I took those observations to mean not that the "intranets" themselves rely on IE6 but that they are using web apps that don't behave properly in the new browsers.
Or perhaps more accurately that they behave "properly" in the new browsers where "proper" is defined by the W3C, whereas "proper" used to be defined by the specification of the web app itself and the behaviour elicited in the browser by the HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Once upon a time, that "old" software for which there is no excuse to be using it used to be the cutting edge that people scoffed at you if you /weren't/ using it and were using what was *then* considered the "old" software. And I think you missed the point when observing that new browsers are "free". The problem isn't the cost of upgrading the browsers. The problem is that once you have upgraded all your clients to the new browser, your *apps* stop working, so you have to upgrade those apps and the chances are that will incur direct and indirect costs not to mention disruption and "downtime" to some extent. Even for the browser upgrades, I suspect there is still a cost because not all *users* are competent to upgrade themselves - we who live and breath IT tend to forget that many people are confused by (and can royally screw up) what we take for granted. Plus, in this day and age, it's pretty certain that users won't be able to just upgrade their browser software without central IT/admin support, something that those concerned with "security" questions would surely characterise as "a good thing". After all, we can't have everyone just able to willy nilly install/upgrade software on their workstations... Those who live by the sword etc... ;) -----Original Message----- From: delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-boun...@delphi.org.nz] On Behalf Of John Bird Sent: Tuesday, 7 June 2011 13:43 To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List Subject: Re: [DUG] FW: Web development I am mystified why any government organisations would be stuck on IE6 given its the best door for any hacker wanting to intrude into a system. Its how Google was penetrated 18 months ago - hackers found workstations that had to use IE6 for historical reasons (reasons that were not all that good) I was astonished about 3 years ago to see an unnamed government department workstation using a pre-release version of Firefox, ie it was so old it was basically the old Netscape - with diagonal arrow buttons and all, probably something like v0.5 and from probably 2003. Surely any government IT department should not be relying on such old unpatched software if even to cover their own backsides when the inevitable problem occurs - its not a budget issue if free secure browsers abound. If they have to use IE6 for intranets, do they prevent IE6 from accessing the outside internet? And why can they not use later browsers for Intranets? John _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe _______________________________________________ NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi mailing list Post: delphi@delphi.org.nz Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/delphi Unsubscribe: send an email to delphi-requ...@delphi.org.nz with Subject: unsubscribe
