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Thread: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

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    News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    Ancient browser to remain despite petition.
    Read more.

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    Of course we'll have this conversation in 4 years time. If the government hasn't moved to proper standards compliant intra/extranet by now they definitely wont while they're trying to combat Gordy's legacy.
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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    The pathetic whining about it's going to take ages doesn't justify why the upgrades aren't being done.
    IE 8 can be deployed via SCCM overnight to all machines and next morning, everyone's on new IE. I can't see what the problem is ?

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    mmh
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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    Quote Originally Posted by OilSheikh View Post
    The pathetic whining about it's going to take ages doesn't justify why the upgrades aren't being done.
    IE 8 can be deployed via SCCM overnight to all machines and next morning, everyone's on new IE. I can't see what the problem is ?
    unfortunately alot of the software that the public secotr uses, is via the intranet, or web based systems, and alot of these were written for ie6, along with the bugs and glitches that IE6 contains... so upgrading them to modern browsers makes these software packages obsolete and they'd have to invest lots of money to patch, or re-write the software.

    so this is where the expense comes in
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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    I work for a large international chemical company, we havent shifted from IE6 yet either.

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    Quote Originally Posted by mmh View Post
    unfortunately alot of the software that the public secotr uses, is via the intranet, or web based systems, and alot of these were written for ie6, along with the bugs and glitches that IE6 contains... so upgrading them to modern browsers makes these software packages obsolete and they'd have to invest lots of money to patch, or re-write the software.

    so this is where the expense comes in
    You're correct - that's the usual excuse trotted out. Of course, a cynic would argue that (a) they were a stupid bunch for allowing IE6 only extensions anyway, and (b) that they would need to upgrade anyway at some point, so where's the harm in doing it before they absolutely have to?

    But I guess that HMG aren't the only folks to do this. Are there any web developers out there in Hexus-land (I'm in 'platforms' not 'applications') who'd care to comment how difficult de-IE6-ing really is? (I'm curious) Aren't there any tools available to assist?

    BTW, weren't FR and DE governments not only saying "no IE6" but also saying that they preferred something other than IE?

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    I really hate the Number 10 petitions stuff. They always follow the same pattern:

    1) Start a petition
    2) Wait a year to get massive number of signatures
    3A) If not enough signatures, petition ignored
    3B) If sufficient signatures, civil servant replies with message reading as follows
    4A) We are already doing something tangentially related to the issue, which we will now explain in pointless detail
    4B) We can't/won't do anything about this, so there.

    They might as well replace it with a page with size 72 font that says "Sod off"

    A recent one was where a lot of football fans signed a petition asking for the government to prevent businessmen ripping the heart and soul out of the sport, and they replied after a year to say that it was none of their business, and we should be looking at the FA instead. I think most of the people who signed it realised that - they wanted you to make it your business, you imbeciles.

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    I can't actually comment on how easy it would be to de-IE6ify applications that were designed specifically for it (since I always went the way of designing for standards-compliance first and then patching for IE6 afterwards ) but I'd say it could be a huge task depending on how "badly" the application was written (i.e. how much IE6-specific code it had in).

    But the problem isn't necessarily the complexity of rewriting the application. My experience from working in both local government and the NHS is that a lot of these apps will have been written either by externally contracted developers whom the departments (or NHS trusts, or whatever public body) have since lost contact with, or by internal development teams - usually no more than 2 or 3 people - who have since left or been disbanded. Essentially that means that the apps have been running unmaintained for years, and no-one really knows how they work, how to change them, or who to contact to update them. A lot of these apps become mission-critical, so they can't afford any downtime or disruption that such changes might cause, and generally neither the IT departments nor the departments using the apps have the resources to do proper regression testing - so no-one even knows how much of an impact using a new version of IE will make. As a result there are only really two options available most of the time: completely replace the (originally very expensive, flagship) applications (at even more expense), or do absolutely nothing that would risk disturbing the status quo.

    Not really difficult to guess which the government would rather do...


    EDIT: Should also say - it would've taken very little time and very little money for all those apps to have been written for cross-browser compliance in the first place, and then we wouldn't be in this mess...

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't included an "IE6 mode" inside a secure sandbox as an alternative for these big companies and government departments. Would be a great way for them to ensure people continue to buy into their products.

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    I think IE6 was so bad they didn't dare IE8 has an IE7 rendering mode which is very handy for testing backwards compatibility, but (afaik) IE7 was such a rewrite compared to IE6 that I think it would've been very hard to enable an IE6 mode and keep it stable and "secure"...

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    In the part of the public section I work we have made it to 7, but I still want firefox.

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    You might want to read their response again. The question posed initially was to upgrade away from IE to Firefox an alternative browser. They said they categorically would not be doing that, but they would be upgrading their current browsers to the latest supported version. In other words, they won't change browser, but they are (slowly) upgrading to IE version 8.

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    Remember plenty of people went through that phase of making ActiveX enabled web pages!

    They where a very quick way of letting a VBA dev provide data and functionality to a web page with little technical knowledge.
    throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    Quote Originally Posted by crossy View Post
    BTW, weren't FR and DE governments not only saying "no IE6" but also saying that they preferred something other than IE?
    France was recommending Firefox over IE for security. And has one of the largest government deployments of Ubuntu desktops in the world.

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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post
    I think most of the people who signed it realised that - they wanted you to make it your business, you imbeciles.
    Ahh the old "someone's doing something I don't like, the government should do something"
    I bet these same imbeciles that started the petition also moaned about the nanny state
    If they don't like it and have large enough numbers they could fix this themselves. If fans get together and all buy shares in their favourite football clubs then they get to have an input in how they are run. Option B would be to take the huge money out of the sport. Cancel that sky subscription and use the money saved to buy up shares.
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    Re: News - Government refuses to upgrade from IE6

    My company has just started upgrading to ie8 and as we use a configuration script to run IE and the settings havent been transfered so none of the upgraded mahines have any internet access until IT comes around to sort them out.

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