
IE8 will be distributed via automatic updates for IE6/IE7 - vaksel
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/04/10/prepare-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie8.aspx
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dschoon
This doesn't solve everything, as many commenters have already pointed out.
There are going to be legacy app-holdouts. There are going to be upgrade
skeptics who stay with "what works". There are going to be lazy people, dumb
people, and all manner of launch bugs which scare people off.

So let's say that's 50%--A HUGE PERCENTAGE--of IE6+IE7 users. That means 50%
less IE6 and IE7. Like we just said: FIFTY PERCENT IS HUGE.

I'm more than happy to lump IE8 in with the Gecko and KHTML browsers as being
"good enough" from a developer's perspective. This nudges the web in the right
direction, and the specter of NO auto-update was the big pisser on this
parade.

I think this is a giant step in the right direction. Let's imagine that IE8
keeps on the good path, with more updates rolled out in the next year. Maybe
it pulls close to parity in standards sometime. Auto-update makes all this
meaningful.

I'm thrilled. The world's not gonna be perfect overnight. At least now we have
a reason to hope it'll get close someday.

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jsdalton
A few people in this thread (and elsewhere when the topic of IE6 comes up)
bring up the problem of applications that are dependent on IE6 as a reason why
many business users cannot upgrade.

I'm curious, does anyone have any actual experience with such applications? Do
you use them yourself? Do you work for a company that uses them? Did you
develop them? Are you aware of any statistics that cite how prevalent these
applications are?

I'm beginning to wonder whether these IE6-dependent applications are
widespread in reality, or whether they server more as a rhetorical rejoinder
anytime someone brings up the idea of forcing people to upgrade.

It certainly feels more and more to me like progress on web applications is
being highjacked by an extremely small minority of enterprise IT departments.

~~~
symbiotic
The company I work for uses IE 7 standards for rendering within our
application. A lot of things would break if the people using our software
upgraded to IE 8.

Our HTML markup is so ugly :(

~~~
treyp
Actually, there's one simple meta tag ("X-UA-Compatible") you can add to the
head of your pages that will make IE8 use the IE7-compatible rendering engine:

[http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-
explorer/readiness...](http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-
explorer/readiness/developers-new.aspx#dom)

IE7 obviously isn't perfect (or even good), but it's also nowhere near as bad
as IE6 in terms of supporting standards.

~~~
joechung
You can also add the HTTP header to the response for these pages so you don't
even have to touch the markup, just a configuration file on the Web server.

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krschultz
Generally I am against sneaky upgrades such as Apple's iTunes update that
installed Safari, but IE8's standards compliance (though not perfect) is so
much better than IE6 that this is a great move for the web as a whole.

~~~
likpok
Especially because the "upgrade" asks nicely. So instead of silently getting
IE8, you get asked "Do you want IE8".

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martythemaniak
They could have just called it a security patch and made it automatically
install for IE6 users ;)

~~~
ibsulon
There are too many places that standardized their web apps on IE6 bugs to do
that.

~~~
windsurfer
_sigh_

Oh Microsoft.

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makecheck
Isn't it really better at this point to spend the effort identifying and
directly assisting _developers_ whose apps are totally IE-dependent? Marketing
to users will probably only cause them to break apps that they may really need
to do their jobs (and make them hate their IT staff more).

The big players who stand to gain significantly from removing IE6 (which at
this point include Microsoft itself), should be doing everything they can to
encourage _developers_ to move on, and leaving users alone. Heck, even if
Microsoft offered _free_ classes or donated development resources to help de-
cruftify IE6-only apps, at this point it would be well worth their investment.

~~~
johns
I doubt it's developers making the decisions. They need to reach managers of
IT departments who look at their IE6-only apps that work fine and would cost
time and money to upgrade to support IE7/8 with no perceivable benefit.

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nostrademons
I had two reactions to this:

1.) "Yes! Maybe now I won't have to support IE6."

2.) "Fuck. That means I better fix the IE8 bugs in my software ASAP."

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mlLK
This is somewhat of a shocker. . .all of a sudden this solution will refactor
two browsers out of compliance that I've been designing for, well. . ,I guess
how ever old IE6 is while factoring in a browser that I have never designed
for let alone used yet.

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grinich
Making it an autoupdate seems like a last-ditch effort by Microsoft to keep
people from going to Firefox when they finally need to update, rather than a
gift to web developers.

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riobard
This is going to suck: those corporate IT departments will set Microsoft on
fire if they push the automatic upgrade to IE8 really hard ...

~~~
johns
Which they're not doing. Any IT department reliant on IE6 has already blocked
one upgrade and the same tools are available to them this time around as well.
Did you read the article?

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tomjen
>Organizations that wish to block the distribution of IE8 should have their
blocking in place by the week of April 20th.

Fulfilling Hitlers old plan to take over the universe?

~~~
windsurfer
Stop downvoting this guy so much. This guy tried to make a joke and failed,
but should it really cost him that much karma?

~~~
windsurfer
If you disagree, at least tell me why.

