Neowin.net

right guys.... If you are still using IE6 or 7. please update your web browser to IE8

A lot of corporations have web applications that were written ONLY for Internet explorer 6 (and to some extent 7). Major platfoms such as SAP have interfaces that don't work AT ALL in browsers other than Internet Explorer 6, which basically means that they're trapped. Where I work had some very dubious "developers" working prior to my teams arrival, and most of the code is so badly written that it REQUIRES IE6 (two wrongs make a right in this case) in order to function.

Its all well and good saying "upgrade to IE8", but for some people (big companies in particular), their systems can be so badly broken that the upgrade from IE6 to IE8 can be as costly as shifting from Windows to GNU/Linux (for example).

Hold on a sec. Just because something only works in IE 6 doesn't necessarily mean it's poorly written. Maybe it is. But at the time, IE 6 was the most standards compliant browser you could get. It's not that unreasonable for a business with a functional LOB app to expect it to continue functioning going forward. The main problem is that IE 6 and XP at this point are so out of date and were written for a time when security requirements and expectations were very different.

So while I'll agree it's time for these companies to make an investment in updating their tools, it's not hard to understand why they wouldn't want to replace something that's generally working.

There's nothing in the W3C recommendation for HTML 4.0 that states "well written apps are allowed to work only in Internet Explorer 6", in fact it states the opposite.

Regardless, I'm personally talking about applications written as recently as 2008 that REQUIRE IE6. We're talking about web developers that knew their specialty so poorly that they didn't even use DOCTYPE tags to identify the markup (instant quirks mode right there, DOCTYPE tags are standard practice, even for IE6), and as a result, have written apps that work in IE6, but nothing else.

This is the case in many places. The Web is still so young (counting from the boom of '97), that demand for web-centric developers until recently outnumbered the number of available trained developers, and as a result the industry ended up with a glut of "self-taught" web developers that didn't know what the W3C was, and HTML was a bunch of angle-bracketed letters that formed a table (or dozens of nested tables) to display content. As a result we have ended up with "The Broken Intranet".

Its not entirely IE's fault, but the resulting fallout from its broken box model, its proprietary CSS/JavaScript functionality, and its former dominance in the market will cost companies in the near future dearly, and ensure that IE6 and Windows 2000/XP remain in active use until well into the next decade.

I'm pretty sure Mozilla would disagree with you. And probably Opera as well?

do they allow terminals running SAP to access the internets?

Huh? Mozilla? You mean Netscape??

Actually he has a point. When IE6 was released in 2001, it was the most standards compliant browser available. Its just unfortunate that it was the only browser to not receive an update in... oh, say six years.

You are so very right :

Internet Explorer 8�s famous XSS filter can be exploited to perform successful XSS attacks against web sites which would be otherwise safe. In other words, XSS �protection� is helping XSS attackers, oh the irony

http://hackademix.net/2009/11/21/ies-xss-f...vulnerabilities

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/20/in...r_security_flaw

Its true since IE *IS* the de-facto standard.

Then why don't Firefox plugins work in Safari/Konqueror?
Double standards?

We're talking about web-based applications (i.e. websites), not plugins, extensions and so on :).

yes they do. and I'll add one more point to it, so companies dont have an SAP problem, they have a problem with various accounting software that also handle payments and credit cards that is in the same situation. So you can expect more stolen credit card stories because they are using machines with IE6 that access the internet (via IE6) to run your credit cards.

Sounds like their web apps are crap then.

Doesn't mean they can just leave them, Saburac. They should've started the process of moving to something different years ago, but that doesn't mean they have.

Sounds like you know nothing about the IT Corporate world. Symantec's own Altiris solution isnt supported in IE8, even their recent v7. Microsoft OWA 2007 has issues with IE8, the list could go on. From an IT System Administrator point of view until major suppliers who build apps into IE start supporting IE8 we cant upgrade, no matter how much web site developers bitch. Its frustrating

At first some of our websites were incompatible, *cough* Wachovia.com *cough*, but we went about it as "install IE8, ask questions later". We're willing to install any patches MS brings for IE, since many times vulnerabilities equate downtime.

Altiris, agreed. However OWA 2007 works perfectly well on IE8 thank you.