On 15 June 2012 01:30, Daniel Friesen lists@nadir-seen-fire.com wrote:
I do have to mention something on this whole topic. All these arguments seem to focus on saying that that IE6/7 should be supported because enterprises are dependent on out of date software and can't update. This line of thought completely ignores the fact that upgrading isn't even the only option... the possibilities of simply installing a second browser for web browsing and only opening IE for internal systems (pretend the page sitting in IE is an app and use shortcuts) or installing chrome frame. Given that fact arguments that enterprises "can't and should be enabled" rather than "just wont and should be ignored" feels rather flimsy.
I hate to perpetuate this topic, but your assumption that adding a browser to a corporate estate will be trivial (or, at least, less work than just upgrading IE from 6 to, say, 8) is not always correct.
One UK Government organisation where I used to work was quoted an outline figure of ~ US$300m to upgrade IE6 to IE7 (almost all of which was re-certification to UK National Security standards). The figure for Firefox - which doesn't have baseline accreditation, unlike IE - was ~US$500m, and would only be good until the next *.*.1+ release of Firefox, unlike IE where the patches are signed-off. Sure, these costs are partially inflated by their poor contracts, but full security audits against thousands of bespoke (and badly-written VB-based archaic) apps is insanely expensive.
Are these organisations screwed mostly as a result of their own short-sightedness in building systems that weren't standards-compatabile? Yes. Should we trivialise the difficulties into which they've steered themselves? No.
Yours,