
Microsoft to ditch support for IE6 in Office Web Apps - trezor
http://blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/archive/2009/08/05/9858563.aspx
======
zhyder
This is the bigger than Youtube, YC-mafia, etc. trying to put the nail in the
IE6 coffin. IE6 is big in enterprises, and Microsoft has incredibly strong
relationships with them. Plus office.com would actually be seen as an
important productivity app to support, unlike apps like Youtube.

On a different note, I think their strategy of using Silverlight to enhance
the experience, and degrading gracefully to cross-platform/browser HTML+CSS+JS
when it's not available is brilliant.

~~~
sho
_"I think their strategy of using Silverlight [..] is brilliant."_

Brilliantly evil, perhaps. All these stupid problems moving off IE6 have been
because of people using, then relying on, proprietary, non-standard additions
to the browser. It seems like a good idea at the time; a few years later it's
an albatross around your neck.

So here we are, a few years later - lesson learnt? Hardly. The "solution" to
losing IE6's proprietary, non-standard additions to the browser is to use
another proprietary, non-standard addition to the browser. Wonderful. In 6
years time they'll be going through the whole process again - _finally we can
dump silverlight!_. Perfect for MS, of course, they couldn't care less as long
as you're still using Windows.

Anyway, luckily consumer web developers did learn the lesson, which is why
Silverlight will never achieve any real penetration in the consumer market.

~~~
trezor
Silverlight has an open implementation which Microsoft has assisted with. I'm
not sure how far behind the official releases it lags, but it has an open
implementation.

For some things, using RIA frameworks eases development massively and lets you
do stuff which would take ages to do in plain HTML/JS. Google themselves said
Google Wave took around 2 _years_ to make. Do you think it would have taken
that much time using non-HTML technology?

I'm not saying sticking to plain HTML/JS isn't admirable, but sometimes it's
just not very practical.

Also in this case it isn't _required_ , so your potential scenario about being
"stuck" with it doesn't really apply.in any meaningful way. In fact they have
done just as you said, but given people the _option_ to use a plugin to make
things better. It degrades by default, which is helluva lot better than most
sites out there.

I don't see you cursing Flash in the same way as you do Silverlight in. What
makes Adobe Flash any better?

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rbanffy
I think this is their final attempt to make their corporate users ditch
Windows 2000...

------
rbanffy
It was about time they felt the pain it is to support IE6...

~~~
trezor
You mean like with SQL Server Reporting Service, Outlook Web Access,
Sharepoint Portal Services, MSN, Hotmail, Live.com and numerous other web-
based software and services they have?

I'm pretty sure internally the MS developers have been cursing IE6 for a long
time, and that they have finally gotten the approval for ditching support.

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rbanffy
Seriously: any CTO/CIO who makes his organization use Microsoft web stuff, be
it Sharepoint or Outlook Web Access or ASP.NET, it doesn't matter, should be
fired and be registered on a worldwide "IT offender registry" so we can look
up the name and not hire them ever again.

~~~
hamidp
I am working for a company that uses Microsoft stuff exclusively and it's not
half bad. Sometimes I may have to fire up IE to open a page or two.

~~~
youngian
My college insisted on paying for Outlook Web Access for all student email. It
was more than half bad. I still get the shivers just thinking about it.

~~~
likpok
I've used OWA, and it isn't that bad. It's not nearly as nice as Outlook, but
as a web client it is not that bad.

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chrischen
Everyone should ditch IE6 support. Screw those who don't know how to install
software. Heck, just give IE6 users a blank page with no explanation. let them
suffer for their ignorance. No wait even better, redirect IE6 users to porn
sites and claim it's a bug in IE6.

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scrame
From comments in this thread:

Hyperbole:

>>Everyone should ditch IE6 support. Screw those who don't know how to install
software. Heck, just give IE6 users a blank page with no explanation. let them
suffer for their ignorance. No wait even better, redirect IE6 users to porn
sites and claim it's a bug in IE6.

Sorry, dude. Computer science and modern technology would not exist if the
attitude was: "screw those who dont know how to use this, lets just offend
them instead!". Music does that subversively, and predictably perfectly;
people living as pop culture personas do not; neither have an important place
in the advancement of either the study, or the application of computer
science.

Honestly:

* Would pac-man be a hit if it had a button with instructions? If it kept the money of people who did not know how to use the button?

* Can all of your relatives "do the google" even though its not HTML 4.0 strict?

And another:

>> Seriously: any CTO/CIO who makes his organization use Microsoft web stuff,
be it Sharepoint or Outlook Web Access or ASP.NET, it doesn't matter, should
be fired and be registered on a worldwide "IT offender registry" so we can
look up the name and not hire them ever again.

Right.

Lets rephrase that: Seriously: any _X_ who _Y_ , be it _A_ or _B_ [or [ _..._
]], it doesn't matter, should be fired and be registered on a worldwide
$REGISTRY so we can look up the name and not hire them ever again.

Corporations employ a lot more people than just IT and tech savvy types. The
phrase I hear from BA's and Executives is: "No one ever got fired for choosing
Microsoft."

Hypothetical question: Do you think Warren Buffet gives a fuck if every
flunkie in his rank uses a macpro, or if his personal site runs django on
postgres with memcached?

Most large companies currently using windows are much older than the
commonplace web, and most companies large enough for IT budgets and CTO/CIO
positions are not anywhere near 100% web technology based. If cutting-edge
software technology is not _integral_ to the company, then anyone in charge of
a budget will choose being able to hire someone for a job versus having to
train a new hire to use their proprietary, or unsupported software. Computers
are complex things, and any piece of software that isnt preloaded and only
consists of a single button people do not have to push will require
_training_. The benefit to everyone in the management chain who can approve of
someone who can perform a higher level task using excel will be given excel
because anything else will be getting in the way of what they are being _paid_
_to _do_.

Switching to Macs for every employee of a large company is prohibitively
expensive, and would still require microsofts office suite to be fully
compatible with exchange or any interoperability of _anyone above them_ in the
management hierarchy.

Linux is simply not ready.

Like it or not, Microsoft develops, sells, and supports _the_ standard for
business applications. PM's, analysts and executives _do not care_ what
license a piece of software is, because they do not know, or want to know,
what a kernel, package, dependency, distro, or anything else is. They want to
do their job, and having to learn something that is not 100% interoperable
with what everyone else has wastes their time checking compatibility, like
webdevs time is wasted checking for ie6 compatibility.

The fact that people are trained to use microsoft means that any non-microsoft
software will require an overhead of training for otherwise capable people,
who will also be reliant on continuing support not only for an unfamiliar
piece of software, but for an unfamiliar operating system.

This may be a benefit to small startups, focused on using a particular piece
of technology, and getting people who are either familiar or willing to learn
new things, but for every one of them, there are literally _millions_ of
people who want to go to work on time, do what they already know how to do,
and go _home_.

A lot of capable software engineers are like that, too.

In the end, PM's need to write press releases and status updates with lists
and broad stats in word and email them reliably to the appropriate people and
lists; the analysts want to import data into excel and use the excel macros
they learned at business school to make the numbers as impressive as they can
so they can make charts with lots of arrows pointing up; and the executives
want to be able to paste those emails into their regular powerpoint deck with
the list of popular buzz-adverbs so they can show them throughout the chain-
of-all-hands to the technical grunts so they can mumble about what a travesty
it is that a modern IT department would have the gall to use windows.

(disclaimer: debian, fluxbox, rxvt, zsh, emacs, JAPH, FF, strt.up&&CORPORATE;
exp., devils advocate)

(p.s.currently posting from Notepad with Chrome on a Vista laptop. I also had
to spend an hour sitting through the 9 mandatory shutdown updates because I
wanted to restart because the computer was running so freaking slow coming out
of hibernation)

(edit: formatting)

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TweedHeads
Oh the irony!

They've been using IE6 as the anchor that doesn't let the web sail away and
now they drop it like a dead weight to the bottom of the ocean just to push
their agenda forward and get an early advantage over office suites online.

But you know what? we've been rowing the oars without their help pushing that
heavy anchor with us as we move forward.

~~~
likpok
I don't think that Microsoft likes IE6 any more than you do. They're just
obligated to support it by their customers.

~~~
eli
Agreed. They set IE8 to be a _critical_ update to Windows. They really want
you to upgrade.

