset as Firefox and Chrome. I was amused to find that IE10 even had similar CSS bugs to Chrome.

Re:The article seemed somewhat negative...

[Anonymous Coward]

What always rather scares me is comparing their statistics for e.g. the US and Germany. This seems rather insane to me, how can these be so completely different? Is it companies or private PC where this difference comes from mostly?

Re:The article seemed somewhat negative...

[quetwo]

Windows 7's XP mode is horrible at supporting old hardware devices. Their USB/Port pass-through is very buggy, and is the only way I've seen BSOD's generated on Windows 7. Luckily, VMWare's solution is much better if you have to support XP with older devices, but it is much more klunky to push out to multiple users..

Re:The article seemed somewhat negative...

[10101001 10101001]

How about "I don't see the point in fixing what's not broken" and "I don't see the point in the wasteful quest to follow the latest and greatest trends"? Or are those equivalent to "just being cheap"? The problem, as I see it, is that neither IE9 nor IE10 are "killer apps" and a lot of people on older machines aren't playing DX10 games so those "killer apps" aren't there either. So what motivation would people really have to buy W7, exactly? It'd seem, at least in the future, the answer would be security updates, and that's it.

Big businesses won't move

[Tony Isaac]

It takes a LONG time for big businesses to move to new versions of anything. They are just now moving off of Windows XP and IE 7. Many major software systems used by big companies (such as GE Centricity) still don't even support IE 9, so customers of such software can't move forward even if they wanted to!

It looks like Google is taking a page out of Apple's book. It's stunts like this that keep Apple out of the office (for the most part). Microsoft, on the other hand, has a reputation for supporting legacy software just about forever...lots of old DOS programs still work! Microsoft has been rewarded by businesses in a big way.

Is this an opening for Yahoo?

Re:Big businesses won't move

[tangent3]

Or you know, they could just install Firefox or Chrome to access Google Apps and retain the obselete IE to access the obselete services.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Quick Reply]

I think that if they are so change-resistent that they can't even deploy Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome Frame or Google Apps Sync for Outlook (all of the supported options) then what chance is there that they would even move to Google Apps at all.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[viperidaenz]

Since when did Mozilla or Google offer SLA's for Firefox or Chrome? Microsoft supports IE as its part of the OS.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[sjames]

Apparently not on XP any more. The latest IE won't even install. At least Firefox and Chrome will install.

Granted, XP is ancient now and I don't really blame MS for not supporting it anymore, but it seems they are now actively sabotaging it.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[viperidaenz]

Microsoft continue to support IE8 and continue to release security fixes for it.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox requires a lot of elwork with the gpo plugin and firefox adm to integrated in a domain and then it doesn't come in a msi for centralized distribution

Is there anyone posting who knows what a corporate deployment looks like?

It is not just a question on downloading the setup.exe

However, no pity for the companies that are just being cheap if they cant afford a 300$/3years computer update for they 3000$/month employee, they're not really going anywhere

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Osgeld]

for what, another year?

its beyond time

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Grishnakh]

You'd be surprised just how cheap and stupid a lot of companies are. At my last job, I was getting six figures in pay, but for the longest time they kept me stuck with a shitty, old, slow PC running XP (and I had to use tools that only ran in Cygwin! because they wouldn't get Linux) with a tiny 17" monitor. Builds took forever, wasting tons of my time. After about a year of that, they finally got us new computers, but that was a lot of wasted time there.

I think these companies are just poorly run, by bean-counters mainly. They'll pay a lot for an employee because if they don't, the position will just sit vacant and the work won't get done, so they'll pay "market rate" or maybe a little more if they're getting desperate. But then they'll cut costs in other places, especially IT since it's a cost center. They're too stupid to put the two together (we're paying this guy $50-75/hour, but we're trying to save money by not getting him a $200 large-screen monitor and a $600 computer so he doesn't waste his time compiling software. He makes as much in only 2 days as it costs to pay for these things). Penny wise and pound foolish.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Bert64]

Microsoft offer no guarantee whatsoever with IE, they will offer "best effort" support, where the level of effort is directly related to how much you pay them.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Anonymous Coward]

DNRTFA, but I think it very likely google will support older IE browsers. As long as they use Chrome Frame.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[m_gol]

for what, another year?

its beyond time

No, for 2 more years. And it'll support IE6 for 2 more years.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[RabidReindeer]

But then they'll cut costs in other places, especially IT since it's a cost center.

One of the biggest fallacies in the whole bean-counting mindset. IT is more commonly a savings center. They've forgotten how much not employing all those Bob Cratchett-types over in the "profit center" helps make that "profit center" more profitable.

Anything that doesn't look like a bean doesn't exist for a bean counter. Nor, for that matter, do any beans that appear outside their computed timeframes or their constricted view of the Universe.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[alexgieg]

One of the biggest fallacies in the whole bean-counting mindset. IT is more commonly a savings center.

It's worse than that. I read a few months ago that the business guru who developed the concept of "cost center vs. profit center" (Peter something, I don't remember his surname) in, if I'm not mistaken, the 1960s, abandoned it about 10 to 20 years ago as the BS concept it is, saying he was sorry for the consequences. His new thesis was a return to the previous one, something like (I quote from memory) "a business' profit center is a customer's check that doesn't bounce", i.e., as long as everything within the business is pursuing that single outcome, there's no such thing as a cost center.

As expected, MBAs and accountants haven't got the news yet. A few more decades and, who knows? Maybe they'll make their companies start doing the right thing.

Also, I've read somewhere else that some large businesses are slooowly starting to abandon another BS concept that's caused wreak and havoc all around for the last few decades: the notion that their purpose is to move the company into maximizing shareholder benefit by all means no matter what. You know, as (if it were somehow) opposed to maximizing product quality, customer loyalty and satisfaction etc. The new shocking old idea is that shareholders benefit the most when people actually like their companies and products and love consuming them.

Nothing like hitting one's head in the wall, repeatedly, to drive a point home. :-)

Re:Big businesses won't move

[MtViewGuy]

However, now that Microsoft has said they're pulling support for Windows XP in 2014, that has forced corporations and government agencies to upgrade to Windows 7, which in many ways is a VASTLY superior operating system. Indeed, at where I work, it was this change that forced the IT department to upgrade their computers to run Windows 7 Professional, which will be the "de facto" default operating system for many years to come.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Jesus_666]

Reminds me of how my boss won't spring for the small investment neccessary to set up things like a bug tracker or a centralized document store. Because hey, paying 300 bucks for a small office server is much too expensive but having the devs fix the same problems over and over again because they half-finished a bugfix, then were moved to some urgent problem and forgot they ever dealt with the issue at all is totally cost-efficient...

Re:Big businesses won't move

[tepples]

Microsoft [...] will offer "best effort" support, where the level of effort is directly related to how much you pay them.

But because some companies are willing to pay Microsoft enough to at least repair defects that allow compromise of the security of a Windows XP system through Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft is willing to pass these repairs on to the general public on the second Tuesday of every Gregorian month.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[RabidReindeer]

Nothing like hitting one's head in the wall, repeatedly, to drive a point home. :-)

Experience keeps a dear school, but Fools will learn in no other.

B. Franklin

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Grishnakh]

Also, I've read somewhere else that some large businesses are slooowly starting to abandon another BS concept that's caused wreak and havoc all around for the last few decades: the notion that their purpose is to move the company into maximizing shareholder benefit by all means no matter what.

I haven't seen any evidence of that; maybe some foreign-owned businesses, where they have "honor" as an important part of their culture, unlike us.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Grishnakh]

If your company is doing software development and they're too incompetent to set up a bug tracker, then you need to start looking for a new job ASAP. That's totally inexcusable. Don't tell me they also don't have a revision control system.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[viperidaenz]

IE8 will be supported until the end of Windows 7 which is currently 14/01/2020. IE7 is tied to Vista, which will last until 11/4/2017. IE9 is probably going to be dropped before IE8, perhaps even IE7, since it isn't tied to a Windows product. Windows 8 comes with IE10

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Bert64]

Companies willing to pay that much could easily hire a couple of developers to patch up an ageing version of firefox or chrome etc... Even easier if several such companies pool their resources on doing so.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Jesus_666]

We do have an RCS and luckily all of our current devs can be arsed to use it. But yeah, the only reason I'm still there is because I don't want to switch jobs while writing my diploma thesis. Plus I want to move away afterwards and short-term student jobs tend to have lousy pay.

(I should've run when the boss told me that he expects me to write an enterprise business management system on my own in PHP in less than a year of part-time work but hey, this is my first real job and I didn't have the experience to recognize obvious delusion for what it is.)

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Grishnakh]

I dunno, with a year of part-time work and PHP, you could hack out something that manages a lot for a small business. Definitely not enterprise-grade, but it'd be enough to help out a small business significantly and it's unlikely they're going to grow that much for a long time.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Jesus_666]

Well, the requirements included a presentation system for bringing in new customers (both frotend and backend), domain and mail account management, time management for our coworkers, invoice generation for four different mutually-incompatible pricing structures (with the possibility of having more than one present on the same invoice), invoice generation for business partners that receive money from us, limited remote configuration of WordPress and being able to handle arbitrary constellations of companies and sub-companies that can be in any kind of business relationship with each other.

And, of course, "it has to work like our existing Flash-based system", which I was expected to be able to reverse-engineer just by looking at the user interface without changing anything. In fact, in the very beginning that was the entirety of the specification as the boss assumed that a programmer can infer from the UI what the program does and hey, my predecassor's predecessor had written a design document after al. Of course due to us having no process for handling documents it turned out that no one could find the design document anymore.

I also had to be compatible with the existing presentation system (which was simultaneously unfinished, in active use, critically important and a legacy system scheduled for replacement), which stored everything in a giant entity-key-value table where the uniqueness of entries was assumed but not guaranteed and things ike transactions were completely absent. I also had to maintain that system simultaneously with my development time. We're currently in the process of finally replacing this crock.

Add to that the fact that prior to taking the job I only had hobbyist exposure to PHP and web design and I think it's no wonder that my first attempt at building the system is also currently in the process of being superseded. 1000 man-hours aren't enough to learn how to build maintainable large codebases, get the hang of software architecture and spec out and build a mission-critical large system while simultaneously babysitting various other badly-written systems without a structured way of keeping track of bugs and unfinished functionality.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[yuhong]

AFAIK IE9 will be supported until 2020 too.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Grishnakh]

Wow, that's pretty insane. How on earth did this boss get to his position with wild ideas like this. Never mind, I think I know: he has a big mouth and can talk his way into anything.

Re:Big businesses won't move

[Jesus_666]

It worked the first time. Then again, the first time was with a Flash-based system that was grown over the course of two years and didn't have to support a three-digit customer base from the get go. He's still convinced that I have it easier than the Flash dev, though, because "all the hard work has already been done" and "I merely need to connect a few systems". Yeah, you can tell that he's not really tech savvy.

Lesson learned: "Small, dynamic team" means "senior developer with a junior developer's wage".

It's well deserved.

[mosb1000]

Anyone still using IE 8 deserves to be left out in the cold. Modern browsers are free, and work much better than that ancient piece of crap. If your IT department doesn't have it's shit together enough to let you run a real web browser, you can't expect most of the internet to work for you either. Don't complain to Google, you should seriously be considering replacing whoever it is who is making your IT decisions for you.

Re:It's well deserved.

[rudy_wayne]

I'm no fan of Internet Explorer, but that's just complete bullshit. IE 8 isn't that old and not that bad. It isn't as good as Firefox or Chrome, but it's not that bad.. I really wonder if there is any legitimate technical reason for not allowing IE8, or if it's just anti-Microsoft bias -- sort of the reverse of what used to happen back when IE was the dominant browser.

For example, years ago when Firefox was just starting to become popular, there were some bank and credit card websites that would not allow me to use Firefox, they insisted that I had to use IE. So I changed Firefox's user agent string to IE and those sites worked just fine. In other words, there was no legitimate technical reason for not allowing browsers other than IE. Just ignorance and /or bias that was not based on any reality.

Re:It's well deserved.

[mosb1000]

You are wrong. There are a number of HTML 5 technologies (especially canvas objects) that IE 8 doesn't support. Many special concessions must be made to support IE 8 from a modern web-based application. It often means writing two versions of you code, one for IE 8 and one for everything else. Supporting IE 8 means limiting the functionality of you application while adding complexity to your code. I'm sure there was a collective sigh of relief among web developers when they heard Google was dropping IE 8, it means their employers will soon follow suit.

They aren't blocking IE 8 users, they're just dropping support for the browser. That means some features won't work correctly or at all, and as time goes on the whole site will stop working as the continue to roll out new features that aren't supported in IE 8.

Re:It's well deserved.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I really wonder if there is any legitimate technical reason for not allowing IE8, or if it's just anti-Microsoft bias

The technical reason is that it takes resources to even test it in IE and Google has decided those resources are no longer available.

I realize that you were looking for a reason why the site wouldn't load, but really the simple explanation is that Google just doesn't want to spend the money on it. There's no reason it has to only be about ignorance or bias.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Billly Gates]

It most surely not free! You are taking millions and BS with fights tooth and nail from the finance and accounting deparmtnets who prefer to see the share price go up rather than take a risk supporting a browswer that already works fine!

Worse intranet software only works on IE 8. Some used to Firefox 3.6 certified, but not anymore. You can thank Mozilla for the 6 week release cycle for that thank you very much! THese companies are liable if it breaks. SO only IE is supported for payrolls ADP app, or siebel's crapware 2012 edition. These intranet software optimized for iE 6 still work fine and are deployed in organizations all over the world.

It is not the same like your computer at home.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Billly Gates]

You do not need canvas objects unless you want applet like animations and motions similiar to your phone. What IE 8 lacks is a decent javascript engine. It still is the same as IE 6 with minor tweeks and ajax needs special code just for old IE.

HTML 5 is too early and the css is not compatible as different standards between webkit, trident, and gecko. I would love to see corporate software use standards but face the facts it will alienate them as many are spending millions just to upgrade to IE 8 from IE 6. You are telling htem to throw out that investment they just made for IE 10?? I don't think so!

Re:It's well deserved.

[KingMotley]

Off the top of my head:
Opacity (real opacity, including opacity on PNGs with an alpha channel).
Being able to define colors using RGBA
CSS3 transforms
Fully supporting @font-face for real web fonts
HTML5 video support with H.264/MPEG4 so we can drop flash video players finally
WOFF font support instead of the EOT (IE-only font format)
Box shadows
multiple backgrounds on a single object
CSS3 selectors (:last-child, :nth-child, etc)

Stuff even IE9 doesn't support:
text-shadows
3d transforms
aync on script tags
web sockets
Filereader API (Smarter upload buttons)
CSS3 transitions
CSS3 gradients
HTML5 form elements (date picker, range, integer, etc)

Yes, those are all things that we use on our web site, or wanted to use and either had to write custom fallbacks just for IE, rewrite to use a different (more difficult, less efficient, larger) technique, or just let IE look like crap.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Billly Gates]

... referring to HTML 5 canvas objects. Not HTML 4 elements.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear rudy_wayne,

It is obvious from your statement that you are not a web application developer. Please refrain from making silly comments on subjects in which you are not well versed.

IE 8 does a stand up job rendering static web sites, but that is vastly different from producing and maintaining a web application such as Google Apps.

Re:It's well deserved.

[repvik]

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

So we deserve to be left out in the cold, because we have a need for applications that have yet to be upgraded to support IE9+? Our IT department employs 260+ people, and while you may claim that they "haven't got their shit together" I know these people pretty well, and they're pretty competent. IE8 is three years old. That isn't stoneage. And since IE breaks compatibility every single release, that means that more than 600 of the applications we provide (most external, some internal) have to be updated, re-tested and pushed. Almost once a year. Are you f*cking kidding me?
Chrome with their incremental upgrade model is a complete no-go. We can't have the browser suddenly upgrading and breaking a critical system either. Firefox has major revisions every other week, which is even worse for an enterprise setup.

In a small IT shop with Office and little else, being stuck on XP and IE8 would be gross incompetence. For a large company supporting more than 3k applications, it's not so much a choice. And it's not as easy as switching to other applications either, since many of these are specialist apps for which no alternative applications are available.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Grishnakh]

Um, isn't IE8 a free download for XP users? Why would corporations spend millions to upgrade to it?

Re:It's well deserved.

[mosb1000]

HTML5 has been coming down the pipeline for quite a while now. There're no excuse for not being ready for it. If you're picking external applications, don't pick someone using ancient technology. If you're developing internal applications, future proofing is even easier. If you already know that IE breaks compatibility with every new release, and that they have a great deal of difficulty keeping to standards, so you shouldn't have been using IE in the first place. There has always been a better, more standard compliant browser available. If you're not aware of that, it means you don't know what you're doing. If you'd started to switch to applications compatible with Firefox or Chrome years ago, you'd pretty much be ready for IE 10 today.

I don't know how you can honestly spin this as anything other than gross incompetence. The only reason IT departments operate this way and get away with it is leadership that doesn't have the technical knowledge to understand the magnitude of their incompetence.

Re:It's well deserved.

[truedfx]

Time is money. Time spent upgrading browsers is time that could have been spent earning money. When IE is required for intraweb sites, there's also the time spent making sure the site works in IE8: they can be very browser-dependent and not support any other browser or any other version of the one required browser. But even then, millions seems like a big stretch.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern browsers might be free, but the process of installing them on 100,000 PCs is anything but free, even with an automated system. Then there is the testing required to ensure that business critical web applications that have been running perfectly for 5 - 10 years continue running perfectly on the new browser. All of this takes time and costs $$$$.

For home users, sure upgrade whenever. Large business and government is a separate beast that will simply not be able to react so quickly.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

When your business still requires IE6 for its intranet and does not work on IE >6, it is quite retarded isn't it?

Re:It's well deserved.

[thetoadwarrior]

It's not the worst IE but yeah you'd have to be a bit of a moron to prefer that over the varitey of better choices that are out now.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Opacity (real opacity, including opacity on PNGs with an alpha channel).

Erm, this is supported in IE8.

Re:It's well deserved.

[cyber-vandal]

Like you know what you're talking about fuckwit. Insightful my arse.

Re:It's well deserved.

[cyber-vandal]

Because Microsoft actively worked to prevent organisations migrating away from IE6 to other browsers. This has come round and bitten everyone on the arse since any upgrade to a better browser has required extensive testing to ensure that the shit from IE6 still worked. Had Microsoft been punished properly by Bush perhaps we could have all been spared the worst of IE6's awfulness. Microsoft's incompetence with regards to IE7 and 8 also didn't help. IE9 isn't much better but it's a start. However they seem to be carrying on the retardation by not allowing people to test their sites in advance with IE10 without having to install a whole new OS.

Re:It's well deserved.

[cyber-vandal]

So where do you work? How large is the company? How many staff does it have in the IT department? How many applications does your IT department support? Any legacy applications that have worked fine for 10 years and would require a lot of money to replace?

Re:It's well deserved.

[Pieroxy]

So we deserve to be left out in the cold, because we have a need for applications that have yet to be upgraded to support IE9+?

No, you deserve to be left out in the cold for refusing to install either Chrome, Firefox or Safari.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that it's always company intranets that break with new browsers? Everyone else only rarely needs to touch their website to "support" new browser versions. New browsers fix bugs and add features. Your sites will only break if they depend on bugs or were broken to begin with (and just happened to work), and if they do, you deserve what you get. Find some proper web developers that know what they're doing and your websites will stop breaking with browser upgrades.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone still using IE 8 deserves to be left out in the cold. Modern browsers are free, and work much better than that ancient piece of crap. If your IT department doesn't have it's shit together enough to let you run a real web browser, you can't expect most of the internet to work for you either. Don't complain to Google, you should seriously be considering replacing whoever it is who is making your IT decisions for you.

Anyone that can't support their customer base on a browser that's only 3 years old deserves to be left out in the cold. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out as customers desert you.

Re:It's well deserved.

[jkroll]

Why is it that it's always company intranets that break with new browsers?

Because company intranets/portals contain lots of links to third party apps and are limited by what those vendors support. When you have major software companies like SAP which have products that only added IE 9 support in major upgrades provided in the last two months, it is no surprise that lots of corporations aren't on the leading edge of supported browsers. Support for Chrome or recent Firefox (including extended support release 10) is virtually non-existent among lots of enterprise software, so those aren't options either.

Re:It's well deserved.

[truedfx]

IMO, the effort to make sites, even intranet sites, work on other browsers, or at least other IE versions, would have been worthwhile as soon as IE7 was released. But that's opinion, and others, including some of the people who make the calls, disagree.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your IT department can't figure out how to use GPOs to control and fine-tune when exactly Chrome updates, then yes you deserve to be left behind for being behind on your homework.

Re:It's well deserved.

[foniksonik]

Sounds like lots of companies got screwed over by vendors. The SLA for those products should have included web standards support which would mean you could use any modern browser.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Grishnakh]

However they seem to be carrying on the retardation by not allowing people to test their sites in advance with IE10 without having to install a whole new OS.

Here's one possible workaround:
http://netrenderer.com/

Re:It's well deserved.

[Kielistic]

Hardly. If you do anything the least bit complex (as in you have anything more than 1 object with an alpha layer and the user doesn't zoom their browser at all) your alpha rendering goes down the drain. To work around this you have to use microsoft's -ms-filter: blah.blah.AlphaImageLoader. So that means special CSS for any RGBA PNG on the page. That's not what I would consider "supported" in any meaningful sense of the word.

Re:It's well deserved.

[bcrowell]

I know these people pretty well, and they're pretty competent. [...] And since IE breaks compatibility every single release, that means that more than 600 of the applications we provide (most external, some internal) have to be updated, re-tested and pushed. Almost once a year. Are you f*cking kidding me?

IE doesn't break compatibility with web standards every single release. What IE breaks with every release is bug-for-bug compatibility with older versions of IE. The competent solution would have been to build your company's web site to be compatible with the intersection of the set of web standards with the set of features that some version of IE supported.

If you need stuff that isn't defined by a web standard, and browsers do it differently, then the competent approach is to use javascript frameworks that hide those grotty details from you and that allow you a smooth upgrade path without major code rewrites. This is why these frameworks exist. Not knowing about them or not using them shows a lack of competence.

If they web developers at your company are competent, they can even handle cases where IE doesn't support web standards and never will. For example, IE is never going to support mathml, but you can get support for it through mathjax.

Re:It's well deserved.

[jsepeta]

Is IE8 ancient?

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone still using IE 8 deserves to be left out in the cold. Modern browsers are free, and work much better than that ancient piece of crap. If your IT department doesn't have it's shit together enough to let you run a real web browser, you can't expect most of the internet to work for you either. Don't complain to Google, you should seriously be considering replacing whoever it is who is making your IT decisions for you.

Guess of the start you do not work in IT? If you did you might know that depending on the version of Active Directory there may be no way of centrally managing browsers such as Chrome or Firefox and when you can you have more hoops to jump through that there is time to put to it. As to IE it can be managed completely. So to sit there and make comments about replacing whoever it is making the IT decisions you need to give your head a shake first and look at the whole picture. This is the same path as the whole bring your own device crap. If a company is going to support only this type of device, well that is what is going to happen you as the employee is not going to dictate. Until you have the skills to make sure that the integrity of the corporate data is secure stand down.

Re:It's well deserved.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Um, why was my post modded down? "Test our site on $Browser" is not free, even if the browser works 100% with 0 changes.

Re:It's well deserved.

[cyber-vandal]

This is why I keep coming here despite the idiots. Thanks :-)

Re:It's well deserved.

[repvik]

"Don't pick someone using ancient technology". Good for you that you have that choice. If you had bothered to read my post, you would have noticed the part where I said there are several apps for which no alternative applications are available.
Also, "Not using IE" isn't an option, since most of the external apps require IE. Having two browsers for handling different applications is going to be a heck of a mess.

When you conclude on the best solutions by ignoring basic facts of my post, you are displaying gross incompetence.

Re:It's well deserved.

[repvik]

We can't. We depend on specialist applications for which there are no alternatives. You would have known this if you bothered to read my post.

Re:It's well deserved.

[repvik]

Because company intranets often use specialiced apps. Often catering to a unique need, written by specialists in a not-IT-related field. In most of the cases we deal with, these are basically irreplacable apps developed outside our company. These do in most cases, not have commercially viable alternatives.
Which means we have to test the new browser release with 600+ apps and make sure they don't break. This in it self takes a whole lot of time and work. When the troublesome apps are identified, they have to be fixed. Some we can do in-house, other we depend on vendors to fix. Now, this shit costs a lot of money and resources. We went from IE6 to IE8, which reduced the cost somewhat. I expect the same will be done when IE10 is released.

Re:It's well deserved.

[repvik]

Chrome isn't an alternative at all. But if it was, there's a good chance we'd have about the same release cycle as with IE. Ie, IE6 -> IE8.

Re:It's well deserved.

[repvik]

IE doesn't break compatibility with web standards every single release. What IE breaks with every release is bug-for-bug compatibility with older versions of IE. The competent solution would have been to build your company's web site to be compatible with the intersection of the set of web standards with the set of features that some version of IE supported.

The "company website" is doing just fine. It is the applications that aren't.

If they web developers at your company are competent, they can even handle cases where IE doesn't support web standards and never will. For example, IE is never going to support mathml, but you can get support for it through mathjax.

Did you read my post? Didn't think so. Reread my post, read the bit about external vendors/apps. Also read the bit about these applications having no real alternatives. Then just fuck off.

Re:It's well deserved.

[mosb1000]

I'm not sure I believe you, but lets assume for the sake of argument you are right. You are asking web developers to develop two versions of their software in order to support you. Do you honestly think its more reasonable to expect every web developer everywhere, or even just a particular web developer like Google, to do that? Or should you come to terms with the fact that technology has moved on and you need to run two browsers on your machine in order to deal with the reality of the situation?

Re:It's well deserved.

[yuhong]

My favorites are the ten years old XHTML and DOM level 2.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Pieroxy]

Hmmm. Are you saying your applications will stop working with your special flavor of Internet Explorer if you dare install Firefox? You know they can both coexist on the same machine?

Use your IE for whatever it is required. Use Firefox for the rest and the Web.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, it's quite simple. Don't write the applications using non-standard stuff. That means don't use HTML5 stuff for vital things, and use only standard HTML 4 that works in an old IE. If you write things correctly according to the standard, it will work going forward. If you also sidestep certain constructions, it will work in IE8 and up, at least. Then there is very little need to go back and fix the old applications, as long as then don't need upgrade. They will just work.

Re:It's well deserved.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably just because you're a douchebag and people don't like you.

Re:It's well deserved.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

What'd I do?

Re:It's well deserved.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Hah. Been a while since I've seen mastubatory modding!

Re:It's well deserved.

[Billly Gates]

He mentioned something insane like +20,000 users. Ok Peroxy? Explain how to setup dual browsers in an environment like this without MSI or GPO support? What about tickets to help desk where someone uses the wrong browser for a task and it doesn't work?

You and that mobi guy never worked professionally in any moderately complex environment. Just be honest? This isn'[t like your college dorm where people troubleshoot themselves and do not need speciality apps so every site works regardless of browser. This is real life stuff where IE 6 and 7 break with standards compliant code. So the logical alternative is to use MS code because 90% of hte market used it during the time of development and everyone assumed we would still be using IE 6 standards today in 2012 back in 2003. I surely did as there was no firefox and phoenix was a hacker thing and not a serious business browser.

Guess what? These old apps are REQUIRED. Perhaps they use a proprietary database backend too that can't be updated? Now you have 8 year old data that employees need/ THen what?

Yes IE 8 is here to stay and yes as a web developer YOU WILL support it or we will take our business elsewhere. Office 365 sounds better every day. I am not saying this to start a flamewar. But the realities are that Finance and accounting set the IT budget and label it as a cost center. If upgrading IE does not raise the shareprice it doesn't get implemented and upgrading to a modern and better browser is expensive or impossible.

My guess is by 2020 we will see Citrix terminals running IE 6,7, and 8 apps and offie 365 and Hotmail will still support it. I made my IE 6 sig as a joke after encountering the idiosyncracies but it makes economic sense. Unless you are an IT company your customers are not paying you to upgrade browsers. They are paying you to get work done. It is time and money to switch

Re:It's well deserved.

[Pieroxy]

Woaaah, you're on a trip here!

Yes, I work in a professional complex environment, and the masters for all workstations have a Firefox AND an IE6.

I still do not see where the problem is to get there? You need IE6? Keep it for god's sake, nobody gives a flying fuck !

Just don't use it to go to the web. The reasons are so numerous I can't start anywhere. Security, performance, compliance, anything, really, should be enough to convince anyone to add a Firefox to their masters for all of the company's computers.

And if your IT manages 20000 computers and doesn't have a way to deploy something in an automated fashion, then maybe it is time to setup something like this. It's well overdue in any case.

A nail for XP? lol np

[Osgeld]

just load chrome or firefox on XP

I really wonder if MS knows it lost that battle, you have the IE6 crowd using their slow janky, hard coded 640x480 database front ends, and then people like my parents, where "fox, ... fire" has been a part of their everyday existence for over a half decade

IE? whats that, a sporadic TV commercial with nearly 2 decades of pure SHIT to remind us of why we dont use IE in the first place?

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[slashmydots]

Oh yeah, it's really that easy. Hey clueless guy, sorry, our CRM software (Oasis CRM) at work doesn't accept form data correctly from Firefox 15.0 so it's unusable. I'm not going to test and made a new deployment pack every month either and their CSM versions suck. Since 95% of the systems are XP, IE8 is it. I guess I can cross google off the list for competitive products. You go your workplace and "just switch" to Firefox and let me know how that goes.

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[eWarz]

Funny you mention fox...fire. Everyone i know calls it that...why?

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[Anonymous Coward]

honestly dude, your CRM should not be crippleware from last century at this point, grow up and evolve already, just cause your boss spent 199$ in 1998 doesnt mean the world stops

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[Grishnakh]

There was a bestselling magazine called Foxfile back in the 70s and 80s that had something to do with Appalachian folklore and traditions. Maybe all the people who know who call it that are older and remember that magazine.

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[Anonymous Coward]

You should maybe hint at your CRM provider that the quality of their web programming has caused serious concerns about the quality of the rest of their code and whether they are a company you can afford entrusting critical data to. Usually quality of products is fairly consistent, shit in one place most of the time means shit everywhere.

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[game kid]

That, or maybe "Fox 5" if in the New York metro area.

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[abirdman]

For the record, it was called Foxfire, not Foxfile. It was quite interesting, mixing text with graphics. It's what a lot of people were reading while we waited for the internet.

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[Grishnakh]

Whoops, that was an odd typo I made there.

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[slashmydots]

It's from 2010 and the company behind it got acquired by another since then. Hey, can I borrow $30,000 to buy new software? You seriously have NO CLUE how corporate IT departments work.

Re:A nail for XP? lol np

[slashmydots]

It's from 2010 and the company behind it got acquired by another since then. Also, it works flawlessly on IE9 and I wouldn't expect anyone to support Firefox's bullshit monthly releases.

And this is what % of Google Apps customers?

[Jahoda]

If you're a monolithic organization only just now about to start your three-years-in-the-making migration to 7, you're also probably not a Google Apps customer...

Re:And this is what % of Google Apps customers?

[HJED]

The NSW Department of Education which uses google apps for all student email, has all of their win 7 laptops (one for each yr9+ student) locked on IE8, the only way to upgrade them to IE9 would be recall and re-image every single one. Considering the size of the laptop program is so large that Microsoft actually allowed a final version of win7 to be installed on them before its global launch you'd think google wouldn't want to alienate such a large customer?

User agent detection

[Deaddy]

It's sad how google still implements user agent detection. Somewhere around 2005 I hoped these funny 'this website is optimized for IE 5'-messages would be a thing of the past soon, although my browser at the time (Opera at the time I guess) obviously was superior or had at least the same capabilities. Yet google is doing the same thing, even worse. While the websites in the past didn't switch to different sites if you had the wrong user agent, or at most included some stupid javascript overlay, google redirects you. In case of google calendar, if you have a user agent string not matching one of the major browsers (for example uzbl, surf or the like), you're asking for trouble, since google won't allow you to use the fully featured version of the calendar and you can only use the non-javascript version (although I hate js, this is one of the few exceptions where js is indeed the better choice). It is one thing not to support some browsers and handle problems that might occur, but at least they should give one the choice to use the service at one owns risk.

I really hoped that at least the worst practices from the late 90s would someday disappear from the net, but with google doing much stupid stuff and getting away with it or even being praised for it, because nobody likes IE, my hope is crushed.

Re:User agent detection

[Osgeld]

the only time I have noticed it is on link2 -g

running all sorts of generic gecko browsers the only thing it would bitch about is the lack of javascript

what has the world become to

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3FVO1u09-o

Google is the New Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is the new Microsoft. Apple is the division of Microsoft that makes good hardware.

IE What?

[rueger]

Just occurred to me that I honestly have no idea what the current version of IE might be. I think I've used it maybe twice in the last year?

Re:IE What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's IE9, which is actually pretty decent. They're coming out with IE10 soon, presumably when Windows 8 is released.

I'll probably get modded down for saying IE doesn't suck.

Re:IE What?

[Anonymous Coward]

IE9 still sucks. You only find it comparatively 'good' because the bar has been set very low with earlier versions of IE.

Re:IE What?

[dkf]

Just occurred to me that I honestly have no idea what the current version of IE might be. I think I've used it maybe twice in the last year?

Woah! IE still exists? Really?

Re:IE What?

[DarkXale]

Both IE9 and IE10. IE9 is still the latest on Windows Vista and 7, but Windows 8 (which is released for MSDN and others) uses IE10.

Re:IE What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, as a web browser, and not an OS in and of itself, it does what it is supposed to do, which is to render a functioning website for the vast majority of the websites that exist.

If you think it sucks because it doesn't check to see if your toast is getting burnt, then I think you're being a little unrealistic here. Or maybe you just think it sucks because of M!cr0$of7.

I Can't Wait

[eWarz]

I can't wait. Hopefully this will help put the final nail in the coffin for non compliant browsers and we can all move on with our lives. Do you know how much time and effort it takes to get a site working on IE6-8? The answer is: too much.

Hummm..I'm forced to ask

[A_Non_Moose]

is there a reliable way to change IE9 or 10 to look normal or like IE8 like I can do with firefox?

Particularly:
no unified buttons
menu bar
normal size address bar (not the tiny one IE9 has)

There's a few other minor things, but the 3 above have made me switch back because IE9+ just puts me off quickly....like the
longest I've tolerated it was an hour and a half.

Re:Hummm..I'm forced to ask

[shutdown -p now]

no unified buttons

Clarify?

menu bar

You can activate it by pressing Alt as usual. Then you can go and check View -> Toolbars -> Menu bar to keep it on if you want.

normal size address bar (not the tiny one IE9 has

Do you refer to the fact that address bar is on the same line with tabs, and is squeezed to the right? If so, then right-click on any tab, and select "Show tabs in separate row".

Re:Hummm..I'm forced to ask

[Osgeld]

use firefox/chrome/IE9+ for a whole week and forget about it like the rest of the world?

Cloud problem

[Anonymous Coward]

When other companies decide which browser to use inside a company, things can get messy. This is actually a really bad property with applications in the cloud. I run most of my stuff locally.

Re:Cloud problem

[jimicus]

Bit of a shame you're an AC and so many won't see what you've said - but you're absolutely right. As soon as you start to run the business on web-based applications, you find you have to run your IT to the beat of someone else's drum.

Things start to get messy when one application will only work in IE 8 or below (and not firefox/chrome) and another won't work in any version of IE below 9. Though I suppose you could always put an icon on the desktop that fires up Chrome for just a specific application.

Thank you

[maroberts]

Couldn't have put it better myself, except you missed out supporting phone browsing too. :-)

I can program in COBOL and its easier than supporting several generations of browsers.

Chrome is rubbish for buisiness

[cycler]

I usually feel alone in some of my thoughts and opinions bu tI hope I have some friends out there.
As an administrator I can't understand why Chrome catches on. I have never seen any worse browser.
From an admin point of view that is.

* I can't set the local cache size (what browser in their right mind saves 1GB(sic!) on the local hard drive?)
* It saves it's EXE in the Windows profile. I thought Program Files existed for a reason....
* We have re-routed MyDocuments to a home directory. Chrome default saves downloads in Downloads under MyDocuments. EVERY single file! Attachments from mail or not doesn't matter. 99% can be deleted but I still need to check with the user for the of chance that he/she has edited something in the folder.

In short, I hate it.
(If someone has any answers to these issues I would be grateful to be informed of such answers. And don't bother with command-line switches, are the invoked when the user starts the browser on a link?)

/C

Re:Chrome is rubbish for buisiness

[Skylinux]

* It saves it's EXE in the Windows profile. I thought Program Files existed for a reason....

The Program Files folder requires admin permissions to write to. So storing the exe in profiles makes it possible to install and update a program without admin rights.

Re:Chrome is rubbish for buisiness

[truedfx]

It saves it's EXE in the Windows profile. I thought Program Files existed for a reason....

The second result of a Google search for "chrome program files" points to this download page. I can't verify this exact page still works (I'm on Linux right now, so Google doesn't give me a Windows download), but I do have Chrome installed in Program Files on my Windows system.

Re:Chrome is rubbish for buisiness

[Z34107]

I'm going to assume you're managing a large XP network with roaming profiles, because none of your complaints make sense otherwise. I'm also not a Windows admin, so forgive some lack of familiarity.

* I can't set the local cache size (what browser in their right mind saves 1GB(sic!) on the local hard drive?)

Did you redirect the entire Application Data folder onto a network share? If you did, stop it--it's huge even without Chrome's cache. If you didn't, stop worrying about a gig of local disk.

* It saves it's EXE in the Windows profile. I thought Program Files existed for a reason....

This is so non-administrators can install and update Chrome.

* We have re-routed MyDocuments to a home directory. Chrome default saves downloads in Downloads under MyDocuments. EVERY single file! Attachments from mail or not doesn't matter. 99% can be deleted but I still need to check with the user for the of chance that he/she has edited something in the folder.

So go change Chrome's download folder. This isn't rocket science. Google also provides an MSI installer and group policy objects, which I'd imagine makes that easier.

And do you really spend time deleting individual files out of other users' Documents folders? Windows has supported disk quotas since NT, and it probably costs more to pay you for an hour of download deleting than just buying a new disk for the file server.

Re:Chrome is rubbish for buisiness

[flimflammer]

Said it better than I was going to. I have a hard time believing this person is actual an administrator with these complaints. Maybe just for his family home network.

This is Google's way ...

[Tim Ward]

... to make sure corporates thinking of moving to web applications actually decide to stick with Office.

"... recommending that they upgrade their browser"

[olau]

IE8 users accessing Google Apps will see a message recommending that they upgrade their browser.

Oh, just like the ugly box I occasionally see on google.com when I'm visiting with any other browser than Chrome?

As a web developer, it's good that Google is moving people off of the old browsers. While IE 8 does have much better selector support than IE 6 and fixed a lot of bugs, some of the really convenient styling stuff didn't show up until IE 9.

Although, it's also a bit ironic, as I gather the stock browser on all but the most recent Android have a bunch of issues. And I'm not seeing Google stepping up to fix that by some kind of semi-forced upgrade - it's actually a very similar situation.

You are wrong, sir.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong, sir. Terribly wrong.

God damned web applications

[HideyoshiJP]

I can't help but get annoyed with web apps. People hail them due to the convenience of not having a fat client, and they are until you try to run them in the same pane of glass as that ridiculously expensive piece of software written for IE6, 7 or 8. The advantage of a fat client is that it can keep all of its dependencies separate from the other applications, whereas you can't easily mingle browser versions. It's very easy for a hipster web developer to shout out "upgrade your old-ass browser!" What they fail to realize is IT has to support those old-ass browsers because their predecessors insisted on using proprietary code that doesn't play nicely with modern browsers, then the bean counters (both vendor and client) made sure the code doesn't get updated. I'd love to give end-users a modern browser, as I enjoy using one myself. The problem arises in supporting multiple browsers. Believe it or not, there are still people that would be confused as to which browser they need for their time card system, data entry application X, etc. To further complicate matters, IT departments not only need an easily deployable browser, but one that has ADMs so we don't have to make some futile attempt to deploy settings for compatibility, certs, etc. with strange kludgey methods. Long term support is nice too, as long as it doesn't get as long in the tooth as IE6. I am aware of things like Chrome Frame, Chrome for Businesses, and Front Motion Firefox Community Edition, but I've never attempted deployment.

To close my rant, I beg the following people:

• Vendors: Stop trying to sell us old-ass code that doesn't follow best practices. I realize the conversation is about web apps, but for a comparative example, I should not have to disable UAC and give admin rights for your application to work. If I do, you're doing it wrong or you're just plain lazy.
• Business Decision Makers: Please seek IT's advice when you buy software. We don't want to be a roadblock; we just want to make sure your software's compatible in the same environment as the software you guys bought without consulting us that now still requires IE6. We like shiny new things! That's why we're in IT! We want you to have shiny new things, too! We just want to help you ensure you'll continue being able to have shiny new things.
• Web (or really all) Developers: Please see the above; this is what we have to work with. Do everything you can to make sure that code you're writing isn't going to be left to stagnate in the hands of bean counters.
• Google: I used to love you, but... It's not going to work out. It's not you, it's me... me not liking you. Please take your things and leave. :'(

Re:God damned web applications

[Anonymous Coward]

> ... IT has to support ... the bean counters ... time card system ... deploy settings for compatibility ...

Translation: Your job sucks, and you want to blame Google for it.

Re:God damned web applications

[Compaqt]

Yeah, there are some problems with webapps, but fat clients aren't a nirvana, either.

For one, here's a common scenario: The fat client is based on a client-server setup where you have the fat clients communicating with a database server. And the password for the database is embedded within the client. Which means every user also full access to the database if he wants.

Secondly, if you've hardcoded the DB password, it's also permanent, which is obviously bad.

You might say, that's not a good way to program a fat client, and I'd agree with you, but that's what happens in practice.

Re:God damned web applications

[Pherdnut]

Sorry, but I've been a config/support tech at an advertising agency and I'm a web developer. Computer illiterate users (how do these people exist in modern offices?) is no excuse for failing to give access to at least one competent, modern, browser that updates regularly. You can deploy builds with desktop icons that launch web apps in the appropriate browser for the morons and management shouldn't have selected an app that worked in IE-only in the first place. I'm sympathetic to IT essentially being about avoiding blame because the only time they get noticed is when there's blame to assign, but some IT departments take the butt-covering way too far.

On the flip-side, there's no excuse for web devs to not make simple office productivity services work in at least IE8 (although IE6 and 7 can add more significant development/support costs), but customers shouldn't have the expectation that it will be as pretty or slickly-UI'd as a modern browser that's been updated in the last three years and has a fancy new JIT JS compiler that runs code a LOT faster.

Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

This finally got me to try out Chrome... and it does seem a lot faster than IE9 and Opera.

I would normally feel nervous about them looking at all my personal data, but hey, if I didn't want to be spied on, I shouldn't use the internet.

Say WHAT?

[realxmp]

The NSW Department of Education which uses google apps for all student email, has all of their win 7 laptops (one for each yr9+ student) locked on IE8, the only way to upgrade them to IE9 would be recall and re-image every single one. Considering the size of the laptop program is so large that Microsoft actually allowed a final version of win7 to be installed on them before its global launch you'd think google wouldn't want to alienate such a large customer?

Then the people running this program NSW Department of Education are well intentioned idiots. The person who authorised such a massive deployment without a proper upgrade mechanism other than re-imaging it should be fired (and I mean the one who let it happen at board level and not just a handy minion). I've spent a good deal of time dealing with some fairly large educational networks and having a system which allows you to centrally track deployment of software on locked down machines is such an essential thing. You can barely run a small school network without it, let alone a local or state government wide system. I mean crickey, without something like this, how do you stop the whole lot becoming one giant botnet? Don't tell me they're so locked down that it will protect against that unless each one is relaunching a clean VM on boot. Ring 3->0 exploits are a dime a dozen.

Re:Say WHAT?

[HJED]

It can install normal windows updates and virus updates, but not updates like IE and no executable.

Re:Say WHAT?

[realxmp]

I assume it's not a WSUS solution then as that can install IE9. What about service packs? Windows 7 loses support unless you update to SP1 by April and you can't buy extended support to avoid that. It just seems like it's asking for trouble not to have some kind of mechanism to deploy fixes after the machine has been deployed, no amount of testing can guarantee you have it 100% perfect nor can it anticipate every need.

Great

[diego.viola]

Thanks you Google. It's time that people move on to something better.

Support means inclusion in Patch Tuesday

[tepples]

What "support" could you possibly need for XP?

Continued repair of kernel and system library defects that could lead to security compromise.

Home users with pre-2006 PCs

[tepples]

Maybe he doesn't feel like paying Microsoft a lot of money for no real advantage. If the Win 7 upgrade was a reasonable price you might have a point but here in the UK it's 83 GBP and there's no guarantee that his perfectly functioning computer will be able to run Win 7 given that manufacturers often haven't provided Win 7 drivers for older hardware. So your remedy is potentially for the parent poster to buy himself or herself a new computer that they don't really need.

Anything that came with Windows Vista, which came out in 2006, has Windows Vista/7 drivers for every piece of hardware and access to IE 9. So if people are still using a more than six-year-old computer, they're likely to fall into toejam13's assertion: "For home users, you have to wonder if they're just being cheap. If they can't fork out for an OS upgrade once a decade, how else will they be like on the consumer side?" It's like expecting new games for the original Xbox years after the Xbox 360 came out: Madden NFL updates are pretty much all one can find.

Re:Home users with pre-2006 PCs

[ifiwereasculptor]

Well, tell me why an Athlon 64 wouldn't be perfectly fine to view e-mail, pay your bills, a few older games etc. I have one from 2003 and, coupled with a GeForce FX 5200 - crappy even for its day -, I can even play a few Source games. Why should I have to upgrade my hardware - or OS, for that matter - when it's still perfectly capable to comfortably accommodate my workflow?

This is all rhetorical, of course, since said system is running Debian and, other than the aforementioned GeForce on Gnome Shell, has no issues with hardware support.

Re:Home users with pre-2006 PCs

[tepples]

Well, tell me why an Athlon 64 wouldn't be perfectly fine

Another comment to this story states that Windows XP for x64 was based on Windows Server 2003, and as I understand it, drivers for fewer peripherals were made for Windows XP for x64 than were made available for Windows XP for x86 or for Windows Vista/7.

Why should I have to upgrade my hardware - or OS, for that matter - when it's still perfectly capable to comfortably accommodate my workflow?

In my own opinion, you don't have to. You can just install Firefox into an existing Windows XP system, which I did for a long time on a PC sold in the fourth quarter of 2000.

Re:Home users with pre-2006 PCs

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Because the rest of the world has moved on. If you don't want to keep up that's fine, but don't expect everyone else to cater to you.

Re:Home users with pre-2006 PCs

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the rest of the world has moved on. If you don't want to keep up that's fine, but don't expect everyone else to cater to you.

You're fucked in the head. No seriously. Not trolling. You are FUCKED in the head.

There is still software out there that won't run on 7, and even more that won't run on 7 x64. The fact that the world has abandoned that software doesn't matter one little bit. Perhaps the company has folded or decided that the software doesn't fit strategic direction. Perhaps it was a sole developer who decided to do something else. Regardless it's still valid to wish to run something you bought 3 years ago. Emulation doesn't always cut it. You are advocating that certain users abandon software to "keep up" which is FUCKED. You do not get to decide on behalf of the world that everyone should dump their system and "move on" or that a 3 year old browser should be ditched. Unfortunately a large company such as google does get to which is why they too are FUCKED.

Re:Home users with pre-2006 PCs

[DeathFromSomewhere]

You are advocating that certain users abandon software to "keep up" which is FUCKED.

That's actually the exact opposite of what I said. Learn to read. Here it is in bold for you: If you don't want to keep up that's fine

You do not get to decide on behalf of the world that everyone should dump their system and "move on" or that a 3 year old browser should be ditched.

Never tried to, just pointing out that the rest of the world won't sit around because you have some magic piece of abandon-ware that won't run in a VM. Once again, learn to read. And try not to rage so hard on the internet, it just makes you look stupid.

Re:Home users with pre-2006 PCs

[thunderclap]

Its a 64bit system and because its a 64 bit system its different than most peoples 32 bit systems.

Whoa, wait right there!

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have a XP box (no IE9 available) and a W7 one -- which won't install IE9, due to excellent M$ "support".

So, on both machines it will be either Chrome or Firefox -- is that what Google is aiming at... relying on M$' incompetence? If so, erm, well played, but... what if some other pages require IE9 and intentionally veto FF/Chrome? (Government sites are stupid enough to do that -- though, at least, it's arguable that such practice is illegal)

That said, I think they were too shy: everyone should charge something to support IE (like a NZ co. IIRC) or simply drop support until M$ comes up with a standards complying browser -- not sure if even IE10 will be...

Taste of their own medicine.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Now Microsoft is getting what it used to dish out to others. But still, I wish Google would just say something like:

Google apps will work on all browsers that support the following web standards. [list]. Google will test its features in the last two versions of the popular browsers for bug fixes, regressions and security issues. Users using older versions or untested browsers can still use the apps, but performance is not guaranteed.

This is what I would call not-evil. Waiting for someone to change the version number and immediately end-of-life support for some browser that is working well is Microsoftian.

Re:Taste of their own medicine.

[Pherdnut]

To be fair, MS was one of the earlier large companies to declare they were no longer supporting IE6 and then later 7 IIRC. I have my fair share of web dev rage towards them for the hopelessly out of date browsers we've been forced to support but I think they've been coming to their senses lately.

Negotiation on shared hosting or localhost

[tepples]

Apache content negotiation is fine for sites whose operators can afford at least a VPS. But which budget shared hosting providers provide enough AllowOverride to let the user turn on type-map or MultiViews based content negotiation in .htaccess? Go Daddy appears to turn on MultiViews by default, but <understatement>I've read bad things about Go Daddy.</understatement> And I haven't seen any way to use content negotiation for viewing pages on the local machine (file: protocol) without installing a web server and using http://localhost/.

Re:Negotiation on shared hosting or localhost

[mr_jrt]

Depends entirely on your requirements of course, but what would be the problem with running a local Apache instance?

Only time it cropped up for me was when I had one slight hiccup and I had to fallback to XSL transforms on the server side when the client didn't support them (but still wanted to use them normally). I was able to quite easily write a protocol handler for PHP that implemented multiviews for local filesystem calls, and it works really nicely!

If the W7 rollout completes before 2014-04-01

[tepples]

Actually a year and a half. Large companies like known quantities, and as long as the rollout of Windows 7 completes before April of 2014, a company using the known quantity that is Windows XP is still in Microsoft's extended support.

Re:If the W7 rollout completes before 2014-04-01

[yuhong]

It is not 2014-04-01 anymore, they moved it up to the next Patch Tuesday.

Does this hurt, or help, Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of posters here seem to think this is Google sticking it to Microsoft.

I am not so sure that is the case. IMO: MS hates having people stick to old MS OSes, or old MS browsers. The greatest competition for Win7 is XP, not Linux, or even MacOS-X.

After all, it is MS, not Google, that is keeping newer version of MSIE from being installed on XP. MS is doing much more than Google to push people off old MS platforms.

Upgrade after clocking out

[tepples]

Time spent upgrading browsers is time that could have been spent earning money.

Only if you have multiple shifts of people using each PC 24/7. Otherwise, after you've tested the company's critical apps in the new browser, you can schedule the upgrade to be push out to all PCs after the users have clocked out for the day or the weekend.

Re:Upgrade after clocking out

[Anonymous Coward]

No the millions is from a company like Chase Bank who have 40+ intranet apps and numerous other apps that are only XP compatible. THat costs money to upgrade.

Ditching XP and IE 8 is not free by a longshot unless you just want employees to sit around and browse websites and only use Office with nothing else

Re:Upgrade after clocking out

[jonwil]

Half the time its not that the app wont work on anything other than IE6, its that the company or developers that made the app has SAID it wont work on anything other than IE6 and that's all that matters to the PHBs who run things.

Quit deciding to use IE...

[erac3rx]

On the one hand I feel bad for folks that work in IT for companies that have apps they use which require IE. On the other hand, it's getting *really* tough to have sympathy. In a world where you have web browsers like Chrome and Firefox that are available on every major platform *and* free, what type of organization decides to use applications that only work in some version of IE? And furthermore, what is stopping those organizations from just installing FF or Chrome on every user's machine so they can access whatever applications they need to use that don't work right in IE? Nothing. Unlike IE, FF and Chrome work on basically every version of everything.

Quit making stupid choices, then complaining when those choices hurt you.

Re:Quit deciding to use IE...

[geek]

I work in an organization that has tools (PC's running multimillion dollar fabrication tools) that still run DOS/Win2k and XP. The company spent millions of dollars on these things 10-15 years ago. They work fine. The company will not buy new ones just because the OS on it is old. At the time they were purchased, Microsoft was the only game in town for this type of work. No one else even came close. Many of the web apps rolled out at the time (remember this was 10+ years ago) were optimized for IE6 or earlier. This was when IE held 80%+ of the marketshare. It was a smart decision at the time.

Since then the economy has been in constant turmoil, first 9/11 then the dot come crash and now over the last 5 years the horrendous economic policy of the last two administrations and the longest spate of unemployment above 8% in this nations history. The company will not spend what is needed to upgrade these tools and therefore IT must continue to support and maintain them.

Your fantasy world where we can just up and switch things is just that, fantasy. Just because you can upgrade your desktop computer for a few hundred bucks doesn't mean Big Businesses can spend the billions of dollars needed to do so.

Re:Quit deciding to use IE...

[erac3rx]

My apologies for not being clear enough. The second part of my post was simply this: there's nothing stopping people from just installing Chrome or Firefox on existing XP machines to access Google Apps. Both browsers are free and run fine on XP.

So, for your organization, all the users of said multimillion dollar tools can keep using XP and IE 6 or 7 or whatever... and if they need to use Google Apps they can just install Chrome or Firefox. No need to upgrade machines or anything. So this few hundred bucks per computer or 'billions of dollars' you're talking about doesn't exist. There's no cost, just installing a free web browser and using that for Google Apps instead. Hence the lack of sympathy.

As far as my assertion that people should quit using IE; guilty as charged. Sure things were different 10-15 years ago. I don't think your firm really made a mistake. But to choose to use products that require IE at this point, when Microsoft keeps breaking old apps with new versions *and* requiring that you upgrade your OS to use the new versions... it's not smart. Not to mention it ties you to Windows platform when you can use Chrome or Firefox on Mac or Linux (which you can install on all those old machines running XP).

Introduction to computer science

[tepples]

If no executables, then how do students enrolled in introduction to computer science, which would be a year 11 elective if Australian system is anything like U.S. system, compile and test their homework assignments?

Re:Introduction to computer science

[HJED]

At home or on the schools desktops

Using both outdated and HTML5 web apps

[tepples]

It's the "I want everyone to use the same outdated, buggy software that runs the outdated, buggy intranet applications to run web apps that use HTML 5 functionality like I use on my iPad / home PC and if you peon developers can't do that you're fired" mentality that is the issue.

So if a user types in a URL, what should decide whether the request is "outdated, buggy software that runs the outdated, buggy intranet applications" or "web apps that use HTML 5 functionality like I use on my iPad / home PC" and route the request to the appropriate browser? Another comment by HideyoshiJP expressed a concern that people might become frustrated after entering an HTML5 URL into the outdated browser or an outdated URL into the HTML5 browser.

Re:Using both outdated and HTML5 web apps

[mrbester]

There's no such thing as a "HTML 5 URL". In any case, why does a user think that everything will work everywhere? Do they also expect to receive digital only channels on an analogue only television?

Re:Using both outdated and HTML5 web apps

[hicksw]

Do they also expect to receive digital only channels on an analogue only television?
YES!

They should delay it until August 24, 2014

[davidwr]

After all, much of the world can't upgrade to IE 9 and they may not be willing to install a non-MS web browser. Might as well let them keep using Google Apps until Microsoft pulls the plug on XP support.

On the other hand, if Google's goal was to help push people off of Windows XP or at least off of IE8, they shouldn't wait until November.

Cable box metaphor

[tepples]

There's no such thing as a "HTML 5 URL".

I was using the term to refer to an HTTPS or HTTP URL that points to an HTML document that relies on features introduced in HTML5. What's a better term for such URLs?

In any case, why does a user think that everything will work everywhere? Do they also expect to receive digital only channels on an analogue only television?

Yes, they do expect that. They rent a "cable box" from the pay TV provider that acts as a proxy: it processes the signal from the pay TV provider and translates them into signals that the analog monitor can display. So what "cable box" allows IE 8 to correctly display pages that rely on features introduced in HTML5?

Re:Cable box metaphor

[mrbester]

A URL is a URL. You trying to attribute semantic meaning to it based on what happens after its purpose (to denote the Location of a Resource in a Uniform manner) has been achieved merely defeats your argument as you don't know what you're talking about.

I never said anything about cable boxes. I was referring to televisions that receive over the air transmissions. But let's run with your unwarranted addition; when Cable and Wireless enabled customers where upgraded to be fully digital in the UK, did they expect it to work fully with the old boxes or did they use new ones (hint: the latter)?

Oh, and the answer to your question is Chrome Frame.

Re:Cable box metaphor

[tepples]

to denote the Location of a Resource in a Uniform manner

I was using "HTML5 URL" to refer to the Location of a Resource known to currently use HTML5. You claim that this usage is incorrect. So let me rephrase: Another comment by HideyoshiJP expressed a concern that people might become frustrated after entering the URL of an HTML5 resource into the outdated browser or the URL of an outdated resource into the HTML5 browser.

I was referring to televisions that receive over the air transmissions.

For which the United States Government subsidized the sale of converter boxes.

Oh, and the answer to your question is Chrome Frame.

That's a workable solution, but good luck getting IT departments to approve it.

Re:Cable box metaphor

[mrbester]

So a converter box isn't an upgrade? Seems like one to me.

Plus, if people are frustrated because they are attempting to use resources that cannot be used with what they have, isn't the onus on them to do something (like, upgrade) in order to use those resources? It's like complaining that your power steering doesn't work all the while refusing to get the hydraulics installed.

There is NO Safari on windows!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's dead remember? Apple shit canned it. And if you are still using safari on xp your are fucking nuts because there are no mor security updates to it.

So I'd your on xp it's chrome or firefox. Both better choice than IE or safari anyway.

betterunixthanunix on having a PC at home

[tepples]

At home

Not everyone has a PC at home other than the school-provided laptop, especially families that are poor enough to qualify for the subsidized school lunch program. Even if "most" people do as of 2012, betterunixthanunix has predicted that some families will choose to replace a failed home PC with an iPad.

or on the schools desktops

Is there always enough time during the regulation school day to complete the assignment on the school's desktops? If not, the student will have to add a study hall period before or after school during which to use the school's desktops. Is transport provided for early arrival or late departure?

Re:betterunixthanunix on having a PC at home

[HJED]

I wasn't saying it was a good thing, but that is how it is setup at most public schools at the moment.

Will this accelerate Windows 8 Deployments?

[jsepeta]

I doubt most web apps, including Google's, have been thoroughly tested with IE10 which comes with Windows 8.

Re:Will this accelerate Windows 8 Deployments?

[Pherdnut]

Why would anybody test in a browser that's in beta? IE8 dumped a ton of features before releasing.

IE8 Was 5-10 Years Behind the Times On Release

[Pherdnut]

Three years is short by browser-support standards but I can see forward-looking reasons why Google wants to make the push sooner than any of us ever did with IEs 6 and 7. Until IE8, IE browsers were a good 10 years behind on conforming to the basic CSS2 spec that Netscape Navigator was supporting around '01-'02 or so. Particularly painful due to this was finding an easy way to center things vertically because we didn't have access to table-display properties for all that time. Seriously. One !@#$ing CSS property and a decade's worth of "trick's to vertically center stuff" blogs because IE couldn't handle that one, most ridiculously simple issue or upgrade their browsers because they'd artificially tied them to their OS nav schemes.

Now, table-display issue is CSS2, not CSS3 for things like easy rounded corners and other easy-styling details that require setting image backgrounds in order to accomplish in IE8 if management refuses to embrace a progressive enhancement strategy. Chrome, Firefox and Safari have been embracing a large set of forward-looking CSS3 properties (yes for an incomplete spec, note that support is often complete long before specs are officially considered finished) since around '05-07 putting IE8 a good 4-5 years behind when it came.

But the big reason, the real IE fail in IE8 was the failure to upgrade their damned JavaScript (sorry, "jScript") DOM API to conform to specs that were established at the turn of the millenium. For well over 10 freaking years now, we've been weighing down servers and loading browsers just a little bit more slowly on that first page load for all the extra code required to normalize much of the methods and objects used to manipulate HTML and CSS via JavaScript (jQuery being the dominant tool of choice for this). IE8 also ignored the HTML5 spec so none of the newer tags are available in it, and it still runs its own cheesy proprietary version of the otherwise easily inter-operable canvas API which would have had people talking about Flash's end of days back when Vista launched if MS had tried a little harder to make up for 10 years of neglect in IE8.

As a web/UI developer who first started tinkering around '05, it is astounding to me how many doors it opens just to not have to support anything below IE8 for a change and IE8 is really only a small step up from IE7 where supporting W3C specs are concerned. IE9 is still quite a bit behind but a massive upgrade relatively speaking. It opens a lot more new doors than all the improvements from IE6-IE8 combined. The problem is, until we get competent judges in the US or Europe manages to completely curb our tech industry's monopolistic designs for us we will always be stuck with IE straying behind until MS is forced to admit the ties between its OSes and browsers are completely artificial and unnecessary.

What finally got MS to make a serious effort to catch up with modern web standards, IMO, was the speed tests that left them in the dust when other browsers started to update with brand-new JIT compilers for JavaScript which has been a game changer for JS performance. It literally left IE8 in the dust by a factor of 10 and web devs screaming bloody murder at IE may have finally played a factor in getting them to come around.

IE9 is still the last in the pack but it is a massive improvment over IE8 from a seamless development options and performance standpoint. Anybody with Vista can run IE9. Anybody still insisting on continuing to run in XP or run IE8 in Vista who doesn't have to, deserves to get left behind.

But seriously, folks, knock it off with the OS/Browser conservatism already. You're supposed to be in tech for god's sake.