Google To End Support For IE6 272
itwbennett writes "Google announced Friday that it will be phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6, more than two weeks after the attacks on Google's servers that targeted a vulnerability in IE6. In a blog post, Rajen Sheth, Google Apps senior product manager, said that support for IE6 in Google Docs and Google Sites will end March 1. At that point, IE6 users who try to access Docs or Sites may find that 'key functionality' won't work properly. Sheth suggested that customers upgrade their browsers to pretty much anything else."
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time high traffic sites stop supporting that abomination of a browser.
Die IE6 die.
Epitaph (Score:5, Insightful)
upgrade their browsers to pretty much anything else
What an appropriate assessment of IE6.
Subject line is way too broad (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally use Lynx and for 99% of my Google use, it works just as well as it did 14 years ago.
I know that for some, Google = Google Docs or Google Site, but honestly I don't even know what those are.
Google, to me, is just Google search.
Re:Ding Dong (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone else just fall out of their chair when they read this? I was a little disappointed that in TFA, they mention they would suggest users upgrade to IE7.
"Support for IE6 in Google Docs and Google Sites will end March 1, Sheth said in the post. At that point, IE6 users who try to access Docs or Sites may find that "key functionality" won't work properly, he said.
Sheth suggested that customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome 4.0 or Safari 3.0, or more recent versions of those browsers. "
Why would they even suggest IE7?
I'm also wondering how this will affect corporate infrastructures who rely on Docs or Sites. My company is one of those stuck in IE6 ZombieLand, but we are already in the certification process for Windows 7 and IE8. Unfortunately, for an organization our size, it takes 1-2 years to move to a new version of windows. I can't imagine we're all that unique. This time line seems very aggressive (don't get me wrong, I understand Google's perspective completely).
Re:Epitaph (Score:3, Insightful)
I am sure you get get firefox at least to work with it and you are still better off then ie6
Re:Ding Dong (Score:5, Insightful)
its not the best browser alright but its a huge step in right direction
The only reason it's a step in the right direction is because every other browser has dragged Microsoft kicking and screaming into the present. They certainly wouldn't have done it on their own...
Re:Ding Dong (Score:5, Insightful)
Apologies. I should have been more clear. Why wouldn't they just suggest the latest release version for the IE browser (IE8) to begin with? I'm not going to debate it's merits or cons, and I don't use IE, but it doesn't make sense, or seem very responsible to suggest an older browser version that is arguably less standards compliant than IE8. It would seem like Google is just shooting themselves in the foot by doing so.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's time to see IE6 go. Unfortunately, Microsoft will support IE6 until support for XP runs out - this model needs to change, badly.
SP3 for XP should've made IE7 mandatory. Unfortunately, the right decisions are not always good for business.
Yeah, because forced upgrades also go over so well with this crowd. Should a RHEL/SLES/Ubuntu LTS release of Linux force upgrades to Firefox? Is it okay to do that just because the next major version is free? There's a lot you can blame Microsoft for, but it's the companies that don't want to upgrade which is the problem here. Or would you rather Microsoft moves more in the direction of Apple too, making decisions for you than to leave it to the users?
Everyone should do this (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, it might sound really "anti-Microsoft" or being pathetic, but everyone should really either be blacklisting or reducing the available functionality of websites to users still browsing with MSIE 6.0
Reducing functionality and putting up a message to let users know that they need to upgrade, would be the best decision.
After all, it's not as if there aren't any [microsoft.com] alternatives [mozilla.com] available [google.com]...
Re:I think Google is being reactionary here (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft themselves wants companies to abandon IE6 [arstechnica.com].
Consider it a little tough love from Google. If they announced they'd end support for IE6 in 18 months, nobody would do anything for the next 15 months.
Re:I think Google is being reactionary here (Score:5, Insightful)
I know why there are so many businesses that won't upgrade from IE6, with their legacy web apps that they refuse to upgrade, but for God's sake, IE8 has compatibility mode. For the good of humanity, upgrade!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Epitaph (Score:5, Insightful)
I have windows 2000, with IE6. IE7 and IE8 can't be installed. Moreover, the latest version of google toolbar won't install anyhow since during install it complains that it can't find some DLL interface name.
I think I see the root of your problem...
Now I'm the last person to knock old hardware and software, but comon dude, you are willingly running 10 year old software!
That complaint is about as valid as being angry an Apple//e from the 80s can't do that new fangled 'http' thing.
Re:I think Google is being reactionary here (Score:3, Insightful)
It may seem reactionary, but I suspect the debate about whether to end support for IE6 has been going on for quite some time.
I would be very interested to know what percentage of Google Docs users are still using IE6. I would also be very interested in knowing how much it costs Google to support IE6 (the recent attacks notwithstanding). The development costs of supporting IE6 in any sort of web application are not insignificant. I suspect the percentage of the development budget that Google uses to support IE6 is disproportionate to the percentage of IE6 users.
Dropping IE6 is inevitable. Sure it leaves some people behind, but I'll bet the benefits of doing so significantly outweigh the drawbacks.
Re:I think Google is being reactionary here (Score:2, Insightful)
Corporate policies can - or are you suggesting ingore your company's policy?
If a company has issues with you "breaking corporate policy" because you install Firefox on your machine, then that's one more reason to quit.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, if these companies had written their internal system software as a big ActiveX component, they wouldn't have this problem. ActiveX is (as far as IE's concerned) simply a plugin architecture. Note that the Flash plugin for IE (an ActiveX control) works the same in IE6-IE8.
The problem with ActiveX is that it's just not an appropriate plugin technology for browsers. It has no inherent sandboxing capabilities; there's no way to differentiate between a browser plugin and any other ActiveX control; and Windows comes with several ActiveX controls that should never be allowed to be used in a browser (FileSystemObject, anyone)? For what it was designed for -- resuable components for desktop applications -- it's great, but MS should have put a little more thought into what they were unleashing when they decided to make ActiveX the plugin standard for IE. And no, I don't count "signed" and "marked safe for scripting" features as thought.
No, the problem is that these business systems were all put together using HTML/CSS content that was only ever written for, or tested with, IE. Companies that needed these systems took their bizapps people and told 'em to "make a web version". As is typical with internal apps, they were written to meet the company's needs as quickly and cheaply as possible; which means "works in our current environment", not "is ready for the future". Add in years of ad-hoc tweaks, changes, subsystem additions, and you've got a crufty piece of web tech that barely works in the originally spec'ed envrionment.
Asking for cross-browser/web standards output from a bunch of stuff written by programmers who:
is optimistic, at best.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a lot you can blame Microsoft for, but it's the companies that don't want to upgrade which is the problem here.
The companies stuck on IE6 are the very ones that want to upgrade to the next versions - they're "Microsoft shops" and have been for a decade. They're into Software Assurance bigtime. Unfortunately for them they got committed, and built their core mission critical apps on a platform with no compatible migration strategy. They were entitled to expect a compatible migration strategy, and they didn't get one. It's fair to blame Microsoft for that lack.
Unfortunately, they can and will eventually migrate to a newer version of the Microsoft browser and services which also lack a compatible migration strategy, thus getting stuck in the same trap more than once. You would think they would learn and embrace this novel concept of "standards", but no.
Re:Ding Dong (Score:2, Insightful)
Because there are people who are currently using IE7, so why should they upgrade? In fact, my company *just* announced an upgrade to IE7 for IT-managed systems. No, that's not a typo.
Re:Why there is no virtual IE6 in sandboxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of tools to do this (MED-V, XP Mode, etc.), but there's no business case for it, except "being more secure".
This can be very hard to sell, so it's not only a technology problem but an organizational one too, because upgrading from "IE6 on XP" to "IE6 in a VM accessed by XP" or "IE6 on a TS accessed by XP" means you'll need to spend a lot of money. You'll need a very good CIO to sell this to the rest of management why this should be done. And if the CIO doesn't think this is a good idea, then there's no chance in hell that this will ever happen.
Re:Ding Dong (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the hugest step is not all that helpful when you're 80 steps behind already. You'd think that a company with an $8 billion R&D budget could build a web browser that is 100% standards compliant, performs well, and adds enough value for their users to make it the browser of choice on Windows. Apple and Google can did it, so it's definitely doable. Both Chrome and Safari on my Mac score 100/100 on the acid 3 test. Firefox: 93, Opera: 85.
IE 8 on Window 7? 20. After getting stuck at 12 for 6 seconds.
In the real world this is not that apparent, an I can generally get pages to display identically in FF, Safari, Chrome, Opera and IE8, but I do need to modify CSS that renders fine in the other 4 to make IE8 work, particularly in the area of margins and padding.
There is no good excuse for a company with Microsoft's resources to build such shitty software. I'm a little apprehensive about how crappy their implementation of HTML 5 will be; IE 9 will be the new IE 6. Bet on it.
Re:Ding Dong (Score:5, Insightful)
And why should they? I mean how exactly does IE8 build shareholder value or add value to the Windows platform?
Intentionally or not, I think you've managed to highlight one of the biggest problems in modern-day business. There's a lot of emphasis of "building or adding value", but there really doesn't seem to be much consideration of how to manage its evil twin, which is the erosion of value.
When you only look at things that show tangible and immediate gains, you're doing the equivalent of nurturing the leaves of a plant and ignoring its root system. When support is an "expense" or "cost center", when the money you save by routing customers - and potential customers - into Phone Menu Hell, when, by a thousand cuts you make the people who send in the money (whether directly or indirectly) feel abused, neglected and resentful, that's all eroding value. Like a weak root system, it may not immediately be apparent what's wrong, but the "plant" as a whole cannot flourish.
None of which matters to the grab-the-money-and-run crowd, but once you've grabbed the money, you're best off not investing it in places like that.
Re:Huge developer time savings. (Score:2, Insightful)
Some companies will consider this change a bonus (Score:4, Insightful)
Some large corporation sysadmins will be thrilled that certain Google apps won't work correctly anymore.
My computing environment is heavily managed with group policy and very few user rights, and my company has many many thousands of users worldwide. We cannot even use thumb drives or install any software or hardware. For web connection, we are firmly stuck with IE6 and other outdated web software, mainly because of poorly-programmed corporate web apps with ultra-high security requirements (ironically) that the admins cannot afford to update for fear of the unknowns in new browsers. (For crying out loud, we still have a mandatory installation of Netscape!)
So the admins are always blocking off as many non-work-related sites as possible, and having such sites NOT work correctly will only further discourage users from trying them. For example, we can't use GMail or any other popular webmail sites. And I'm honestly surprised they haven't blocked Google Docs or Google Calendar yet, as they could "leak" data to the outside world.
I'd be that most large corporations are also in a similar fight against their users' desires for newer browsers and freer internet access. So I doubt that this move will really encourage many companies to ditch IE6 faster, and may in fact have the opposite effect in some cases.
Re:Huge developer time savings. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but we talked them into dropping support for IE completely, including IE7 and IE8. We got them to standardize on Chrome, and we're currently in the process of deploying it company-wide. Our lives will be much more enjoyable from this point onwards, I think.
It was believable up until this part. No IE support at all? That seems wildly unlikely.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:4, Insightful)
just wait - the re-implementation will be 'one-click' .net apps, and the problems will simply continue from one broken MS technology into another.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:2, Insightful)
Redesigning a web interface is NOT that hard, even if it's all activeX shit
Everything is easy when there's no chance you'll ever have to be the one to do it.
Re:Huge developer time savings. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, not all developers can drop IE6 support. If you have an e-commerce site, especially one that might target older or less tech savvy customers, any unsupported browser is a lost sale, and IE6 use is still high enough that this is significant.
I also question the wisdom of targeting a single browser. What if there is a huge security vulnerability in Chrome, a showstopper bug (like, it stops working on the next Windows service pack or OS X update), or Google drops development for some reason? This is almost as bad as back in the old days when devs targeted IE6 exclusively.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
And instead of calling me names, you might have taken the time to explain what that point was. ;)
OK, yes. AC has a point. And indeed, much of the grief in my current job comes from the fact that we're writing a web-based application, forcing web pages to do things that it was never envisaged they would do. But the world has moved on, and that's how it is; you move with it, or you stick to the old ways and you die. Regardless, that has little or nothing to do with whether the page is "resolution independently [sic]" - and my HTML is semantic and valid, which is as close to "normal and proper" as it's ever likely to get.
And AC's assertion that the problem began with the invention of stylesheets is laughable. People were slapping "Best viewed with Netscape 3 at 800x600" icons on their pages long before those came along. Table-based layout, anyone? Whatever the tools available, some people will use them well and others won't. (You should have seen some of my hideous creations in high-school woodwork.)
The kind of "webdevelopers" AC is so angry about get right up my nose, too. They give the rest of us a bad name. I get very annoyed when I'm tarred with the same brush - especially when it's by someone who's never seen my work and doesn't have the balls to identify himself.
why have the net connection? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have "ultra-high security requirements" then you need to get those computers off the net.
Physically unplug them. Uninstall any wireless drivers and remove any wireless antennas.
Somebody needs the internet? Get them an iPhone.
Re:Good riddance! (Score:3, Insightful)
The IT people can't just "get their act together". They have no means to replace complete systems. If a company depends on systems that only works with IE6, not only do they need replacement systems, but they also need data migration paths. That's not something IT can do, and in the case of "black box" type producs, it can be exceedingly difficult, time consuming and costly.
The inconvenience of some users who browse the internet isn't enough for the CEOs to open the wallets and fund replacements, as long as the old systems still work. The IT departments don't get a vote on this.
Legacy systems will only be replaced when they become too costly to maintain or lack needed functionality that can't be patched on. Which is why you not only find IE6 in many companies, but quite likely a bunch of old NT machines in a corner that run specific vital functions, not to mention 3270/CICS and old COBOL apps with code from the 70s.
And interestingly enough, one of the main reasons for virtualization (like VMware, citrix, xen, kvm, qm, 370-compatible LPARs) isn't better resource management or consolidation, but because the legacy systems won't run on new hardware, and you just can't buy the old hardware anymore.