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IE7 users, we need to talk…

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Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#131

Post by al2o3cr »

csmithuk wrote: post #106
pilif wrote: post #71

> IE7 users make up 1.22% of our traffic right now, and this will decline as more computers are upgraded and can use modern browsers. No computer exists that is able to run IE7 but not IE8. And because IE7 came out way past the "optimized for IE" age, I doubt there is software around that requires 7 and doesn't work with 8. This is in contrast to 6 which is what IE was stuck in for years, so software began depending…

Actually no, you are completely wrong. It might be a popular opinion but it's wrong. Some facts: 1. Firstly, there are a couple of COM APIs that were broken with IE8 which mean that some horrible "intranet applications" that use ActiveX won't work with IE8 properly. They worked fine with IE6 and IE7. These are now no longer supported by the vendors with no upgrade path so people are stuck with IE7 whilst applications…

I fail to see how Microsoft's decision to not fix these proprietary APIs in future IE releases is somehow the fault of "the non-engineering background trendy startup pushing culture".

Your company bought into a single-vendor solution that was then (as is TYPICAL of said vendor) dropped like a rock. Tough.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#132

Post by aaronem »

Zancarius wrote: post #78
flomo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strained car analogies are the 1999 Slashdot PT Cruiser of internet arguments.

I nearly spit water out of my nose. And probably the corner of my eyes.

Could be worse, as I've just found out; it could be hot coffee.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#133

Post by al2o3cr »

josteink wrote: post #117
ajpos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a F500 and we cannot upgrade to 8. We have antiquated web platforms that don't work without it. It sucks. A lot.

I really don't get this mentality, at all. Shouldn't at some point the cost of all websites in the world being broken on your corporate machines be a bigger problem than having to do some work on some antiquated LOB app you've considered rewriting anyway the last 5 years? Do these weirdo F500 still demand railroads to operate steam-trains for them, since that was the last thing they read about last time they received…

"Shouldn't at some point the cost of all websites in the world being broken on your corporate machines be a bigger problem"

Apparently some IT orgs regard "everything but internal sites being broken" as a FEATURE. Keeps the proles off of Facebook, or something.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#134

Post by csmithuk »

al2o3cr wrote: post #131
csmithuk wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no, you are completely wrong. It might be a popular opinion but it's wrong. Some facts: 1. Firstly, there are a couple of COM APIs that were broken with IE8 which mean that some horrible "intranet applications" that use ActiveX won't work with IE8 properly. They worked fine with IE6 and IE7. These are now no longer supported by the vendors with no upgrade path so people are stuck with IE7 whilst applications…

I fail to see how Microsoft's decision to not fix these proprietary APIs in future IE releases is somehow the fault of "the non-engineering background trendy startup pushing culture". Your company bought into a single-vendor solution that was then (as is TYPICAL of said vendor) dropped like a rock. Tough.

The two points are separate. The former is a fact, the latter is a general attitude.

Not our company fortunately, but I have stuff to integrate with their systems. They had supply and maintenance contracts and soure escrow. The supplier went under rather than dropped the product - this is not typical. The replacement is being built by ex-members of the supplier working for the company.

They won in a bad market so it's hardly a "tough" situation.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#135

Post by nirvdrum »

csmithuk wrote: post #124
robinwarren wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unfortunately, the rate of change is incredibly large for Internet-facing applications. Intranet-facing applications are left behind. As browsers evolve, which they do rapidly, unpredictably and without compromise[1] a disparity grows until you need two browsers." This could be an argument for buying in cloud services (which you expect to be updated and maintained as technology evolves) rather than building solution…

Yes and no. So far cloud services have proven themselves too risky for a lot of people as they suffer from availability problems (Azure), data retention problems (Atlassian data loss), security problems (NSA anyone?), churn and inconsistency (Google apps), data protection and regional law (Amazon S3). I could go on all day. This isn't really an option for a lot of people.

My larger issue is that the UI gets tweaked constantly. To the point where the app you originally purchased and the one you're currently using may not longer resemble each other and there's nothing you can do about it when it's hosted.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#136

Post by aaronem »

NamTaf wrote: post #30

Related: Kogan (an electronics vendor here in AU) has an IE7 tax on all of their products to pay for the upkeep required to develop supporting IE7. This follows the succesful implementation of an IE6 tax some years ago. http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-explorer-7-tax/

It's an interesting idea, I suppose, if a bit smug; I've always found it sufficient just to pop up a note saying something along the lines of "Look, I'm sure you have a good reason for using IE 7, and I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't. But it's no longer reasonably possible to test in that version of the browser, and I therefore can't warrant everything on this site will work properly in it; I don't particularly expect problems, but you should know they might happen, and if they do, there's not a lot of help I can offer beyond suggesting you instead use a newer version of IE, or an alternate browser like Firefox, Safari, or Chrome, all of which I have tested and can warrant." We're all adults here, after all, even when "we" is mostly composed of triathletes, who are wonderful, athletic people and often not completely barking mad, and I've found this approach to produce quite good results and only a modicum of whining.

As for Kogan, their site seems anxious that I should know someone bought an SD card a minute ago in some antipodean town I've never heard of. I can't think why.

Oh, and someone else just bought a camera battery. It's interesting to see this sort of thing pop up, to be sure, but why would anyone bother? Does it help conversion rate? Mainly it just seems like an annoying distraction from the blog post I'm trying to read.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#137

Post by nirvdrum »

crisnoble wrote: post #55
micampe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do that with a car from 1972. The comparison doesn't hold though.

You likely have been upgrading and maintaining your car. Users with IE7 who expect the world to freeze with their hardware are like car owners who do not change their oil yet would be amiss when their car stops functioning after 10 years.

I don't think anyone running IE 7 honestly believes that. But the promise of the Web was you got to avoid minimum hardware requirements and things worked everywhere. HTML and CSS were supposed to be backwards-compatible by degrading gracefully. This point has been lost. There's really very little point in having an open standard if the only way to run anything is to update your browser every 6 weeks.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#139

Post by ideonexus »

csmithuk wrote: post #123
mjolk wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These are now no longer supported by the vendors with no upgrade path so people are stuck with IE7 whilst applications are rewritten or disposed of...I know a company that has taken 4 years to rewrite an ERP system away from this model. The compatibility flag deals with some rendering issues but it doesn't change the script engine or the ActiveX hosting situation. The company should light a fire under the ass of the…

In the spirit of maintaining my argument... The company should light a fire under the ass of their vendor or development department if they're being forced to live with some very serious security risks. The vendor doesn't exist any more. This is a realistic problem. They had source escrow which results in them hiring a development team to port it. This has taken 4 years, including retraining all 5000 users and portin…

This. This. This. Thank you for explaining the reality of the situation.

I've worked with lots of different companies over the last 20 years with lots of legacy intranet systems that are too large, complex, and customized to make upgrading them anything less than a multi-million dollar multi-year endeavor, and yet there's always someone who says, "Just rewrite the thing in [favorite framework]!"

I've seen some programmers actually try to do the rewrites themselves. They code for a week or two, discover just how much business logic has been written into the thing over the last 20 years, and abandon it to start looking for employment elsewhere.

Re: IE7 users, we need to talk…

#140

Post by bradleyland »

ideonexus wrote: post #139
csmithuk wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the spirit of maintaining my argument... The company should light a fire under the ass of their vendor or development department if they're being forced to live with some very serious security risks. The vendor doesn't exist any more. This is a realistic problem. They had source escrow which results in them hiring a development team to port it. This has taken 4 years, including retraining all 5000 users and portin…

This. This. This. Thank you for explaining the reality of the situation. I've worked with lots of different companies over the last 20 years with lots of legacy intranet systems that are too large, complex, and customized to make upgrading them anything less than a multi-million dollar multi-year endeavor, and yet there's always someone who says, "Just rewrite the thing in [favorite framework]!" I've seen some progra…

> Thank you for explaining the reality of the situation.

I love it when people use this phrase. The "reality of the situation". Yes, this is how things are, and they will continue to be that way until we change them.

There is a world of difference between "refuse to support IE7" and "let's rewrite everything in [favorite framework]." Our startup is squarely in the enterprise space, and we don't support IE7. Our app will literally display a "you shall not pass" modal if you try to log in with IE7. Our client list includes a lot of local governments (cities large and small, counties, GPOs, etc), and we still manage to get by just fine without supporting IE7.

I think you'd be amazed at how small of a market you're giving up by telling everyone you simply cannot support IE7. When you just accept "reality", you never bother to push the issue, and you never make progress.

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