
IE7 users, we need to talk… - trothamel
http://www.nursingjobs.us/blog/ie7-users-we-need-to-talk/
======
taspeotis
> We are offering to buy a new computer with a modern browser for any of our
> customers who are stuck with IE7

Great PR, since practically no-one is going to take them up on the offer. If
you're on IE7 you're probably on it because MegaCorp's Intranet Application
'02 Enterprise Edition doesn't work on anything else. Meaning the new computer
will break their LOB application.

It's also possible it won't cost them any money in the long run, if their
definition of "customer" is limited to the people posting jobs [1].

[1]
[http://www.nursingjobs.us/employers/pricing/](http://www.nursingjobs.us/employers/pricing/)

~~~
valarauca1
The other option is they are elderly or just don't care. They have that
E-Machines Pentium 3 future proof 256MB of RAM Windows98 computer and they'll
use it until they die, because shouldn't everything that costs over $1,000
dollars last for 20-30 years?

~~~
crisnoble
Yes, just like your car will last you 20 years. If you drive a car from 1994
you don't expect to be able to drive 90 mph or offroad without running into
major issues. Should cities keep their infrastructure backwards compatible for
people with old cars?

~~~
hackmiester
It's apples and oranges. In 1994 people went over 80mph all the time, and they
still do. If you maintain a car well, it will continue to be able to do that.
By contrast, though... a PC perfectly maintained from 1994 until now would be
hopeless in today's infrastructure.

~~~
crisnoble
> a PC perfectly maintained from 1994 until now would be hopeless in today's
> infrastructure.

Not if they upgraded both their hardware and software along the way. Even
without upgrades, their computer might function just fine, but they should not
expect to browse websites created with technologies that were not yet dreamed
of when their computer was born.

People expect to make phone calls on their 5 year old phones, but it would be
unreasonable for them to complain that they cannot download the latest version
of snapchat on it. People with old browsers and hardware can expect old
websites and software to work for them. It is unreasonable for developers to
be required to create new websites that work for outdated and insecure
browsers.

~~~
eropple
_> Not if they upgraded both their hardware and software along the way._

The "upgrades" necessary would be a new computer in all but case, so unless
your name is Theseus, you've got a new computer.

~~~
spellboots
> Theseus

Or Trigger...

[http://www.frequency.com/video/only-fools-horses-truth-
behin...](http://www.frequency.com/video/only-fools-horses-truth-behind-
triggers/70490197/-/Vidoosh)

------
pilif
_> IE7 users make up 1.22% of our traffic right now, and this will decline as
more computers are upgraded and can use modern browsers._

No computer exists that is able to run IE7 but not IE8. And because IE7 came
out way past the "optimized for IE" age, I doubt there is software around that
requires 7 and doesn't work with 8.

This is in contrast to 6 which is what IE was stuck in for years, so software
began depending on that.

If you could upgrade from 6 to 7, then you can upgrade from 7 to 8. Even more
so considering that IE8 has an IE7 compatibility mode built in that can be
enabled without having to touch the site itself (by setting the HTTP header in
the server).

The same is true for local software embedding the IE control, but there you
need to set some registry flag to do it.

There is no excuse for sticking with 7 and 8 is so much better to develop for.
It's 2014. I would stop caring about 7. People still using 7 are used to sites
not quite looking right anyways (as the majority of sites stopped caring) and
in all likelyhood, they might not even notice the odd rendering glitch.

~~~
csmithuk
Actually no, you are completely wrong. It might be a popular opinion but it's
wrong.

Some facts:

1\. Firstly, there are a couple of COM APIs that were broken with IE8 which
mean that some horrible "intranet applications" that use ActiveX won't work
with IE8 properly. They worked fine with IE6 and IE7. These are now no longer
supported by the vendors with no upgrade path so people are stuck with IE7
whilst applications are rewritten or disposed of. This can take years. In fact
I know a company that has taken 4 years to rewrite an ERP system away from
this model. The compatibility flag deals with some rendering issues but it
doesn't change the script engine or the ActiveX hosting situation.

2\. No they can't install another browser side by side and just keep that for
legacy. Chrome has a poor privacy and configuration support. The GPO side of
it really is crappy. Firefox ESR is impossible to configure using GPO. Not
only that users don't want to browser-juggle. Most of them don't actually give
a shit about any of this as long as it works.

3\. Also, IE7 was released in 2006. I personally maintain software that was
written in 1988. People are very quick to hang software, particularly the non-
engineering background trendy startup pushing culture. IE7 isn't going away
until April 11, 2017.

To be fair, I'm recommending people away from the web and the cloud for
business critical applications these days. The churn, culture and attitude (as
your post outlines so readily) is very negative and a realistic 10 year cycle
isn't possible any more. People need stuff to work undisturbed for years for
their investment to be recouped.

~~~
mjolk
>These are now no longer supported by the vendors with no upgrade path so
people are stuck with IE7 whilst applications are rewritten or disposed of...I
know a company that has taken 4 years to rewrite an ERP system away from this
model. The compatibility flag deals with some rendering issues but it doesn't
change the script engine or the ActiveX hosting situation.

The company should light a fire under the ass of their vendor or development
department if they're being forced to live with some very serious security
risks.

>I personally maintain software that was written in 1988.

Why are you supporting software that is a quarter of a century old? If it has
undergone significant rewrites to work on those new-fangled color monitors,
then you understand why things need to be upgraded.

>People are very quick to hang software, particularly the non-engineering
background trendy startup pushing culture. IE7 isn't going away until April
11, 2017.

What is "non-engineering background trendy startup pushing culture" supposed
to mean? While HN has a charlatan element, you can't legitimately think that
the startup culture here isn't dominated by engineers.

>I'm recommending people away from the web and the cloud for business critical
applications these days.

Do you also scream "la la la" while the tips of your fingers are lodged in
your ears whenever in architecture meetings? A web browser is an ideal
consumer (ubiquitous, cross-platform, cheap) of a large number of business
applications and high availability demands writing software that's internet-
aware (that feels so strange to even have to type).

>The churn, culture and attitude (as your post outlines so readily) is very
negative and a realistic 10 year cycle isn't possible any more.

It sounds like your perception of the industry is antiquated. A 10 year cycle
without maintenance to keep the codebase secure/running on modern
hardware/platforms?

~~~
csmithuk
In the spirit of maintaining my argument...

 _The company should light a fire under the ass of their vendor or development
department if they 're being forced to live with some very serious security
risks._

The vendor doesn't exist any more. This is a realistic problem. They had
source escrow which results in them hiring a development team to port it. This
has taken 4 years, including retraining all 5000 users and porting data. This
isn't some shitty TODO list app or an Intranet - it's a full ERP with over 2
million lines of code and 500Gb of raw non-binary data. And yes this is still
cheaper to run than SAP/Oracle.

 _Why are you supporting software that is a quarter of a century old? If it
has undergone significant rewrites to work on those new-fangled color
monitors, then you understand why things need to be upgraded._

Because the 30 year _paid for and guaranteed support lifecycle_ isn't over
yet. Not only that, it's tied to the specific hardware platform which is an
embedded 80286. It doesn't have a monitor attached - it has a 40x8 text LCD
screen and an RS232 port. New requirements and bugs do appear.

 _What is "non-engineering background trendy startup pushing culture" supposed
to mean? While HN has a charlatan element, you can't legitimately think that
the startup culture here isn't dominated by engineers._

I use the phrase engineer loosely with respect to software as it has in the
last decade or so come to mean a different thing. It's gone from _individual
who carefully plans and creates something with meticulous attention to detail
and extensive knowledge of requirements_ to _individual who makes something
with little thought_. Note: this isn't every case but it changes the meaning
of the word, much as you can say "I love you" too much...

 _Do you also scream "la la la" while the tips of your fingers are lodged in
your ears whenever in architecture meetings? A web browser is an ideal
consumer (ubiquitous, cross-platform, cheap) of a large number of business
applications and high availability demands writing software that's internet-
aware (that feels so strange to even have to type)._

Yes, it's actually my job to ensure that due diligence is done and put good
engineering standards and technology in place. La la la doesn't cut it but I
have to think ahead 20 years in some cases and make a call. If something
doesn't make sense in that timescale, then it gets discarded. Your personal
opinion isn't necessarily that of a risk assessment.

 _It sounds like your perception of the industry is antiquated. A 10 year
cycle without maintenance to keep the codebase secure /running on modern
hardware/platforms?_

Industry? There are two industries at the moment. The one in the technology
press and everywhere else. I firmly circulate in the latter. There is not a
noisy presence but a large and realistic one that makes critical cogs turn
behind the scenes. Whether or not this is "antiquated" or not is purely
conjecture.

~~~
ideonexus
This. This. This. Thank you for explaining the reality of the situation.

I've worked with lots of different companies over the last 20 years with lots
of legacy intranet systems that are too large, complex, and customized to make
upgrading them anything less than a multi-million dollar multi-year endeavor,
and yet there's always someone who says, "Just rewrite the thing in [favorite
framework]!"

I've seen some programmers actually try to do the rewrites themselves. They
code for a week or two, discover just how much business logic has been written
into the thing over the last 20 years, and abandon it to start looking for
employment elsewhere.

~~~
nulagrithom
I can't tell which point you're arguing. Sounds like you're losing good
employees.

The 'reality of the situation' is that you're no longer retaining any young
talent in your company, because you're stuck writing COBOL. The Frankenstein-
of-an intranet program you've stitched together is now too big and too complex
to work with; only the guys who built it in the first place have the guts to
stick their fingers in the code.

Sometime around 5 to 10 years ago, you stopped building software and started
slapping a bunch of dirty hacks together to get things to 'just work'. The
technical debt is insurmountable, and it's only getting worse. The software is
20 years old. What will happen in the next 10 years? Maybe then the company
will be able to afford a rewrite...

Except now the technical debt has crept in to the workflow of your users.
People are doing things that computers should be doing. Every process involves
some hacky workaround to get your ancient system to play nice. You're printing
on dot-matrix printers and scanning it back in. Other companies don't know how
to hand you data. CSV files over FTP transfer? Maybe we can just email you the
files every week so your mail server can gobble it up and hand it to your
ancient application? Other companies are scaling. Your bottom line is hurting.

Now we're 30 years in, and the guys who built it in the first place are
looking to retire. There's nobody you can 'pass the torch' because none of the
new employees over the last decade have lasted more than two years; they all
went on to play with silly 'kid' languages like 'Ruby' and that funny 'Cloud'
fad. You'll have to find someone with talent, years of experience in your
antique system, and yet isn't thinking about retirement within the next
decade. Time to post a job opening for a COBOL ninja-rockstar!

------
NamTaf
Related: Kogan (an electronics vendor here in AU) has an IE7 tax on all of
their products to pay for the upkeep required to develop supporting IE7. This
follows the succesful implementation of an IE6 tax some years ago.

[http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-
explorer-7-tax/](http://www.kogan.com/au/blog/new-internet-explorer-7-tax/)

~~~
aaronem
It's an interesting idea, I suppose, if a bit smug; I've always found it
sufficient just to pop up a note saying something along the lines of "Look,
I'm sure you have a good reason for using IE 7, and I'm not going to tell you
that you shouldn't. But it's no longer reasonably possible to test in that
version of the browser, and I therefore can't warrant everything on this site
will work properly in it; I don't particularly expect problems, but you should
know they might happen, and if they do, there's not a lot of help I can offer
beyond suggesting you instead use a newer version of IE, or an alternate
browser like Firefox, Safari, or Chrome, all of which I _have_ tested and
_can_ warrant." We're all adults here, after all, even when "we" is mostly
composed of triathletes, who are wonderful, athletic people and often not
completely barking mad, and I've found this approach to produce quite good
results and only a modicum of whining.

As for Kogan, their site seems anxious that I should know someone bought an SD
card a minute ago in some antipodean town I've never heard of. I can't think
why.

Oh, and someone else just bought a camera battery. It's interesting to see
this sort of thing pop up, to be sure, but why would anyone bother? Does it
help conversion rate? Mainly it just seems like an annoying distraction from
the blog post I'm trying to read.

~~~
NamTaf
I've no idea; I've never actually purchased any Kogan product. It nevertheless
made news when they released the tax and they repeated the process so I guess
it worked out for them?

(The lesson here is that many people will probably just blindly pay whatever
the final cost is without checking the itemised receipt and why it costs what
it does)

------
ddw
I work for a fairly large org. Once I finished an internal app and sent out an
email for some folks to check it out.

I soon received an email that the website was not working for someone. The
screenshot showed that the browser they were using was Lotus Notes.

They were clicking on the link in their email and it was opening it in Lotus
freaking Notes.

"Uh, no, we don't support that."

~~~
madaxe_again
Yeah, we've got a client who still uses IE for Mac, and refuses to consider
using Safari, or anything else, as his feeling is that the internet should
conform to him and his browser, not the other way around.

------
simonsquiff
We also make software for healthcare customers, and asked the same question
re: IE7 support internally. Sadly our stats show that IE7 usage for our
clients is at 59%! Down from a peak at 81% but still crazily high. We're
hoping the April no support for XP deadline will change things but sadly IE7
is far from dead in UK healthcare.

------
protocow
Well done. But many IE7 and IE8 users aren't by choice. They are employees at
large companies with no ability to upgrade their corporate computers.

~~~
SDGT
One might ask why they're looking for nursing jobs at work then.

~~~
skywhopper
Probably because they're at a job so crappy that their employer forces them to
use IE7.

~~~
DannyBee
"Screw you nerds, i'm going to change bedpans for the elderly"

------
microcolonel
Just to clear up your confusion guys.

Their clients are, as far as I can tell, the hospitals posting the jobs. Other
users are mostly accessing the site on home computers, where they can almost
certainly install some other browser which isn't as broken.

While in general a hospital may not have computers for this, their hiring
manager is likely to be able to take an extra machine onto the network.

------
scrabble
Supporting IE7 is the worst part of my day job. I end up building new modules
in Firefox, making sure they look the same in Chrome, then testing IE7.

Then I have to fix all the stuff broken in IE7 and ensure it still looks good
on the modern browsers.

My ultimate goal though is for it to be presentable in IE7 with a top notch
experience in anything newer, makes it a little easier.

~~~
knassy
> My ultimate goal though is for it to be presentable in IE7 with a top notch
> experience in anything newer, makes it a little easier.

I think that's the exact right attitude.

I work in an environment that supports back to IE7 and I really get a kick out
of creating robust solutions that work in crappy or older browsers.

Admittedly I work with web sites, or simple applications, rather than full on
web applications, but I find starting with sensible HTML/CSS/JS and using
progressive enhancement usually gets me 95% of the way there.

------
chris_wot
"Wayne Gretzky once said “skate where the puck is going, not where it’s been”"

No, no he did not. Steve Jobs said that Wayne Gretzky said "skate where the
puck is going, not where it's been". However, I'm sure one day Wayne Gretzky
will quote Steve Jobs saying that he once said that you must skate to where
the puck is going, not where it's been. That day will be quite awesome.

On that note, what happens when the puck goes past its original position, as
inevitably happens in a game of hockey? What does Wayne Gretzky do then?
Ignore it?

~~~
mendelk
'[Wayne Gretzky's father] Walter taught Wayne, Keith, Brent, Glen and their
friends hockey on a rink he made in the back yard of the family home,
nicknamed the "Wally Coliseum". Drills included skating around Javex bleach
bottles and tin cans, and flipping pucks over scattered hockey sticks to be
able to pick up the puck again in full flight. Additionally, Walter gave the
advice to "skate where the puck's going, not where it's been"'[0]

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Gretzky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Gretzky)

------
chrismorgan
Cannot _all_ IE7 users upgrade to IE8?

~~~
ajpos
I work for a F500 and we cannot upgrade to 8. We have antiquated web platforms
that don't work without it. It sucks. A lot.

~~~
josteink
I really don't get this mentality, at all.

Shouldn't at some point the cost of _all websites in the world_ being broken
on your corporate machines be a bigger problem than having to do some work on
some antiquated LOB app you've considered rewriting anyway the last 5 years?

Do these weirdo F500 still demand railroads to operate steam-trains for them,
since that was the last thing they read about last time they received a
telegram?

In what world do these people live where perpetually staying in the past is
not a problem?

~~~
al2o3cr
"Shouldn't at some point the cost of all websites in the world being broken on
your corporate machines be a bigger problem"

Apparently some IT orgs regard "everything but internal sites being broken" as
a FEATURE. Keeps the proles off of Facebook, or something.

------
dougmccune
I've often received bug report screenshots or sat in watching a customer
screenshare using our product in IE6 on literally a 800 x 600 screen. Each
time it makes me cry inside and I debate just ordering them a new computer.
That said, as others have pointed out here, almost nobody these days running
IE 6/7/8 is doing so of their own free will, and any computer you send them
can't be used for work.

------
craigching
So you upgrade their computers and ... they're stuck with IE8! :p

In all seriousness, I think it's better and more cost effective to have them
switch to a better browser (FF, Chrome and even IE11). There are a lot of Win7
companies that _still_ insist on IE8 as their browser of choice and that costs
a lot to support as well, speaking from experience.

~~~
Zancarius
I think the point is more for PR purposes and public awareness than it is to
actually buy people new computers. If it is, it's a rather good tactic. It
gets your attention, doesn't it? ;)

~~~
craigching
> I think the point is more for PR purposes

Oh, believe me, I get that ... ;)

------
deevus
I did a job recently where a legacy site needed to be upgraded to support
mobile and tablets. After all the work was done I was informed that the site
didn't work in ie6 (the default browser on their work machines) [1]

Luckily firefox was installed on their machines as well.

There was no way I was going back to fix it for ie6 on the budget I was
allocated.

[1]: This constraint was never mentioned in initial talks. Fortunately it
wasn't a massive deal in the end.

~~~
DrStalker
I've found asking up front what level of IE6 support was needed and then
listing it as a separate line item in a quote is a good way to get out of
supporting it, or at least move from "must be pixel perfect!" to "the main
functionality has to work"

------
crisnoble
I applaud them for moving the web a small step forward. Every minute saved by
not worrying about IE7 is a minute that you can spend creating features for
standards compliant browsers. As more sites drop support for older versions of
IE, more employees will pressure their IT departments for updated browsers.

Maybe one day we will see nothing but evergreen browsers in the logs...

------
cnp
I'm surprised you didn't just go with IE9 as the cutoff? Why?

~~~
ForHackernews
Windows XP only runs IE8.

~~~
sfeng
and Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera.

~~~
daigoba66
Chrome is only supported for another year.

~~~
vxNsr
XP support ends in April, with extended security support ending in 2015, but
you already knew that.

------
nlp
Ok, so I download IE7, sign up on the site, get a new computer, and then go
back to using Firefox.

~~~
kristopolous
I think it would be better to find an existing user and execute the scheme - a
registration date of "yesterday" and a post count of "1" probably wouldn't
qualify you.

It reminds me of the MSFT settlement in the early 2000's where you could get a
(I think) $100 check from Redmond. It was somehow "transferable" and a few of
my friends bought people's right to redeem the check by doing things like
giving out gift certificates or handing out free ice cream. (IANAL so excuse
me if I didn't use the proper lingo there)

IIRC, I think they made in the tens of thousands.

------
baldajan
Brings up an interesting point: cost of buying every customer with IE 7 a new
computer < cost of adapting to IE 7 - assuming it's true after all.

Personally, I wouldn't have done an offer like that, as I would see no point
in it (other than PR); but then again, I take a ruthless approach to upgrades

------
_piyush
I hope it does not turn out to be opposite of what they intended : people
starting to use IE7 just to get a new computer. It is called the Cobra Effect
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect))

------
jonaldomo
I work for a large EMR provider. You would be sick by the IE7 traffic at large
hospital systems. Think 20%+. The reason is hospitals spend millions of a
dollar for one solution. The solution is usually monolithic and takes years to
implement.

------
ta_tatata
This is a viral marketing scheme to get some free advertising.

Seeing this kind of viral marketing advertising on hacker news frontpage is
sad, this one is not even clever, it's mostly throwing a pile of money towards
microsoft.

------
throw7
If we as software engineers really cared, a page like that would never exist.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I disagree. Engineering is all about choosing tradeoffs. Freeways aren't built
with a slow lane to support horse and buggy users, because that would be an
irresponsible use of resources. For most sites, supporting IE7 would be a
complete waste of money.

------
ck2
1.22% of your users are bots with an old user-agent

------
kordless
Working in infrastructure, this is much less of a worry for your users. We ran
the metrics on it.

------
waitingkuo
Is it possible to hold a foundation to help people upgrade from ie7?

------
sdaityari
There are people (read professors) here who use IE 6 btw.

------
rjuyal
Now, where can I buy old PC with IE7. ;)

------
Angostura
Ponders:

So I can sign up now, to receive my free PC?

------
arsemouflon
Where can I download IE7?

~~~
Scottopherson
[https://github.com/xdissent/ievms](https://github.com/xdissent/ievms)

------
mosiac
And you think this is the right place to find them :P

------
ocfx
How is buying potentially thousands of computers for people cheaper than
gracefully degrading features from a bootstrap site?

~~~
ta_tatata
You got it all wrong, it supposed to be "how offering to buy computers for 1%
of our customers is cheaper and more advertising than actually buying an ads
campaign ?"

~~~
ocfx
My bad :(

------
be5invis
Beware Chinese.

They may browse your website using IE7 ON PURPOSE to get a new computer.

~~~
andybak
Yes and they are really likely to also have expensive subscriptions to a US
magazine for nursing HR departments.

Idiot.

------
soup10
1.22% of your users is probably like 1 person lol. Gj gaming hacker news to
reach the many nurses that visit here.

~~~
jameshart
You're right, nursing jobs sites must be so niche they hardly get any traffic.
The healthcare industry in the US is tiny, I mean, it's only, what, 16% of the
entire US economy? I mean the total expenditure on hospital care in the entire
country is only $380 billion or so a year, and employs only about 2.6 million
nurses. That's just 1.8% of the US working population. And it's not like
nursing is disproportionately dominated by short term contracts, or the
provider market that employs them massively fragmented meaning that almost
every six to twelve months a career nurse will be jobhunting... yes, 87 nurses
looking for jobs, 1 of whom is using IE7, sounds like a perfectly reasonable
estimate for the amount of traffic this site with a page 1 google ranking for
a search for "nursing jobs" probably gets.

~~~
pikachu_is_cool
> this site with a page 1 google ranking for a search for "nursing jobs"

INCORRECT! The #1 ranked page is in fact nursingjobs.org. The website in the
OP is ranked #7.

Edit: I'm an idiot.

------
kfk
What about IE8-9-10? I mean, I don't care, but my website frontpage still
looks wrong in IE10 and I didn't do anything fancy. The overlay doesn't work
in IE<10\. I mean, IE is a mess in general. I wouldn’t buy a PC to all that
use this terrible piece of crap, but at least we can rant about it, no? I
mean, they should have said: OK, we take the pain to STILL support this shitty
IE, but please stop using IE7 we will buy you a PC if you do.

~~~
iopq
Anything before IE11 is not by any definition a modern browser.

