I applaud everyone who participates in this for having the gumption to add some inertia to the situation. It's ok to give the plebs some incentive to user better, safer technologies. And furthermore, three cheers for the realization that small, progressive companies can use consumer impact to positively change the greater technological environment and accelerate the pace of widespread adoption. Booya!
YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
21–30 of 114 posts
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#22from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…
I am currently working at one of the largest beverage corporations of the world, and not only they continue to use IE6 but also they methodically inspect every Windows OS update, even if its a security patch, it can be months until they decide to update the network with such patches and updates.
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#23from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…
I'm currently an intern at a large biotech company which employs over 25,000 people world-wide and all the machines come with IE6.
I'm an intern at their headquarters in a section of the IT department that doesn't deal with maintaining the software on the computers. However, there was one larger meeting where I remember someone asking about upgrading IE, and the response was something like, "Uhh, I've been pretty busy, I'll get around to it eventually." Everyone just laughed and I could tell it was a kind of ongoing joke. I think the general attitude is that no one here really cares enough to go through the work of upgrading everyone. I don't think they get many complaints, and their job isn't in jeopardy, so they just sit on it until something or someone really big makes them act.
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#24from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…
IE6 is still very prevalent in the American school system (don't know about elsewhere). We used to sell a web product to schools and you wouldn't believe the number of districts using IE6 for "compatibility" with their network software or because they don't consider upgrading a priority.
One of my co-founders has been a public school teacher for the last 20 years or so. She says that the school system's primary function is to give America's least competent individuals a way to stay in the middle class.
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#25from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…
The problem is internal legacy applications that only work in IE6. If they upgrade browsers the apps break, so in order to support these apps they keep IE 6. The question for them is 'do we spend time and money to update all of our applications to upgrade a browser, or just leave things the way they are for now?'
Same reply here as below:
"Sorry, that's not an excuse. IE 8 comes with a "compatibility mode" feature where any site can choose to use the IE 6 rendering engine by setting headers or meta tags appropriately."
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#26I've heard that IE6 is prevalent within the federal government.
I'm guessing most of the remaining IE6 installs are inside corporations and government departments and are necessary to run legacy internal web applications.
Again, same reply:
"That's not an excuse. IE 8 comes with a "compatibility mode" feature where any site can choose to use the IE 6 rendering engine by setting headers or meta tags appropriately."
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#27from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…
I'm currently an intern at a large biotech company which employs over 25,000 people world-wide and all the machines come with IE6. I'm an intern at their headquarters in a section of the IT department that doesn't deal with maintaining the software on the computers. However, there was one larger meeting where I remember someone asking about upgrading IE, and the response was something like, "Uhh, I've been pretty bus…
That's what we figure -- the more complaints coming through the door, the more pressure will be put on the IT department to upgrade.
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're people who work in firms that have intranet applications that were written specifically for IE6. Its cheaper to keep the browser than update some very badly written software.
Sorry, that's not an excuse. IE 8 comes with a "compatibility mode" feature where any site can choose to use the IE 6 rendering engine by setting headers or meta tags appropriately.
That was an excuse until fairly recently. IE8 is pretty new to the scene, and hopefully this feature will allow corporations to upgrade.
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#29Unfortunately, there are a huge number of corporate environments that have virtually no reason to upgrade their browsing platforms. Many of these environments don't even really have a technical reason to not do the upgrade, they are just administered by overworked staff and upgrading IE6 to something newer and safer is just at the bottom of the list.
The bottom line is that until the end users who have to use IE6 every day become inconvenienced enough (in the form of sites blocking them out, not warning them) or the people who pay these IT admins actually think it's a priority, we're not going to make much headway on this issue.
With that said, I think that initiatives like this are a great start. What I would like to see is a distributed technical effort to encourage upgrades, which is what they are doing, followed up a technical effort to block access to IE6 starting on a specific date. Let the note of encouragement that participants place on their sites let users know that unless their browser is upgraded, they will be unable to access the site as of June 1, 2010.
Eventually these IT admins will be placed in the position of having to choose between keeping IE6 to support their legacy intranet applications and upgrading IE6 because third party sites have started to implement functionality that IE6 doesn't support.
Re: YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
#30from the comments: You do realize that a large portion of people that are using IE6 are at work where they have NO control over the browser... i hear this every time the ie6 argument comes up, and yet, i've never heard from someone that actually works in one of these IT departments that can vouch for this. who are these unsympathetic robots who, while ironically working in an IT department, are so out of touch with t…
At my day job we have some (unpatched?) Windows 2000 machine (no service packs) running IE 5.5 (I think?). I carry around a flash drive with a Portable Firefox (among other apps) install on it for browsing at work.
They're 2.0 gHz P4 Dell machines if you're really interested in the specs. :p