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Chrome browser for businesses

enterprise.google.com

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Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#201

Post by sangnoir »

johnward wrote: post #181
neiled wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only does Dev stop, but the people that built the app, agreed on the specs and really understood it, all left too. Auto update is unfortunately something that's just not worth the risk in a lot of cases.

With web apps there should be very little risk if you followed standards. The problem is most of these places chose to follow IE6 instead of standards. They will put this off until it becomes a major issue or someone else takes their business. By know I've left banks of terrible client facing systems but internal enn efficiencies are even obvious. It took almost 8 weeks, multiple in person visits, and a freaking type…

> With web apps there should be very little risk if you followed standards

You might be surprised by the number of subtle bugs lurking in corners left out as "implementation detail" by standards.

I've learnt to treat browsers as capricious genies that stick to the letter of the standards, but inevitably screw you over by inconsistently doing the opposite of what a sane person would have regarded as implicit.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#202

Post by DougWebb »

tomelders wrote: post #120
jpochtar wrote: post #61

Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…

My first thoughts exactly. My work has increasingly become creating software for enterprise clients. They all want it to be delivered through the browser. Over time, chrome has become the primary target because its simply unfeasible to target IE. Organisations have bizarre and arcane rules for who gets which versions of IE, so it inevitably leads to developing for the lowest common denominator, which in turn leads to…

In another comment I mentioned a client company that had a locked down default-block web proxy in place. During a site visit with the two developers I was working with I discovered two surprising things:

1. The conference room where I was working had two ethernet ports; one went through the proxy, and one had a clear line to the internet. Apparently this was a common setup in the offices.

2. Everyone was required to use IE, and to use the proxy-managed ethernet port. But I develop using Firefox and I didn't get blocked by the proxy, regardless of which port I used. It turned out that the proxy had to be set up on the browser. The developers were granted admin rights on their machines so they could manage the proxy settings for IE but no one else could. However most people had the ability to install Firefox or Chrome, which would give them proxy-free access to the internet. They just had to know they could do it, and then not get caught doing it.

Turns out this was all about control rather than security; they had a real problem with people spending time on websites they shouldn't have been on, during time they should have been working.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#203

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

SeanBoocock wrote: post #199
homero wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely true, now video games on discs are manufactured completely broken or even mostly empty and they make you download 50gb on launch day

That is not true. Games released physically for video game consoles must pass platform certification requirements and only then manufacture, distribute, and release the game. The lead time required for this in my experience is on the order of 2-3 months, during which time the development team cannot touch the "gold master" build of the game. The build that ends up on the disk is not "completely broken or even mostly…

>The build that ends up on the disk is not "completely broken

...Well, then. Would you care to explain Assassin's Creed Unity, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5? I suppose you classify them as "not completely broken"?

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#204

Post by sangnoir »

simonw wrote: post #140
Jean-Philipe wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies have far too much internal plumbing to permit browsers to auto-update themselves. What plumbing might prevent a browser update? I can't think of a good use case.

Poorly written intranet web apps that break between browser versions. Especially likely if those apps were only tested in one specific browser -especially if it was an older version of MSIE.

Even the most perfect web apps won't save you from breakage when there is a botched browser release- such as the recent Chrome update that blocked all sites using certs from a specific CA.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#205

Post by gajjanag »

illumin8 wrote: post #176
DougN7 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question if you've worked with large enterprises. They freeze everything for a decade or more. Think about a bank with 500 offices, a dozen tellers at each office. Having their internal web app that everyone uses go down because of an auto upgrade could cost them hundreds of millions. They have a very different risk appetite.

That doesn't mean this is a good practice. In fact, I would argue that this type of thinking has created far more harm than good for both the IT industry as well as the companies that adopt this harmful practice. Case in point: many of these same companies that refuse to upgrade systems for a decade or more are still running Windows XP and Server 2003. Due to the negligence of their IT leadership, they are now vulner…

> That doesn't mean this is a good practice. In fact, I would argue that this type of thinking has created far more harm than good for both the IT industry as well as the companies that adopt this harmful practice.

> Case in point: many of these same companies that refuse to upgrade systems for a decade or more are still running Windows XP and Server 2003. Due to the negligence of their IT leadership, they are now vulnerable to all types of security vulnerabilities that won't be patched, and have put both their business and their customer's private data at risk.

There are legitimate reasons for this though. The way I understand it, a big chunk of the problem is that many software vendors refuse to properly separate security related updates from regular updates. Firefox at least has an ESR version, AFAIK there is no equivalent for Chrome. See also attitudes like that mentioned in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9164251

Similar examples can be given for MATLAB - I know of many professors who ask students to run some old and fixed version of MATLAB for many years - they do not want to waste their time dealing with the breakage that inevitably happens with newer releases.

If all vendors actually put in effort into maintaining LTS versions, the situation could be different.

I do agree that the idea of perpetual business value with zero maintenance in a frozen state doesn't make sense - but as a business, I would always be interested in minimizing my maintenance burden.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#206

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

tomelders wrote: post #122
dingaling wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies have far too much internal plumbing to permit browsers to auto-update themselves. Being feature-compatible with the latest SV-poster-child website is insignificant compared to maintaining stability for the tax-management team's internal web app. I was once involved in an IE6 -> IE8 upgrade for a Fortune 100 corporation. It took nine months to analyze all the possible impacts and implement mitigations before…

I think this is a weak argument. The problem here is that companies think that software can exist in some sort of "done" state, where no further updates or development is required. That has never been true. The hardware and software changes. The infrastructure it connects to changes. But most importantly, your workflows must evolve if you are to remain efficient. If you roll your own software, you either commit to co…

>That has never been true.

Some software does actually reach a "done" state, where there is nothing left to do, assuming no major platform changes.

wc will probably work as intended until UNIX itself shambles off the coil at this point.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#207

Post by tomelders »

DougWebb wrote: post #187
tomelders wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can all agree that NASA is a special case. Also, is it 100% true that they dont update software on actuve systems mid mission? What if they discover a critical bug?

Of course NASA updates software mid-mission; they're famous for sending software updates out to deep-space probes and rovers to fix things as critical as communication issues, which is quite a neat trick. What they don't do is allow updates to happen automatically. They're carefully pre-tested, and the update is carefully planned and scheduled. Their goal, like most enterprises, is to minimize risk, and bugs that you…

In this example though, your app is the mars rover and Chrome is the rest of the Universe.

The Universe auto updates. So you need to update your rover when that happens.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#208

Post by agopaul »

jpochtar wrote: post #61

Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…

On the other hand this will probably help deploying Chrome inside companies with more restricting policies. Some of these companies still use IE for everything because it's the only browser allowed, because you know, it's corporate.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#209

Post by applecore »

jpochtar wrote: post #61

Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…

What does "low key" mean? Is "low key" a good or a bad thing? Does it mean we should conceal this information?

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#210

Post by mandlar »

jpochtar wrote: post #61

Is anyone else concerned that this means IT can choose to hold back the version of Chrome in their organizations? Auto-updating Chrome has been low key one of the best solutions to the pain of backwards compatibility with older browsers. In the past we not only had to worry about compatibility between browsers, we had to worry about compatibility between browser versions. Further, auto-updating Chrome as dramatically…

My company has already disabled the auto-updates in our installed versions of Chrome :/
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