The Death of Internet Explorer 6

The most popular internet browser out there is obviously Internet Explorer.

This is because it ships with Microsoft Windows.

Now I hear, that Google is looking to discontinue its support for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). This concerns me, simply because I am a great supporter of Google and have used them for my search needs for as long as I can recall.

I’d hate them to lose even more market share to rivals.

I have worked at large companies, of which I obviously am not going to name at this moment in time.

Concerns

Deployment

If we take the last corporate company, we can estimate that the building I was in housed somewhere between 400-800 staff at any given point in time.

This would be staff working on a rotation system, so let’s take the day as being split over 3 shifts and the 800 staff maximum this means that there needs to be a minimum of 267 (rounded, don’t post) computers.

I have installed Internet Explorer 7, and recently installed Internet Explorer 8. In my experience it took 25 minutes to install per machine. These were manual installs, rather than using Group Policy.

I have done installs using client deployment through Group Policy, and know it also takes about the same time.

This puts us at 373 minutes (rounded, down). A pure 6.23 hours.

That’s a large portion of a shift, taken up in doing this update. Yes, we can do groups of deployments.

I would estimate they would do 20 machines in blocks so there would be 14 groups. The last of course, having less than 20 in it.

This now has one building up-to-date. There are maybe 50 other buildings of equal size across the company, and even the globe.

Compatibility

We had an important system we used for diagnosing faults in systems, that was written and designed for IE6. We knew it did not run in IE7 and I left long before the release of IE8.

This was one of the key systems that I used, and so I would assume that across the company there is several other systems.

Costs

As we already have seen, the time taken to upgrade would be vast. The cost would also increase massively, as the staff would be unable to work during the upgrade. The company I worked at was available 24/7, so there was no scheduled downtime.

The bespoke systems, would need to be altered which would no doubt cost massively.

Pro

Security

When people talk of IE6, they talk of the insecurity of the system. I agree on the main part, IE6 is a proven insecure browser and the consumer (you) should upgrade now. It’s out of support life cycle now and Microsoft are not releasing patches (I know they have released an update recently).

As of January 10, 2009, security advisory site Secunia reports 142 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6, 22 of which are unpatched, some of which are rated moderately critical in severity.

Compatibility

We all love this whole Web 2.0 thing. The simple fact, we have to code websites and plugins to work in IE6 is killing developers.

IE6 does not support CSS 2, so we must resort to CSS hacks, conditional comments or even browser sniffing just to try and get our websites to work.

IE6 lacks support for alpha transparency in PNG images, instead removing all transparency and displaying the image with a gray background unless the proprietary AlphaImageLoader filter is used.

Features

I must admit, on this one I am somewhat lacking. I have not used Internet Explorer much over the last few years so I’m not 100% on what it can do.

I do however know  that IE6, lacks one key feature. A feature I cannot live without, tabs.

Conclusion

The internet is a lot different today, than it was back in 2001. It will be a lot different in another 9 years.

Let’s try and keep things up-to-date, shall we?

Consumers, you have no reason not to upgrade. If you choose not to upgrade, then don’t blame anyone else it’s your choice.

Corporates, look at getting yourselves together. This isn’t going away, and you are better dealing with it soon before it becomes a problem.

Recent Discussion

This is a transcript of a conversation I recently held with @MarkOfRespect on Twitter, regarding the upgrade of IE6.

@MarkOfRespect:

"Google  dropping support for IE6 has made me so happy, along with the security  issue this may be the final nail in the coffin."

@PartTimeLegend:

"Unfortunately it won't be. Many big companies  still use IE6 and it would cost millions to upgrade, and check  compatibility."

@MarkOfRespect

"I  am aware of that man, other software is updated eg word  so I don't see  that this is impossible or as costly?"

@PartTimeLegend

"Many  companies use web based systems, a lot are designed for IE6. Many don't  work in anything else.
It  was too costly, to even consider the upgrade. The PCs are locked down,  so only approved apps would run. Malware != Problem
I  used to work at a large UK company, our friend Rich, knows. There we  used a diagnostic tool, that only worked in IE6"

@MarkOfRespect

"upsets me, alot. Though I also know what it takes  to update a system. Not like system evolution is not part of management"

@PartTimeLegend

"System  evolution is a key part of the management structure. So is cost  management, sometimes (read: always) cost wins."

@MarkOfRespect

"true, I do beleive that this is still the start of  the end. Standards in place to ensure upgrade would be sustainable now."

@PartTimeLegend

"I'd love to see everyone keep everything up to date. If only from a  security perspective. I've done this too long, to know it won't happen"

@MarkOfRespect

"fair play man. I am an optimistic pragmatist  "

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