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."
What do you expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Funny)
It's vendor/version lock-in.
In other words, Microsoft overdid it. They just wanted to vendor lock-in not the version lock-in. And they are having a hard time recovering from it.
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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]
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The hospital I work in *just* got their several thousand (think 6000+) workstations upgraded to XP. It took almost 2 years.
We're just *now* only beginning to roll out IE7 because it took a while to test vendor apps and make sure things would work for IE7....a few machines are keeping IE6 because they have something that doesnt.
IE8 support isnt even a considering at this point, and probably wont be for the foreseeable future. Windows 7 couldnt happen if they wanted it to...a lot of the workstations are too o
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This is probably moot, but Windows 7 can actually be set up to run nearly (very nearly) as well as XP on the same hardware. There are a few things you'd have to shut off and other tweaks to be made, but it actually does run well on the older hardware. As long as you are running the 32-bit version (highly recommended for cases like yours) then drivers shouldn't be a huge deal.
Having said that, I fully understand why your workplace would not upgrade past XP. We're still on XP here even though Windows 7 32-
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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.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:4, Funny)
This will visualize IE6 and 7.
Why the heck would you want to do that? Wouldn't it be more effective to virtualize them?
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What do you expect? I expect standards (Score:5, Insightful)
If your corporate IT standards mandate ...
That's the point: standards.
Unless your company is developing its own browser and its own OS, making it's own corporate standard on browsers is stupid.
The standards that should have been followed here are the W3C standards. Not the "standards" of one company with one browser on one operating system.
Before 2000 there were computer standards in place. Not following those standards is now an obvious huge failure and now companies will be paying for it.
Re:What do you expect? I expect standards (Score:4, Insightful)
IE was (and still is, in some places) a de facto standard. Calling it "stupid" doesn't change that fact.
Back around 2000 the browser wars were very much alive and compliance with W3C standards was largely mythical, to say nothing of fractious JavaScript implementations.
Corporations had to settle on something. Microsoft won out primarily because the browser was a) bundled and b) made by the same company as the operating system. It was just less hassle all around to go with IE at the time.
We can look back now and say it was stupid to standardize on a browser with such a non-standard implementation, but that's because we have the benefit of various standards-compliant browsers now, and the notion that you should be able to view a particular site with any browser you choose has achieved wide penetration. At the time, it was thought one browser would "win" and control the standards for all practical purposes, and most people banked on Microsoft. It was an understandable gamble at the time even though it looks foolish in hindsight.
Re:What do you expect? I expect standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the distant past, there used to be the notion of a second source. That is, for every product that you buy - especially ones that your business depends upon - you should have at least two potential suppliers, even if you never actually bought anything from the second one. There are several reasons for this. If the first supplier goes bust, you have a backup. If there is a second supplier, then the first supplier can't raise prices too much or they will suddenly find that they are no longer the first supplier.
Back when IBM made the PC, they insisted on a second source for every single component, with two exceptions. The BIOS, they wrote in house. The operating system, they regarded as a commodity, which therefore didn't need a second source. You'd think that other companies might learn from this mistake.
Part of the economic attraction of open source is that it automatically comes with a second source; any open source product that you buy (by definition) comes with the rights to get someone else to maintain it for you.
If you build your internal infrastructure on top of one company's products and do not have an alternate supplier, then you are saying to that company 'we are willing to pay whatever you decide to charge in the future'. This was known well before IE4 was released, and I was certainly not the only person at the time saying that building intranet sites depending on a particular browser was a stupid idea. I have absolutely no sympathy for companies that decided to save a small amount of money in exchange for a large cost later on.
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:What do you expect? I expect standards (Score:4, Informative)
Corporations had to settle on something.
No, they didn't. Any manager with even minimal competence understands that the computer industry has always been in a state of rapid change. Nobody with a grain of sense will "standardize" on something that's controlled by another corporation and likely to change in unpredictable ways in the near future. Standardizing on IE was a sign of incompetence; standardizing on one version of IE was (and still is) a sign of utter, hopeless incompetence.
Sensible managers (and I've known a few of them) knew all along that the sane approach has always been to treat the browser arena as highly unstable. Sensible business practice is to plan for the changes that you know will come, and demand that your own web stuff be as generic as possible. It's easy enough to collect a set of browsers and test against all of them. I've done this since the Web became the hot new thing, and so have lots of other people. Not doing this may be common business practice, but it's still a sign of incompetence.
It was just less hassle all around to go with IE at the time.
Indeed. And it's a good example of the short-sighted "don't look beyond the current fiscal year" attitude of much of the corporate world. We've known for a couple of centuries that this leads to economic disasters. The people who make corporate decisions like this should be exposed and ridiculed in public. They shouldn't be held up as example of "how things are done".
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Actually, we didn't all know that Microsoft would lose the browser wars. Remember, at one time they had very close to 100% market share in the browser space. Had they maintained such dominance they would have effectively controlled Web standards. It wouldn't matter what the W3C said, it would only matter what Microsoft implemented.
People also assumed Microsoft would maintain backward compatibility as they'd done in large part since the MS-DOS days. It was not clear that MS would eventually abandon their cus
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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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
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In other words, Microsoft overdid it. They just wanted to vendor lock-in not the version lock-in. And they are having a hard time recovering from it.
MONKEY PAAAAAAAAAAAW!!!!
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It's not as if there weren't PLENTY of warnings that sooner or later that would come back to bite them in the ass, they just ignored them all and painted themselves into the corner as fast as they could.
The few apps developed way back then that worked on multiple browsers still work on the latest and greatest.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
These are all big corporations who buy tons of windows licenses.
MS isn't going to sue them because they are running a bunch of IE6-apps on copies of IE6 that they paid for via XP licenses, on copies of Windows 7 that they pay licenses for, supported by Active Directory and Exchange servers that they pay licenses for and client licenses for, etc. Oh, and the reason they're doing it is because MS stopped taking their money for XP extended support contracts and instead they're paying for Windows 7 extended support contracts.
MS would be suicidal to file legal action against companies like this. They're EXACTLY who keeps them in business. No, they're going to do everything they can to make the migration path as smooth as they can. The IT guys at these companies can pick up the phone and have engineers at their beck and call any time they want - they are MS's bread and butter and they know it.
Sure, MS would prefer to leave IE6 behind, and no doubt they'll do what they can to get people to move on. However, the worst they'll actually do is remove official support - they won't be suing their customers.
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Everyone wants to blame Microsoft for everything, the real blame is on the standards bodies.
I don't think so at all.
Berners-Lee's original draft for HTML appeared under the auspices of the IETF in 1993. By the end of 1995, HTML was already at version 2.0. The first W3C "recommendation," HTML 3.2, was released in January of 1997.
ASP 1.0 was released in December of 1996. PHP 1.0 had existed since June of 1995, and people were already writing web applications in existing languages like Perl before then. PHP
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When people get comfortable enough with something, they don't look for new products to replace it.
This is what I don't get:
People are willing to put in the money and effort to try and virtualize IE 6 but the same amount could probably have gone in to upgrading their web application to run on IE8
Re:What do you expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Similarly, if it were cheap to rewrite all these web applications for IE8, it would also not be a story.
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You can do this with some of the management suites out there.
We'll be virtualizing all browsers on Windows 7 - be it IE6, 7, or 8.
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Eventually support for IE6 will be gone, and that is a concern for corporations. We considered virtualization under Win7 and rejected it for that reason. The out of the box solution to run XP VM is meaningless if XP support dries up, and it doubles the desktop footprint for the support areas. A nightmare in the making.
We are going through the painful process of rewriting and certifying IE6 specific apps and migrating to IE8. Only after that is complete will we migrate to Win 7.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you mean that you are going to lock yourself into IE8, or that you are going to rewrite and certify to standards?
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Even better, virtualize the entire OS it runs on since IE6 is such a security hole.
We could call the feature Windows XP Mode [microsoft.com] and include it with the Professional and Enterprise versions of Windows.
Oh wait, Microsoft already did that.
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Windows XP mode on older hardware sucks royally. Windows 7 can run fine in a 1 GB machine, but try running XP Mode on top of that and see what you get. Now try it again on a 512 MB machine (and a lot of companies still have them - we have at least a dozen 2.4 GHz P4's with 512 MB of RAM).
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I was under the impression that they would upgrade to Win7 during a hardware refresh.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
"There's never enough money to do it right, but there's always enough money to do it again."
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but you missed, re-training, lost productivity, re certifying, supporting, and probably a few other costs as well. Re-training and lost productivity are going to have major $$ values with them. If your app handles sensitive data and needed to be certified, any re-write will cause you to have to pay for that again as well.
In short it's not dev costs that are the issue.
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Sensitive data and IE6 in the same sentence.. lol..
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You don't need to retrain someone to use the app - its the exact same application it just runs in a different browser. You don't need to worry about re-certifying and supporting because you'll have to do that with a virtualized system anyways.
I made a post a bit futher up about how you basically save money in the long run by simply paying the dev costs for that upgrade as opposed to a licensing solution. Licensing something to run an obsolete product is a terrible idea, there are very few circumstances wher
What forethought by Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
They used IE6 to E^3 (Embrace, Extetnd, Extinguish) Windows 7 long before it even came out!
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IE Patch (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:IE Patch (Score:4, Insightful)
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I live in Scotland.
I'm happy for them to ban smoking anywhere. If it wasn't dangerous to health then of course they shouldn't ban it. But smokers do not, and should not, have any right to force their smoke onto other people.
Car exhausts aren't great either, but at least they don't smell so bad, and usually aren't right there next to you.
The Browser That Wouldn't Die (Score:5, Funny)
Seems appropriate for Halloween.
So sue them. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Then Microsoft should sue them. That would teach them, right? After all, violating intellectual property licenses is the same as theft.
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Re:So sue them. (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt that Microsoft actually would sue them. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Let me guess, you're dressing up as Captain Obvious for Halloween?
Re:So sue them. (Score:5, Funny)
I went as Captain Obvious one Halloween. No one got it.
Encapsulating IE6 (Score:4, Informative)
A while back, I remember thindownload.com offering IE6 in a Thinstall (Now VMWare ThinApp) package. It was taken down, but something like that would be the best thing for places that need IE6, but don't have the hardware to virtualize an ACE VM just for this program. Even better would be running the IE6 package under sandboxie so when (not if) it gets compromised, the damage is very limited what malware could attempt.
Re:Encapsulating IE6 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Encapsulating IE6 (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. However it isn't as easy to get set up and pushed out on an enterprise basis as a single app file. Another downside is that because XP Mode is complete VM that can easily get compromised, it requires an instance of antivirus for corporate IT reasons. Having a single executable that runs in a "jail" is a lot better performance-wise, and means one doesn't have to set up virtualization on company desktops.
Probably the simplest solution for a company that needs IE6 on desktops for one task or application would be to use Citrix or Terminal server, and just keep a well locked down copy of IE6 on a dedicated server.
Never Upgrade, Never Surrender! (Score:5, Insightful)
You gotta upgrade sometime, people.
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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.
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This is not entirely the fault of the users, sure they deserve some blame but only for allowing themselves to be suckered by microsoft's lock-in strategies...
It is microsoft that chose to ignore standards and build a browse designed to lock people in.
Had they built a standards compliant browser, then modern browsers being a superset of the standards available at the time would continue to run these old application just fine.
Similarly if these application developers had developed using standard technologies
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Have we forgotten that for several years, IE6 was basically the only free-as-in-beer browser that existed, or are we ignoring that sad truth?
You don't have to be crazy to build for what works on a specific browser when it's the only browser there is.
Re:Never Upgrade, Never Surrender! (Score:5, Informative)
lolwat? Netscape was free as in beer long before IE 6 was released, and Netscape had started the free-as-in-speech Mozilla project years before IE6 was released (though it didn't have a browser until Netscape 6, released the year before IE6).
Sure, there was a Netscape in those days. Just like there was a Matrix Revolutions and a Highlander 2 and a Star Wars Episode 1.
You know, things that were so bad, we pretend they don't exist because they soured your memory of enjoying the previous versions. Except latter-day Netscape wasn't as good as any of those movies.
Developing for Netscape in those days was like fucking a pickle slicer, except painful. Anyone who was in the trenches of web development in that era can tell you, assuming they didn't get PTSD or block out the bad touch entirely.
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In short, IE6 was the ONLY browser that mattered, and the only real competition was a steaming pile of crap that was even worse.
Take a look at my signat
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I don't think you understand the scope of the problem. Not even a little.
Companies and governments have massive amounts of custom code which runs only on IE6. The time, money, and effort to rewrite this would be absolutely huge.
Are you seriously suggesting that organizations just toss out a mission-critical bit of software e
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Companies and governments have massive amounts of custom code which runs only on IE6. The time, money, and effort to rewrite this would be absolutely huge.
Lots of people have massive amounts of 16-bit apps. Should Microsoft have included 16-bit support in x64 versions of Windows as a result? Lots of people still use VB6 apps. Should Microsoft continue to support Visual Studio 6? When I upgraded to Windows 7, I was annoyed that the one 16-bit app I still used at home wouldn't work anymore, but I got over it.
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Companies wrote those things because they had an immediate business need to get things done. Over time, they added onto them, and the tools became much more entrenched and something they can't get away from.
Yes. It's called "bad design", or in enterprise terms, "short-term focus". Many of those applications can be linked back to the dot-com bubble, when every kid and their dog was hired instantly to "be part of the hype". And because of the hype maybe, both the people hiring and (most of) the contractors were not expecting the application to last ten years.
But we are now ten years from when the bubble burst. I have zero sympathy for the companies that have eschewed investing in their "business-critical" infras
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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.
Quirksmode (Score:2)
It really shouldnt be a big upgrade.
Re:Quirksmode (Score:4, Informative)
One line... really? Perhaps you have not noticed how fail the "compatibility mode" in IE8 actually is. If that component actually worked as advertised then maybe it would be simple to get it working but it doesn't. What they have today is far from having a quick fix option.
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If anything looks different you will need to re-train staff, and if it had some 3rd certification that will need to be re-done if you touch the code.
XP Mode? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Xp mode is still running a full XP + VM overhead (Score:2)
Xp mode is still running a full XP + VM overhead.
So you still have the 2014 deadline and may have to run AV and other stuff in the VP and the host OS.
IE6 on WIndows 7 (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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Actually, Windows 7 has Windows XP available as an option. It runs XP apps in a VM and displays the window as a native window on the 7 desktop. You would need to tweak the default install to get IE 6 on there (it ships with 8), but it's still cheaper over the long haul than not upgrading to windows 7.
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Did you even make it through the summary?
Yes, they have looked at it. As usual, Microsoft are being asshats. Heck, I think Microsoft even claims you can't run their operating systems on virtual machines unless it's
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...a compatibility module that would let them use a NEW browser with their old applications...It would seem like the smoothest way to get over this problem.
As long as IE6 and Winxp are still in support, how is your suggestion smoother than just cruising along with status quo?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning the choice, but it's not hard to see why some people and organisations are reluctant to get on the treadmill.
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Let that be a lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
Let that be a lesson to all those idiots who wrote IE only web applications.
Brilliant!
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Yeah, they must be kicking themselves for having already been paid once, and possibly having been paid again to port their apps over to IE7+...
Serves them Right (Score:2)
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html [joelonsoftware.com]
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I think organizations rather like having a browser that screws up social networking.
IE6: bigger mess than Y2K (Score:4, Insightful)
IE6 is beginning to be a bigger mess than Y2K. It's not yet such a long-term problem, but the scope is pretty board due to the fact that it's the entire program, not just date fields, which are broken.
Not just IE specific apps (Score:2)
A lot of applications are developed against directions in MSDN. For instance a lot of apps write stuff under %ProgramFiles% or replaces DLLs under %SystemRoot%. This means that they don't work well (read: at all) in Vista or 7 without administrator rights. As a member of our IT staff I'm really reluctant to give administrator password or administrator rights to, well, anyone. That's why we've been sticking to XP.
In fact, I can't think a single ActiveX component that's holding us back. In fact we just upgrad
IE6 needs something like Mozilla Prism (Score:2)
I'm no anonymous coward... (Score:2)
I love IE6! I love the feel of it, where the buttons and everything are. I love the way it acts when I go to websites.
I detest IE8. The only thing IE8 has going for it would be the ability to drag and drop sites into the toolbar. But everything else, I don't like.
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Dude you should join my IE6 supporters group [goo.gl]. It's a community that's pressuring Microsoft to continue support for IE6.
Huge Success! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, Microsoft made IE6 not compatible with standards so that people would make sites compatible with IE (because the majority use IE, since it came with Windows) so that the sites would be less compatible with standard browsers that work on other operating systems, so that people would use Windows and IE, since a lot of sites only worked with IE.
Corporate software also requires IE6, since it comes with Windows XP, why make a program that's compatible with other browsers, except IE and then require that browser when all your users have IE6 by default? Now it is inconvenient, but redoing the app to support standards would be expensive.
So, now IE6 is so entrenched in the corporate environment that not only it prevents the company from migrating to Linux or some other OS, but it also prevents the company from migrating to a newer OS made by Microsoft.
Whoever was in charge of the decision to make IE6 non compatible did a wonderful job - XP and IE6 will live for a long time. It will probably even outlive newer versions of Windows.
Re:Huge Success! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. IE6 is fantastic, truly magnificent - it's a poster child for any architect.
Why? Because now we have the perfect "here's how to fuck up your organisation by not following standards" example. With the added bonus that almost any organisation I go to work for will have fallen into exactly that trap.
Karma is a bitch! (Score:2)
New sales pitch needed (Score:2)
I work on IE6 all day long. All our in-house apps were made for it. They ALL use Java.
Recently one of the apps was upgraded and it has caused havok all this week as the java platform is not running properly and it's pretty much borked six ways from sunday.
While trying to do some critical work yesterday, stuff that just had to be done as deadline was coming up, I tried, on a hunch to see if it ran in chrome or FF. I got a popup to tell me that my browser did not meet the requirements to run the app. I ignore
Let this be a lesson (Score:2)
Let this be a lesson to those companies who said it was too expensive to follow web standards when developing web sites and applications.
The Lesson (Score:2)
If Microsoft had take W3 standards seriously sooner, they wouldn't be losing potential sales on Windows 7 now.
The companies that built software targeted only at IE 6 are also reaping what they are sowing. For years many web designers and tech managers have been ignorant of the existence of W3 standards. I have seen many instances where upon being told that the internet and IE are not same thing these people brushed that piece of information off.
At the time when IE 6 was the most advanced IE, if you want
Too bad so sad. (Score:2)
At what point don't they just buckle down and rewrite the apps to use standards-based methods? They put their money on a losing horse. Suck it up and move on.
I understand that Microsoft encouraged folks to write their apps with Active X and all that but they learned a valuable lesson - don't trust mission-critical operations to a single-vendor solution.
Yes, I know Exchange and Active Directory ft into this category as well but the only difference is that Microsoft hasn't dropped support for them. I mean, wh
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.
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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 o
Inhibits? (Score:2)
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Yay! (Score:2)
I am at risk of foaming at the mouth when I think of IE6, but the news that it is hurting adoption of Windows 7 and costing MS profits puts a smile on my face.
Karma-rific!
Simple Solution (Score:3, Informative)
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That's no longer true. MS have released a patch allowing it to run on non-virtualizable processors.
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.
Corporate Reality (Score:4, Interesting)
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