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IE Standardization Fading Fast
alphadogg writes "Just as Internet users in general have defected in huge numbers from Microsoft Internet Explorer over the past several years, the business world, as well, is becoming less dependent on the venerable browser. Companies that used to mandate the use of IE for access to web resources are beginning to embrace a far more heterodox attitude toward web browsers. While it hasn't gone away, the experience of having to use IE 6 to access some legacy in-house web app is becoming less common. 'A lot of it has to do with the emergence of the modern web and the popularity of mobile. They have made it very different for companies to truly standardize on a browser,' says Gartner Research analyst David Mitchell Smith."
Without Microsoft nobody will be left to defend us from the Ubuntu £inux monopoly.
I've seen a lot of people start making this mistake again, but now it's the KHTML/Safari/Chrome/Opera engine, especially on mobile.
Let's hope companies also stop mandating the use of Shockwave and JavaScript, or at least let me use the web site without having to completely disable NoScript.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Try finding a merchant account with a bank (not a new fangled Web 3.0 deal like Square) that doesn't specifically write their "web" app to specifically *only* work with IE on Windows. There are lots of other examples of extranet "applications" that are written w/ MS libraries that depend on IE .It's frustrating and depressing.
I don't believe IE ever deserved to be called venerable.
All of them specifically to convert IE only sites to support at least Firefox, Chrome, & IE. A few of them even specifically listed Safari. We may not have seen the cusp of the wave, but companies have definitely heard the message loud and clear, and are responding appropriately.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
I can't say when there was a time when "venerable" would describe Internet Explorer. It's pretty much been despised its whole existence.
Today a client of mine bought a subscription to a web application (SaaS) and because they have Windows 8 workstations (IE10 built-in) they had to install Firefox, otherwise the web application would not work.
In the last two versions or so of IE, Microsoft has taken a path of enforcing things prematurely. IE is the only browser where jQuery post is not working, and they also force CORS down the throat while many applications are built on jsonp solutions.
I remember a long time ago where workarounds in CSS were mostly for Netscape. Now it's almost always for IE.
lucm, indeed.
For every business that Gartner "knows" is dropping IE standardization, there are 100 it doesn't know about who are continuing to mandate IE use because they bought some legacy Web-based app that is only used internally, and the people who wrote that app were too lazy or incompetent to write it in actual HTML (as opposed to "we played with it until it worked in this browser, so this is what your users must use").
My favorite example of a web-app developer who knew virtually nothing about HTML but shipped what "worked" had every single element on the page absolute-positioned with CSS. What looked like a simple table of 30 rows of data on the screen was actually hundreds of DIVs that had been rendered on the fly by the server with absolute position coordinates for each one. Even INPUT elements that were invisible had absolute positions calculated for them. Every time someone loaded a page, the server would calculate the offset for each "cell" in the table so it would look like a table, and for dozens of invisible form elements so they wouldn't collide with the table. The billion-dollar non-tech company that bought this couldn't figure out why the server frequently became unresponsive... They actually bought a second server from the developer and a load balancer to get around the fact that the developer didn't understand basic HTML, and have been using the app for 7 years. When I explained the problem to them, they reasoned that it would cost them more to ask the developer to do it properly that to just add additional servers as needed. They will probably be using it for the next 20 years. And the login page states that it requires IE.
Often this type of app lives on an internal server that will never be updated because the company doesn't want to pay for something that works well enough, but serves some essential purpose that hundreds or thousands of employees are required to use daily. IE standardization will die out in consumer applications long before it goes away in businesses. Microsoft knew this is how most businesses approach computers, and it's the reason the Windows/Office/IE monopoly was so successful. It's the reason Microsoft is still successful despite the Ballmer decade.
Is there homodox?
The G
So instead: this is hopefully a sign that, in the world of computing, monopolistic practices will give way to healthy competition.
There we are, tentative but hopeful!
It's also the wrong word to be using in the context, and is completely nonsensical if taken in its strict meaning. The correct word is 'heterogeneous'. 'Heterodox' refers to doctrines or opinions that strictly deviate from orthodox teachings in a religion or system of belief, but not sufficiently enough to be branded as heresy.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I have been seen "heterodox" for a while about heterodox economists, which are the ones that say neoliberalism is a failure, euro was badly engineered and cannot work, banks too big to fail should all be nationalized, some part of public debt should not be honored, and other insightful things ...
Nice to see that typical snide attitude of "but our site is certified for IE 6, so use it" that was so common among web developers getting its comeuppance by the CEO's latest smartphone. I would have given a dollar to be there every time one of them was told to his face that his site needed to become cross-platform, and pronto. I can only imagine the weeping and gnashing of teeth as the web developer fearfully installed Firefox and Opera and began to learn that awful vocabulary "cross-platform".
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It horribly violates the standard if first post is not first.
Is there homodox?
No, the antonym is "orthodox".
Sad, isn't it? People are *still* talking about standardizing on browsers instead of enforcing adherence to standardized markup languages.
C|N>K
Require Firefox or Chrome, but will not run on IE.
Of course, they are really pushing the Linux Desktop as well, they had a program recently where if you had an older laptop you could get a newer one if you went with a Linux based system.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
IE is alive and well, and in fact our Oracle BI suite ONLY works in IE (how wack is that?!?!?)
Wish I could believe this, but it is too soon to declare victory.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
I help a company who's IT guy likes XP. They use Firefox and I can't really blame them. I'm more than happy to test with FF1X but IE 6,7 or 8 is not on my radar.
There is in fact legislation in Korea requiring the use of an ActiveX control as an anti-Phishing measure, and there has been since the 1990's, in order to implement the SEED encryption algorithm in a captive frame; here is a report on it: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120507/12295718818/south-korea-still-paying-price-embracing-internet-explorer-decade-ago.shtml
Similarly, Chinese banks implement an alternate ("software clipper chip") asymmetric key encryption, also in a captive browser frame.
The software that initially implemented this was developed in Germany, and there are a number of major banks all over the world which require ActiveX controls to implement secure banking. This is why if you search for "banking activex firefox" or "banking activex safari" or "banking activex opera", you will see lively discussioms with people bitching about not being able to do banking.
Now, there have been several researchers who have published exploits, which indicate, that it's possible to attck through the ActiveX control, and therefore this type of thing in reality provides no security any longer. But moving a bank or a government is like trying to move a mountain.
Before you fault them, realize that when you are logging into your Google account, you are also doing so in a captive browser frame -- which is why there aren't programmatic ways to log into Google accounts.
"Not to mention that many websites have began using vendor-specific features (i.e. -webkit-*). I'm not sure if it is a good sign and a good time to celebrate (?) just because people are moving away from IE "standards" (to WebKit "standards")."
+1 they are just exchanging one master for another and its the users that get shafted because of the developers arrogance or stupidity.
I seriously doubt it. WinRT is a horrible mobile OS, maybe with WinRT +1, but it's current incarnation has enough loose ends to make Gnome 3 look polished.
People who mark up content with HTML are not 'developers.'
Generally, if they think of themselves as 'developers,' they're just people who slow down delivery of the content that matters. Which is text, images, sometimes audio and video.
That's not even worthy of a troll mod.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"We need to spend money to get rid of IE" doesn't fly with management.
"You can't run that on your iPad because it needs IE" however, does.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
My bad, I was using the diluted form of the word which includes web designers
Now it's all about bad devs working on a chrome monoculture. You get all the same problems plus a lack of privacy.
Try doing two-factor authentication with those apps that were not written by Google themselves, and tell me where you found the Google published SDK that allowed you to do it.
In technology a product can be dead and still widely used. When we say it is dead it means there are little to none development for it, and anything that does work that is new is by chance and not by design.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
IE is pretty much a zombie browser outside the corporate environment.
I run a couple online games and other sites. My browser stats:
Chrome
Firefox
Safari
(unknown)
Opera
Android browser
IE
Mozilla
BlackBerry
other
IE makes up 0.4% of my visitors. I am honestly surprised every time I learn that someone is actually using it. (and no, it's not because I run some freakish Linux-fanpage or something, 75% of my visitors use windows, 17% OS X, just 1% Linux, the rest is mostly mobile).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Microsoft Sharepoint. Grrrrr.....
The companies still using training and ERP from places like skillport and Lawson....
mark