Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A clever way to fight IE6

igorpartola.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 114 posts

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#61

Post by swombat »

ricardo wrote: post #47
swombat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The enterprises wouldn't decide to pay the IE tax. The decision would have to be made by the end-users forced to use IE6. And they wouldn't pay.

End users at large enterprise companies have zero say in the support browsers of that organization. These policies are put in place by their IT organization which in some cases manages all applications and patches that are pushed down to an individual's machines. In those large companies even Windows patches are managed in house and not through the standard Windows update process. I think those companies will easily…

Have you ever tried to make a sale to this sort of company? It'll take three years before they even bother to react.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#62

Post by tnorthcutt »

MJR wrote: post #26

Many users of IE6 have no choice of browser. It's either IE6 or nothing. They're forced to use it because many large companies have IE6 as they're single browser on the desktop. Forcing an upgrade of all the clients in a company to IE7, 8, or another browser can be a large effort. The end users have zero control to upgrade their own browser or install other software. An upgrade also requires that all internal applica…

"that recently upgraded from IE6 to IE7 internally"

Why on earth didn't they go ahead and make the jump to IE8?

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#63

Post by dkarl »

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…

Subcontract the IE6 compatibility work to someone who doesn't know how much you're charging for it.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#64

Post by orblivion »

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…

> Sure, you'd make tons of money, but is that what you really want?

Well sure, that's why you've been agreeing to do it for that price. If doing it so much makes it not worth it, increase the price even more, eventually demand has to decrease.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#65

Post by billybob »

melvinram wrote: post #53
yock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I see what you're saying, but it might still be useful for them to know what trade-offs are being made.

Like, "for this site and audience, we recommend supporting IE6. But FYI, that does eat this much of our costs, which can't be spent on shiny new features for modern browsers. So maybe for other projects, if you do something that targets a different audience, we'll want to make a different trade-off."

If I were the client, I think I'd appreciate that info. It might affect what types of sites I want to launch, for example.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#66

Post by ricardo »

swombat wrote: post #61
ricardo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End users at large enterprise companies have zero say in the support browsers of that organization. These policies are put in place by their IT organization which in some cases manages all applications and patches that are pushed down to an individual's machines. In those large companies even Windows patches are managed in house and not through the standard Windows update process. I think those companies will easily…

Have you ever tried to make a sale to this sort of company? It'll take three years before they even bother to react.

Thankfully no, but given the speed those companies move I wouldn't be surprised if IE6 is still there, 3 years later.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#67

Post by btilly »

billybob wrote: post #65
melvinram wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I see what you're saying, but it might still be useful for them to know what trade-offs are being made. Like, "for this site and audience, we recommend supporting IE6. But FYI, that does eat this much of our costs, which can't be spent on shiny new features for modern browsers. So maybe for other projects, if you do something that targets a different audience, we'll want to make a different trade-off." If I were the…

If big companies are part of your core audience, they are part of your core audience. At that point IE 6 support is not optional, nor is pushing back on it going to make a difference. All you'll do is cause annoyance.

Re: A clever way to fight IE6

#70

Post by drivingmenuts »

tsycho wrote: post #51
tmlee wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then your company needs to fire their tech team en masse and hire some up-to-date techies.
Post reply on HN