IE6 Addiction Inhibits Windows 7 Migrations 470
eldavojohn writes "As anyone in the industry will tell you, a lot of money went into developing web applications specific to IE6. And corporations can't leave Windows XP for Windows 7 until IE6 runs (in some way) on Windows 7. Microsoft wants to leave that non-standard browser mess behind them, but as the article notes, 'Organizations running IE6 have told Gartner that 40% of their custom-built browser-dependent applications won't run on IE8, the version packaged with Windows 7. Thus, many companies face a tough decision: Either spend time and money to upgrade those applications so that they work in newer browsers, or stick with Windows XP.' Support for XP is going to end in April 2014. In order to deal with this, companies are looking at virtualizing IE6 only (instead of a full operating system) so that it can run on Windows 7 — even though Microsoft says this violates licensing agreements. IE6 is estimated to have roughly 16% of browser market share, and due to mistakes in the past it may never truly die."
IE Patch (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IE Patch (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like an opportunity (Score:4, Interesting)
Has anyone from these companies tried running XP in a VM to maintain compatibility, while giving them an avenue to load a new OS, and start rolling out new applications? It would seem like the smoothest way to get over this problem.
Re:Never Upgrade, Never Surrender! (Score:3, Interesting)
IE6 conveniently breaks Web 2.0 stuff like youtube, facebook, and a lot of other stuff that PHBs simply do not want their employees accessing on the job.
It's brokenness is a feature in this case.
Re:Never Upgrade, Never Surrender! (Score:3, Interesting)
You gotta upgrade sometime, people.
My brother is the HVAC chief for one of Canada's larger cities, and he recently purchased Windows 98 on ebay because it is required to run the climate controls in city hall.
Yeah, sooner or later they'll have to upgrade, but if you think IE6 is going to magically vanish tomorrow or even in a couple years when support officially runs out, prepare for a shock.
This is why "integration" is bad. Hmkay? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to once again take this opportunity to say "I told you so" to all of the idiots who wanted IE "integrated" in to the OS. If IE was a normal application, like every other browser, then you would be able to run IE 6 on Windows 7 along side IE 8 in a fully supported manner without any fancy hacks or virtualization.
People would have been better off sticking with web stuff that only worked in Netscape 4. I'd need to double check, but I am pretty sure Netscape 4.8 will run fine under Windows 7.
But, of course, when Windows 9 comes out, people will still be stuck on Windows 7 and IE 8.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, think of all the machine upgrades they can get away with in the name of system requirements and so on, its going to be a right old cake fest
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/coming-windows-7-update-heralds-death-of-ie6-finally-009013.php [cmswire.com]
Mistakes? (Score:3, Interesting)
IE6 is estimated to have roughly 16% of browser market share, and due to mistakes in the past it may never truly die."
I do not think they were "mistakes" in the past. On the contrary, they were conscious decisions on Microsoft's part to make IE6 incompatible, thus making developers write pages for IE6 (~runs better on IE6~). It was Microsoft's attempt to kill non-Microsoft web standards.
Now Microsoft is haunted by their own strategy.
Re:This is why "integration" is bad. Hmkay? (Score:3, Interesting)
If IE was a normal application, like every other browser, then you would be able to run IE 6 on Windows 7 along side IE 8 in a fully supported manner without any fancy hacks or virtualization.
Prove that the problem isn't due to the IE6 installer (can you even download it (legally) any more?) doesn't expect certain specific versions of Windows and refuse to run if the version string doesn't match.
But, of course, when Windows 9 comes out, people will still be stuck on Windows 7 and IE 8.
I'm running IE9 beta on my Windows 7 machine at home.
To be fair, I agree with the central point of your argument (code to standards, don't force upgrade unnecessarily) but your arguments don't hold water.
Corporate Reality (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is another thought... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Never Upgrade, Never Surrender! (Score:1, Interesting)
I agree that the cost to upgrade all the software can be prohibitive. That's why there are still lots of ancient (DOS style) inventory management systems.
However, people running legacy systems need to understand what they're getting in to. As time goes on, those systems are going to become more and more expensive to maintain, it will become difficult to buy parts to fix mechanical failures, etc. The choice is not (and has never been) to upgrade or to do nothing. The choice is always to upgrade or support legacy systems. The only thing that frustrates me with this scenario is that people want all the benefits of upgrading, but none of the cost. Make the decision that makes sense, and commit to it!
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
That's no longer true. MS have released a patch allowing it to run on non-virtualizable processors.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Encapsulating IE6 (Score:2, Interesting)
All very well when you're sitting at home but have you ever worked in a large corporation? Most PCs aren't powerful enough to run a second virtual OS instance and, even if they could, maintaining, patching and securing a second OS on every PC effectively doubles the admin overhead of the network - not to mention the licensing cost of doubling the number of antivirus seats you have etc. Virtual XP mode is only suitable for home users and for very specific cases in larger organisations. For large-scale rollout another solution is needed. If you want to stick with the virtual XP based solution but have it manageable, Microsoft have MED-V which will happily run an seamlessly instanced IE6 (as virtual XP mode does) but is clever enough to automatically switch between the native IE8 browser and the virtual IE6 browser based on which URLs you are visiting. MED-V still suffers from the increased hardware requirements of running a second virtualized OS on a client PC. Other alternatives are to deploy IE6 using Citrix XenApp running on a Windows 2003-based server but this also suffers from the same issues or VMware have just announced full support for IE6 running under ThinApp which is probably the least-worst option for most organisations if it weren't for the licensing angle.
Microsoft have a huge number of tools and information on performing compatibility testing prior to a Win7 rollout and anyone considering it I would highly recommend looking into the (free) Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT). For more thorough appcompat testing, look at the toolset provided by App-DNA which is fantastic.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:3, Interesting)
I dunno. I was around the IT world at the time. It was certainly the case that IE was *the* standard corporate web browser at the time, but even then I recall reading a lot of articles about why writing apps that depended on a lot of these proprietary browser extensions was a bad idea. Precisely for most of the reasons it turns out to have been a bad idea.
People said "Sure it's the standard now, but what about ten years from now... After all Netscape was the standard five years ago."
People said "Even if IE stays the standard how do we know that Microsoft will continue to support all these particular extensions. They seem to still be trying to figure out their strategy in this market."
People said "All these extensions in the browser seem to be asking for security and stability problems."
Meanwhile companies blithely bought (or wrote) tons of these applications. It *never* really seemed like a good idea, except from the point of view that it was dead easy, and thus dead cheap, to do. Well, lots of companies did the dead easy, dead cheap, thing; and like most dead cheap options they got what they paid for. They're highly reliant on an insecure, unstable browser than is no longer the standard and only minimally support by Microsoft (who are going to drop even the "minimal" part soon).
Companies dug their own graves, and now try to blame Microsoft. Microsoft certain deserves part of the blame, they wrote the stupid thing after all, but to be fair to them it's not like they woke up one morning last week and decided to drop support. They said *years* ago that IE6 was a mistake, and that they couldn't keep supporting all the proprietary extensions. If It managers had read the writing on the wall then, they could have long since weaned their companies off of these apps with minimal quarterly impacts (or at the very least be well along on the process). Of course that would mean admitting they made a mistake in the first place.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
The hospital system I work in just moved to IE7 (at great pains) but THERE IS A SOLUTION! (12,500 workstations and 25,000 users)
VMware has a program called ThinApp (useto be Thinstall till they bought it)
This will visualize IE6 and 7. Microsoft and Citrix says this is bad, VMware tells us they have already gone though Microsoft Legal and cleared it with them completely, plus they will support you whereas Microsoft will not.
Citrix will tell you to build a 2003 server and send it out that way, Microsoft will tell you to make a virtual XP box and go that way. Both way too much overhead with virus scanning software, patching etc...
This could be the answer, and it does work. Thinapp is a pretty amazing program for $10 per device.
We are looking at doing a full Win 7 migration based on Microsft's App-V and Thinapp with some apps on our Citrix servers, and our support will drop like a rock after it.
Rebuild a PC and the apps get sent to it virtually, so we would be able to rebuild a Pc in under 30 minutes from the start of re-image to completed. Right now we are at about an hour to get from kicking off the re-image to all the vertical apps installed.
Mod Parent Up (Score:3, Interesting)
Somebody please mod the parent post up. Second source (i.e. backup) is a fundamental part of proper risk management, something that the corporate world has largely fallen away from in certain aspects of IT.
<pure_speculation>Makes me wonder if the surge in MBAs over the past few decades has anything to do with this.</pure_speculation>
Cheers,
Re:So sue them. (Score:1, Interesting)
Why doesn't MS repackage IE6 to be standalone, and then put some restrictions in place that it can only be used to load local intranet sites? This would give people that truly need it for legacy internal apps the ability to use it, but kill it off for general web browsing use.
Vmware view (Score:1, Interesting)
I think it's vmware view, it allows you to wrap an app in a virtual sandbox and run it on any windows version. Supports ie6 on windows 7 afaik. More future proof than xp mode.