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A clever way to fight IE6

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Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#51

Post by tsycho »

tmlee wrote: post #7
WillyF wrote: post #5

Maybe you could turn this idea into a new monetization technique for content websites. Free for most, but IE 6 users have to pay to view your content.

but the underlying problem is that IE6s are still sticking in big enterprise/workplace where they do not have a choice of uninstalling it.

TL;DR => Most users in large enterprises cannot get rid of IE6 even if they want to.

I working for a large company (100,000+ employees) in the US and we are stuck with IE6. We cannot uninstall or upgrade it without admin rights, which 99% of employees do not have.

A small minority of tech-savvy employees use Chrome or Firefox, but this is heavily frowned upon. Once when my hard disk crashed, our internal tech support team tried to blame the fact that I use Firefox instead of IE6 as the reason.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#52

Post by VMG »

flannell wrote: post #50

I think we should remember why IE6 continues to burden us. All those companies spending millions adding Citrix and MS Terminal services to their network many years ago need a few more to get their ROI back. In these cash strapped times I can't see an already over stretched IT department putting together an operating system upgrade for 600+ desktops. I develop a web based app and it's a nightmare adding those awful ha…

In these cash strapped times I can't see an already over stretched IT department putting together an operating system upgrade for 600+ desktops.

You assume that it is the decision of the IT department. I would imagine that the IT department would have less headaches by updating

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#53

Post by melvinram »

yock wrote: post #38
melvinram wrote: post #18

I run a web design company and as part of the discovery process, we ask questions to figure out whether or not big corporations, schools, gov. agencies, etc, are part of their core target audience. We also look at their existing analytics data if they have it. If they have visitors using IE6, we just assume that we're going to need to support IE6 and adjust the price according. There is no good reason to make the cus…

I'm confused. Are you or are you not notifying your customers of the added expense of supporting IE6? If you are, then I don't see how your method differs from what is stated in the post. No one is making their client "feel bad" about a business decision. Whether or not they do is more a function of how that unfortunate news is delivered, or perhaps whether or not they irrationally view IE6 support as mission-critica…

If we determine that it's in their best interest to support IE6, we don't line-item IE6 support (i.e. we don't say IE6 will cost you $xxxx extra.) We simply quote them a price that includes that cost (i.e. your website will cost $xxxx.)

If we determine that support IE6 will likely not matter, we break it out as an extra line-item cost and give them the option to support IE6 by paying extra. We explain the facts of their situation and let them make the decision.

It's not about making them feel bad. It's just human nature. It's just a more pleasant experience just paying a price and knowing it'll just work instead of having to pay more than the regular price just to make it work.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#54

Post by pbz »

njharman wrote: post #24
brazzy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the biggest pool of IE6 users are people from poor countries running pirated copies of Windows XP with no access to automatic updates.

They have access to Firefox's and Chrome's automatic updates!

Just because they have a pirated version of XP doesn't mean they heard about Firefox or Chrome.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#55

Post by brazzy »

njharman wrote: post #24
brazzy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the biggest pool of IE6 users are people from poor countries running pirated copies of Windows XP with no access to automatic updates.

They have access to Firefox's and Chrome's automatic updates!

Just like everywhere else, they'll use what comes with the OS.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#56

Post by netmau5 »

I've made the same suggestion to my company and we are going to adopt a pricing policy for IE6 in our future product releases (B2B). The bottom line is that it costs us more to support IE6 and it's a sunk cost. We've eaten the cost for a long time because we care about making our customers happy no matter the circumstance. However, on the verge of IE9 and HTML5, supporting IE6 is starting to show measurable effects on our development velocity, capability, and agility which impacts all of our customers regardless of browser.

I suspect many IT depts and software companies are eating this cost and it reduces the impetus to upgrade browsers. Business cares about the bottom line and they won't consider changes unless they see line items that will affect it.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#57

Post by tlrobinson »

edw519 wrote: post #42

Be careful what you wish for. This reminds me of former NFL great and Monday Night Football announcer Frank Gifford. At one time, he charged $10,000 per corporate appearance. The grind was wearing him down, so he doubled his rate to reduce volume. Funny thing happened though, the higher rate made him more desirable to corporate program directors and his demand actually increased . I wonder how applicable this phenome…

Take the limit of this scenario and you get a single job that pays more money than you'll ever need, thus leaving time to do whatever you want.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#58

Post by brazzy »

sudonim wrote: post #27
brazzy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the biggest pool of IE6 users are people from poor countries running pirated copies of Windows XP with no access to automatic updates.

I hadn't heard this before. Do you have data to support that claim?

Here's the article I remembered:

http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/08/aye-pirates-be-reason-ie6-ju...

Interestingly, some specific countries (namely the Phillipines and Indonesia) have a much lower IE6 usage than their equally poor neighbours, due to a very high market share of Firefox.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#59

Post by Isofarro »

powrtoch wrote: post #33
bherms wrote: post #28

This is what we do too, but this isn't going to kill IE6. It's not a problem that sites support it, it's a problem that large companies and non-techies don't want to or know how to upgrade. What I do for all my sites is add http://pushuptheweb.com/ to all my pages and customize the message to say they're not getting the full experience and that their browser may be unsecure.

I disagree, I think that techniques like this do contribute to killing IE6. The reason that corporations don't upgrade their browsers is pretty simple: they don't have to. As it stands now, IE6 is "good enough" for their employees to do whatever it is they need to do. The more websites that drop IE6 support, the more IE6 becomes "not good enough", and the more pressure accumulates for corporations to upgrade. Right n…

The UK Government decided that it will stay with IE6 for the forseeable future:

http://www.hmg.gov.uk/epetition-responses/petition-view.aspx...

Claiming:

Security: "Complex software will always have vulnerabilities and motivated adversaries will always work to discover and take advantage of them. There is no evidence that upgrading away from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure. Regular software patching and updating will help defend against the latest threats. The Government continues to work with Microsoft and other internet browser suppliers to understand the security of the products used by HMG, including Internet Explorer and we welcome the work that Microsoft are continuing do on delivering security solutions which are deployed as quickly as possible to all Internet Explorer users."

Cost: "It is not straightforward for HMG departments to upgrade IE versions on their systems. Upgrading these systems to IE8 can be a very large operation, taking weeks to test and roll out to all users. To test all the web applications currently used by HMG departments can take months at significant potential cost to the taxpayer. It is therefore more cost effective in many cases to continue to use IE6 and rely on other measures, such as firewalls and malware scanning software, to further protect public sector internet users."

Pretty hard to argue against without deteriorating into a "no it isn't", "yes it is", which gets us nowhere.

So with the UK government, and it's 'standards' for it's various departments, standing firm, cautious businesses will follow the same path as well.

The more websites that drop IE6 support, the less people will use those websites. Facebook and Youtube are fairly safe in ignorning IE6 since that makes it easier for businesses and government departments to stop non-business use of their infrastructure.

Talk of raising prices to cater for IE6 suit me just fine. I've been dealing with IE6 since it was launched, so I'm fairly fluent in dealing with the issues it has. It's part of my job as a web developer, to build websites that work in web browsers.

Supporting IE6 isn't a big deal. It's all about clean separation of layers, progressive enhancement, and a decent understanding of IE6's foibles. Unless you've chosen to use a framework or code-generation toolkit that gets those basics wrong, and prevents you from fixing the corresponding HTML, CSS and JavaScript layers.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#60

Post by tnorthcutt »

kenjackson wrote: post #23

Of course the problem with this strategy is that you may not be in a vacuum. If I'm a competing shop I simply say that I'll do it all for a price somewhat south of your +IE6 price. And if I have some experienced webdevs who have done this type of stuff since forever, the cost is already largely locked in. Sure I may not be "helping the web" (whatever that means), it may mean a substantial boost in revenue.

That scenario exists no matter what the topic. There is almost always a cheaper alternative.
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