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The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

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Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#81

Post by mmahemoff »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #65
nihilocrat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the most common reaction to users accidentally causing errors in data: lock everything down and only allow a very specific operation, and complain loudly and specifically (i.e., incomprehensibly) if they get out of line, in order to protect the data. Did someone find a new way to screw up? Add another restriction. I sometimes wonder why these interfaces are so freaking common for anything not facing…

>I sometimes wonder why these interfaces are so freaking common for anything not facing the general public. It's simple, the choice is to either use it or find a new job. Quitting is not easy or practical to many people. Even the general public faces such choices with atrocious bank, DMV, govt sites etc. written 10 years ago in with CGI or ASP. (and a COBOL backend).

Yep and sites like this get the back button treatment if they're public sites, but you don't know about it until you start working there when it's intranet crud.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#82

Post by mmahemoff »

samd wrote: post #57

Does anyone else get the feeling that the entire automotive industry could be disrupted by a company that focused on design, usability, and modern technology in their car interiors? It seems to me you could replace just about every car's dashboard with an iPad and already be light-years ahead of the industry standard. In fact the problem seems to get worse as you add more technology and money; if Top Gear is any indi…

Seems like a lot of industries are like this. They're too focused on things people don't care about, and haven't woken up to the fact that consumers now have much stronger voices when it comes to poor UX. With increased transparency and faster feedback loops comes a greater emphasis on features people actually care about.

Banking is another example, hence BankSimple. A decent web UI/experience will get them more brand loyalty than a TV ad with ponies. This logic applies across all traditional industry verticals.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#83

Post by zalew »

samd wrote: post #57

Does anyone else get the feeling that the entire automotive industry could be disrupted by a company that focused on design, usability, and modern technology in their car interiors? It seems to me you could replace just about every car's dashboard with an iPad and already be light-years ahead of the industry standard. In fact the problem seems to get worse as you add more technology and money; if Top Gear is any indi…

when today's cars were designed, ipad didn't even exist. it's a very long process where economy is crucial, there is no place where somebody will jump in in the last moment and "hey, have you heard of tablets? let's put it there!", it's technically and economically impossible.

even if somebody today put your beloved ipad in a concept, you would still laugh it off in 7 years when/if it got into production.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#84

Post by ams6110 »

samd wrote: post #57

Does anyone else get the feeling that the entire automotive industry could be disrupted by a company that focused on design, usability, and modern technology in their car interiors? It seems to me you could replace just about every car's dashboard with an iPad and already be light-years ahead of the industry standard. In fact the problem seems to get worse as you add more technology and money; if Top Gear is any indi…

Controls and instruments in a car are meant to be used while driving. They should be fairly standard, non-distracting, and not require a lot of thought. Analog gauges do this well. Controls should be simple to operate and always do the same thing so you can use them without taking a large fraction of your attention off your primary task: driving. Once you learn where the knobs and switches are you should be able to operate them without looking or with maybe a quick glance. Many of the newer multifunction touch screen controls violate this. I rented a Ford Flex last year and every time I needed to adjust the climate controls I would nearly run off the road because it was impossible to do it by feel, in fact you needed to watch the screen carefully and navigate through several UI buttons to effect a change in temperature.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#85

Post by OllieJones »

antimora wrote: post #10

For some reason the corporate world is still stuck with IE6. Just recently we were dealing with a large corporation that was still using IE6 throughout the company and our web app had to support this browser.

Health care, too. There's an Active X Control, made by GE, used for displaying X-ray imagery, that's bug for bug compatible with IE6. It's expensive and risky for hospital IT departments to upgrade all that stuff.

An open source HTML5 replacement for that application would be interesting and a huge boost to new health care web apps. But it would be hard to convince risk-averse hospital IT people to use it.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#86

Post by tsotha »

5hoom wrote: post #11
freedompeace wrote: post #6

For a well-designed website, I must say, I'm a bit worried. > The cooperation takes place by our Group Business Platform using current security standards and ciphering methods. A secure data interchange has high priority! Because that's all there is to security. > All data is transferred with a 128 Bit SSL coding and are even secured by your log in on our Group Business Platform. This ciphering method is used in all…

You forgot this bit in the technical requirements: -PC or MAC with internet connection -Web Browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 is recommended) So... they mean a (pretty old) PC with internet connection then?

It's a good thing they require an internet connection. Because otherwise, you know... chaos.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#87

Post by tsotha »

mkopinsky wrote: post #76
cnvogel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in a ~50000 employee company that shall remain nameless I can give you another datapoint from "big companies" out there: We only got IE8 (on WinXP, Win7 will not launch for another year or two) this year. And before that it was whatever IE version ships with WinXP. The alternative we can use is a Firefox that has not been updated since its rollout in 2009. And of course you are not allowed to use other than c…

Here's what I don't get. (Maybe someone here can help answer this.) My company, with 18,000 employees, recently decided to upgrade workstations from IE6 to IE7. It wasn't entirely seamless - employees still had to double-click a desktop icon to kick off the upgrade. What I don't understand is why they upgraded to IE7. Once you're going through the friction of doing an upgrade at all, why not go all the way? Is the re…

I can't say what happened at your company, but at mine (which is a bit bigger), the IT people started "qualifying" IE7 when it came out. It took them until after IE8 was released to get all the various internal groups working and tested on IE7. The testing part was really the big piece, so they couldn't just jump to IE8 when it was released because it would have meant months or years redoing the testing cycle.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#88

Post by brc »

samd wrote: post #57

Does anyone else get the feeling that the entire automotive industry could be disrupted by a company that focused on design, usability, and modern technology in their car interiors? It seems to me you could replace just about every car's dashboard with an iPad and already be light-years ahead of the industry standard. In fact the problem seems to get worse as you add more technology and money; if Top Gear is any indi…

Top level Mercedes don't have a traditional 'dash panel'. The entire area is just one large LCD display. This generally is used to display speed/engine revs/temp etc, but can also be switched for infra-red imaging, reversing camera, navigation overlays and other things. It also can be themed with the rest of the car, so you can choose a blue, red, yellow, etc theme for your interior.

BMW have had HUD for several years, which overlay speed and turn-by-tun navigation, which are very usable.

You can expect this type of thing in entry and mid level cars within the next 5-10 years, as the current model cycles pan out. Top Gear love to make fun of these features, and indeed some are silly. But the vast majority work well and have a lot of thought behind them. The version 1.0 of all this stuff is already 10 years old.

Early experiments into touch-screen everything have proven to not be popular with the car-buying public. Through experimentation, designers have found that, for important functions (ventilation, radio, etc) a physical button in a known location outperforms a touch screen interface every time. In my case, this is because you can memorize the location and feel of a button and can push it reliably without taking your eyes off the road. You can push it in the dark at night time, and you get tactile feedback.

Touchscreen systems are already here, but will always bury less-used functions like options and navigation, which is designed to be used while stationary, while the more common functions will remain as dedicated push buttons.

Outside of the tech-geek world, function, function and function is prized much more than interesting neat features. Take a test drive with the average car buyer and you'll find that a simple, familiar and well-designed user interface will trump a tech-fest every time. While there is a lot of technical interest in 'carputers' the general public won't ever really warm to them. The big sales winners are in things like self-parking and parking cameras/sensors, accident avoidance and other passive safety systems.

Re: The Volkswagen Group is using IE6 as standard for displaying web pages

#89

Post by samd »

brc wrote: post #88
samd wrote: post #57

Does anyone else get the feeling that the entire automotive industry could be disrupted by a company that focused on design, usability, and modern technology in their car interiors? It seems to me you could replace just about every car's dashboard with an iPad and already be light-years ahead of the industry standard. In fact the problem seems to get worse as you add more technology and money; if Top Gear is any indi…

Top level Mercedes don't have a traditional 'dash panel'. The entire area is just one large LCD display. This generally is used to display speed/engine revs/temp etc, but can also be switched for infra-red imaging, reversing camera, navigation overlays and other things. It also can be themed with the rest of the car, so you can choose a blue, red, yellow, etc theme for your interior. BMW have had HUD for several year…

So touch screen only controls aren't the way to go. But it may not be necessary to reinvent the basic controls of the car. Making a better climate control system isn't going to win hearts and minds. But what would be very interesting is a web-connected car with an API and a touch-screen device with an open app ecosystem.
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