Microsoft: Why We Can't Drop IE6 Support
Microsoft took to its Internet Explorer blog late last night to explain why the company would not be dropping support for IE6 anytime soon.
The fact that many sites are still supporting an eight year old browser has long been a topic of conversation on the web and Microsoft has now thrown its own 2 cents in, explaining the why dropping support for IE6 is not an option.
The post by Microsoft’s Dean Hachamovitch, the General Manager of the Internet Explorer team, references a recent survey done by Digg.com regarding users who were still using IE6. The survey showed that 69 percent of Digg users still using Internet Explorer 6 were doing so because either they don’t have administrator access on my computer or someone at work says they can't and it looks like Microsoft is standing behind those who cannot upgrade because their employer says they can't.
Dean begins by stating that as a browser supplier, of course the company wants users to run the latest version of IE for security, performance, interoperability, and more. However, Dean goes on to say that a huge number of computers do not belong to individual users, but to organizations and highlights the cost of maintaining and updating so many machines, concluding that the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC.
The post clarifies that it has to support IE6 because the company committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product; hence dropping support is "not an option." However, several major websites would be inclined to disagree. Do you think major websites should stop support for IE6? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments below!
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Major websites should not bother anyway. Since any major website developer should be already making it standards complyant for the sake of maintainability.
Sorry, but any sites like Digg and such shouldn't be accessed at work. We all do it I know and I'm not advocating a total block at work, but business machines are for business use in business time.
Corporate intranets are a different kettle of fish and as closed systems it matters not to me if they stay on IE6 - just as long as I know before I start producing for them.
But all that being said, it's really nothing short of laziness on the part of Sysadmins to perpetuate the whole "oh, it's a difficult and time consuming task" myth to get out of upgrading. The browser is free and you can do blanket remote updates from a single console - hit a few buttons and go back to Halo and pizza.
I know, I've been there.
LePhuronn
Its not that straight forward. Yes, you could even get MS to do the patch for you on a Tuesday, but come Wednesday, the internal systems the said company used wont run anymore. Its not the systems support people that has the work, its the developers having to make all things compatible.
Its a catch-22. The developers need to patch the applications (which costs a lot) and not the sysadmins do the rollout.
You need to pay to patch, and if you dont patch your next development project will cost 50% more because it needs to be backward compatible.
@blug:
It's a catch-22 now but unfortunately it wasn't at the beginning - there was a point at the beginning where the tech teams just couldn't be assed to do the upgrade, citing lots of time and money to do it to perpetuate the black magic that is computers to dumb shit management.
Having been on both sides of the fence, I remember a place I did some sysadmin work a few years back, and the intranet developers had to do some app updates that would've taken forever to do in IE6 and they suggested upgrading to IE7.
Management insisted they had to have these features but were concerned about the costs for such a lengthy development, so they approached tech support to talk about the upgrade. Tech told them flat out that it would take a long, long time (i.e. lots of money) to move all the machines over to IE7, so management said they'd stay with IE6. I knew it was bullshit and the tech team laughed about how they'd got out of work.
Also being a web developer, I know full well that none of the existing intranet apps would've had a problem with IE7 so it all came down to the laziness of that tech support team.
In the end management weren't prepared to spend the money on development either so the app never got updated, much to the moaning of employees having to work with a slow, outdated piece of software that killed their own productivity and therefore their targets, thus getting them into hot water, etc, etc.
Yes, there are always cases where you can't upgrade but most of the time the usual reasons are just bullshit.
Like I said, I don't give a monkeys about intranet apps because a lot of my work is on the live web, and I proudly state that I'm part of the growing trend that just won't support IE6 any more.
Microsoft list all new versions of IE as critical updates now so before long IE6 will just get itself updated out of mainstream use so a time will come when Microsoft will have to choose between perpetuating the shit and spend a lot of money supporting IE6 or just dump the thing and move on.
Windows 98 and Windows 2000 aren't supported any more (Windows 2000 extended support expires next year) yet plenty of people still use them, why should IE6 be any different?
I think to just drop support for IE6 is a very risky move for any online business until most government and corporations have moved across to IE7/8. For example, if Computacentre drop support for IE6 from their online procurement system, then are the NHS or one of the many other government/large corporations going to upgrade their systems to buy some printers? No, they will just use Insight who does still support IE6.
As to the upgrade being free, this is complete rubbish. Yes I could download IE8 and the IEAK and generate a custom install with corporate tags and shortcuts in a few hours. Deploy the package to a few thousand clients in a day or two. But the real time/money is spent on testing IE7 against the two to three hundred web based apps. Every app needs to be fully tested by admin and standard users using every function. Every vendor needs to be contacted to check on support for IE7/8 in the version in use, and update or patch any that do not comply.
I freely admit that I've only ever worked in a handful of environments where IE6 was maintained because of compatibility, but the thing that annoyed me the most was how short-sighted it all was.
The developers of the various apps were always making changes and updates to their products, but that energy was spent on ensuring IE6 compatibility. As developers are going to be continuing to develop anyway, why not just go for the upgrade, rather than perpetuate the endless cycle?
I can tell you that most sysadmins I know get funny about testing applications though - they don't see it as their job, so the onus for bug testing and working with upgraded browsers should fall on the developer, not the deployer.
Yes, things get very complex as you go up the enterprise ladder, and I know full well how much of a nightmare moving something like the NHS away from IE6 is, which is probably why Connecting for Health has been such a disaster and waste of money, but I digress...
When the version of Sage, etc, which we use at work are supported on IE later than 6, we'll think about upgrading, but not til then.
I suspect it does work, because those who have IE 7 and use Sage, etc, find it works. But as Sage haven't tested that version, if you hit a problem, they won't try to fix it til after you've rolled back to IE 6.
I suspect it does work, because those who have IE 7 and use Sage, etc, find it works. But as Sage haven't tested that version, if you hit a problem, they won't try to fix it til after you've rolled back to IE 6.
So they won't fix an IE7 problem yet spend the time and money to fix it on IE6? That's the kind of self-perpetuating idiocy that's made the whole situation so much worse.
My 2 cents...
First of all - if MS would stick to the standards we wouldn't have this issue - it would be a matter of features "needed" versus "optional"... Thanks to IE6 everyone now has this problem and there is no right solution - I understand MS supporting the statement that it should be a supported product as it is still used... I agree with the others saying - it's down to tech people to do it... And I agree that it does not really matter in the end... Supporting shit product or fixing apps that work on shit product will always cost money - it's just a matter of who is willing to pay and who is able to get away with NOT doing it now... Let's now skip 10 years... We have IE12, FF7, Opera 14, and what not... Would people still say IE6 is well alive and needs support? No! Would IE6 be used somewhere on earth? Yes! It does not mean it should be supported... It's already old so let's just let it die. It was a horrible mistake on MS's side of things... and why would we all pay for this now? I mean what is the difference? Even if MS would support it until 2020 - patches for it would be released months after the issues have been found and exposed... What kind of a security measure is that? Another thing - why would MS shoot themselves in the foot? If they keep supporting this crap then normal people will still use it - because they will be able to get updates... I reckon that it does not matter WHEN it happens but it MUST happen so it MIGHT as well happen ASAP. Kill IE6 and let's move on... I fully understand the implications and even heard someone from IE team explaining it on a recent conference - yes they have a reason... but they should encourage everyone to upgrade... If MS has the power to terminate windows XP - then they should do the same with IE6...