

Google Apps dropping support for older browsers - spaetzel
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OfficialGoogleDocsBlog/~3/LdHoDNsR0n8/our-plans-to-support-modern-browsers.html

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buster
Sad to see they don't even mention Opera. I don't use it, but it should run
google apps without problems.

Also i know very big companies that still use IE6, sadly. For those people
stuck without admin access and ancient browsers: Give Firefox Portable a try,
it saved my day last week ;)

Apart from that, go google go! I like this move and more websites should just
do this..

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Pewpewarrows
Didn't the Google team also make Chrome now usable/installable without Admin
rights?

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keeperofdakeys
That was Chrome Frame, the Internet Explorer plugin that enables chrome
rendering in IE.

~~~
phn
Chrome itself can be installed without admin rights, I remember using that on
a University pc to view a flash video with the embedded plugin.

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camwest
We deal with a large enterprise that uses old versions of IE and whenever our
support team encounters one we just upgrade them to Chrome. Sadly we can't
recommend any other browser since they all require admin access for some
reason.

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ysangkok
You can get Firefox and Opera in portable versions that don't require admin
rights.

~~~
peregrinari
This works if USB devices haven't been locked down by some kind of IT policy.

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zvm
While portable apps are promoted for and usually installed on USB drives, they
can also be installed on local disks as well, and they don't require admin
privileges to do so (from my experience).

~~~
peregrinari
I was not aware of that. Thanks! I guess the portable aspect is not quite
perfect for their description though?

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brudgers
Dropping support for older browsers shows why Google Apps will continue to
struggle against Microsoft products for government contracts such as was the
case recently in San Francisco. Large organizations get locked into legacy
OS's for many reasons - example government agencies who bought and rely on
geospatial data in Autodesk Mapguide format.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapguide>

[http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&...](http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=9454886&linkID=9242099)

And yes that is a plug-in for Netscape that is still available!

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guelo
Luckily Google has decided that the entire rest of the world doesn't have to
wait for every bureaucracy to upgrade their antiquated systems in order to
make progress.

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46Bit
This is damned good. _If_ organisations continue transitioning, hopefully
it'll up the pressure to keep updating browser versions and internal
resources.

~~~
mparr4
Yes, this strikes me as an important step toward the beginning of the end of
having to design for archaic browsers. The ball just needs a nudge and it'll
get rolling, the momentum of it just-being-the-way-it-ought-to-be behind it.

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smackfu
Interesting. These aren't really what most people would consider older
browsers.

It looks like two years is their support cutoff, based on when FF 3.5 came
out.

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tomjen3
The linked article says that it is the two last major releases.

Why that does not mean FF 4 and 3, I don't get.

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wonderyak
3.6 is considered a major release.

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pilom
You know sometimes it really annoys me that I work somewhere that only
supports IE7. Good thing that jobs thread came up today.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Count yourself lucky. Amongst our enterprise-level customers, IE6 (yes, 6, you
read that right) is still the _majority_ of page hits.

~~~
T-hawk
It might be worth mentioning how IE 6 is still there. IE 6 is the only version
that ever came with Windows XP and 2003 install images, which many many corps
still use. And remember that the average lifetime of a Windows installation on
a corporate desktop is actually pretty short, getting wiped and re-imaged
frequently as people leave or machines are moved around or some Outlook error
pops up and the IT guy re-images because that's faster than digging in to fix
it. So IE 6 comes out of the reinstallation casket all the time.

It's not that corps are scared of upgrading, it's just not worthwhile from a
cost-benefit standpoint to download and install IE 8 on every single machine
on every reinstall. Their users that want IE 8 or Firefox will go get it; the
users that don't know what a browser version is never know that they're
missing anything. IE 6 will only go away when Windows XP does.

FWIW, I intentionally keep IE 6 on my work machine (not a big corp, but we
sell to them) for testing, and use Opera for real browsing.

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eneveu
> FWIW, I intentionally keep IE 6 on my work machine (not a big corp, but we
> sell to them) for testing

Why not use Microsoft's ie VPC images?
[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=...](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef)

 _"In order to help web designers and web developers test their websites in
older versions of Internet Explorer, we've provided the following VHD with
Windows set up with the specified version of Internet Explorer. The images are
patched with the latest security updates and are otherwise clean installs of
the operating system with very few modifications."_

Also works with VirtualBox on linux / mac:
[http://shapeshed.com/journal/testing_with_ie6_ie7_and_ie8_on...](http://shapeshed.com/journal/testing_with_ie6_ie7_and_ie8_on_virtualbox/)

You do not even need a Windows license:

 _"Note: You may be required to activate the OS as the product key has been
deactivated. This is the expected behavior. The VHDs will not pass genuine
validation. Immediately after you start the Windows 7 or Windows Vista images
they will request to be activated. You can cancel the request and it will
login to the desktop. You can activate up to two “rearms” (type slmgr –rearm
at the command prompt) which will extend the trial for another 30 days each
time OR simply shutdown the VPC image and discard the changes you’ve made from
undo disks to reset the image back to its initial state. By doing either of
these methods, you can technically have a base image which never expires
although you will never be able to permanently save any changes on these
images for longer than 90 days."_

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colinprince
_the current and prior major release of Chrome..._

Ouch! that means Chrome versions[0] older than March 2011 won't be supported?

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Release_history>

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smackfu
For Chrome, Google is basically saying "we push updates, you better take them
or you can use some other browser".

~~~
kenjackson
I had ranted about Chromebooks not being a good deal pricewise (which I still
claim). But a friend of mine, who heads IT for a large enterprise, noted the
issue wasn't up-front acquisition cost. But that Google seems to want to run
IT in the cloud and locally. He wasn't willing to take updates to browsers on
Google's schedule unless Google was willing to own making all of their LoB
apps work too.

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peterbraden
Very glad to see them dropping the older browsers. Hopefully more web
companies will follow giving legacy companies impetus to upgrade.

Narrowing their list of modern browsers so tightly is a little worrying
though, any standards supporting browser (opera?) should be considered,
otherwise they could be enforcing a cartel of current browsers.

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zmmmmm
Well if Microsoft feels threatened by Google Apps, they know what to do:
release IE10 quick smart and watch the entire corporate and government world
suddenly not be potential customers of Google any more as Google drops support
for IE8 (and hence Windows XP).

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niels_olson
Why are big enterprises so resistant to change browsers?

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tomgallard
Often they have a number of in-house intranet applications that rely on IE6
quirks. So there is a large cost associated with testing and upgrading their
legacy applications.

This is definitely the case in a large number of the major UK banks.

As someone building software used by these places- it is frustrating to have
to support IE6, but there is a lot of opportunity here, because a lot of
developers/companies can't be bothered to make their products IE6 compatible.

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dfischer
This is great.

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amritayannayak
wohoo :)

