UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
arstechnica.com
UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#2Stupid. IE6 won't be around forever and upgrading to IE9/IE10/IEx will not be cheaper then.
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#3I think it would be most sensible to at least create a strategy for moving away from IE6.
The UK government's current stance doesn't address the problem .. it postpones doing anything until support runs out in 2014.
What will happen then?
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#4Stupid. IE6 won't be around forever and upgrading to IE9/IE10/IEx will not be cheaper then.
No IE6 won't be around forever, but if, in 2014, they can directly upgrade to IE10, say, then they will have avoided going IE6->IE8->IE10 and thus have saved the cost of an upgrade.
Makes sense to me.
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#5Stupid. IE6 won't be around forever and upgrading to IE9/IE10/IEx will not be cheaper then.
No IE6 won't be around forever, but if, in 2014, they can directly upgrade to IE10, say, then they will have avoided going IE6->IE8->IE10 and thus have saved the cost of an upgrade. Makes sense to me.
The problem is with this argument is that you can keep applying it forever. Also, a number of relatively smaller steps are easier to manage than one single big step.
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
No IE6 won't be around forever, but if, in 2014, they can directly upgrade to IE10, say, then they will have avoided going IE6->IE8->IE10 and thus have saved the cost of an upgrade. Makes sense to me.
The problem is with this argument is that you can keep applying it forever. Also, a number of relatively smaller steps are easier to manage than one single big step.
A sensible step would be to get into the habit of upgrading browsers/tools. A workplace that finds it traumatic to upgrade to IE 7, 8 or 9 or from Windows XP or Windows 7 or even from Office 2003 to Office 2007 is not going to be prepared for changes in the future.
Small steps. Regularly taken.
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#7Despite the last paragraph in the article, another reason for refusing to upgrade is the costs involved in service pack upgrades. IE 7 is only available for Windows XP SP2 and higher. Upgrading to SP2 was traumatic for many organizations, so quite a few did not roll it out.
No upgrade from SP2? Well, IE 6 and only IE 6 it is then.
A related issue: IE 8 offers the ability to run in IE 7 compatibility mode, with the inclusion of a header in the source web page. Despite dire warnings to the contrary, some website developers for UK government insist on setting the header and declaring that IE 8 compatibility has been achieved. I can't wait to see how that will end, to be honest.
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#8This is like saying that saving taxpayers money today is saving the taxpayers money in general. This is totally untrue - 5 years of malware, support tickets, etc. that need not be there costs way more than doing the transition now versus having to do it later anyway.
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#9They should at least install Chrome Plugin.
Re: UK government: Upgrading away from IE6 costs too much
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is with this argument is that you can keep applying it forever. Also, a number of relatively smaller steps are easier to manage than one single big step.
A sensible step would be to get into the habit of upgrading browsers/tools. A workplace that finds it traumatic to upgrade to IE 7, 8 or 9 or from Windows XP or Windows 7 or even from Office 2003 to Office 2007 is not going to be prepared for changes in the future. Small steps. Regularly taken.
I think you're missing that some of those small steps weren't obvious at the time everyone was writing software that the government leans heavily on that only works on IE6, the people that developed it are probably long gone by now and rewriting everything is hardly justifiable.
Large banks are having a hard enough time ditching it and they have a clear motivation to do so to aid competitive edges.