On 15 June 2012 01:30, Daniel Friesen <[email protected]> wrote:
> I do have to mention something on this whole topic. All these arguments seem
> to focus on saying that that IE6/7 should be supported because enterprises
> are dependent on out of date software and can't update.
> This line of thought completely ignores the fact that upgrading isn't even
> the only option... the possibilities of simply installing a second browser
> for web browsing and only opening IE for internal systems (pretend the page
> sitting in IE is an app and use shortcuts) or installing chrome frame.
> Given that fact arguments that enterprises "can't and should be enabled"
> rather than "just wont and should be ignored" feels rather flimsy.

I hate to perpetuate this topic, but your assumption that adding a
browser to a corporate estate will be trivial (or, at least, less work
than just upgrading IE from 6 to, say, 8) is not always correct.

One UK Government organisation where I used to work was quoted an
outline figure of ~ US$300m to upgrade IE6 to IE7 (almost all of which
was re-certification to UK National Security standards). The figure
for Firefox - which doesn't have baseline accreditation, unlike IE -
was ~US$500m, and would only be good until the next *.*.1+ release of
Firefox, unlike IE where the patches are signed-off. Sure, these costs
are partially inflated by their poor contracts, but full security
audits against thousands of bespoke (and badly-written VB-based
archaic) apps is insanely expensive.

Are these organisations screwed mostly as a result of their own
short-sightedness in building systems that weren't
standards-compatabile? Yes. Should we trivialise the difficulties into
which they've steered themselves? No.

Yours,
-- 
James D. Forrester
[email protected]
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

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