On 15 June 2012 01:30, Daniel Friesen <lists(a)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are dependent on out of date software and can't update.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,
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]