Why is IE6 still a corporate favorite in some organizations?

Question

... or

How can I convince my organization to ditch IE6?

Having to maintain IE6 compatibility when developing web apps is a nightmare - but until my client decides to ditch it as the official browser, I am stuck with it. I am trying to convince our SysAdmins to change. I've seen a long list of arguments against using IE6 in any environment and I am trying to anticipate their arguments rebuttals. So far, the only perceived advantages I can see in IE6 are:

1. Central management through group policies
2. Legacy application compatibility

Both of these are addressed by IE7+ (AFAIK).

Are there any advantages that IE6 has that are not already addressed by IE7+ ?

Answer 1

Unless they find any strong business case or advantage I dont think company will agree to spend time on upgrading. What is the use? Also IE6 is little faster than the new versions and business users (who dont care about the version as long as it does the job) may complain.

If you are a developer then you have the reason to have all/latest browsers installed.

I thought mine was the only one to use IE6 ;-)

Answer 2

IE6 has been around for ages, and the vast majority of websites & web applications work correctly with it.

In order to change to a different browser (which btw will probably be ie7), you need to first of all, do a cost benefit analysis to justify this decision to everyone's bosses.

A really high level summary: Cost:

• Test all web apps.
• Check all third party websites actually work in the new browser.
• Check all other software, to see if there are any underlying issues with moving to a new browser.

Benefits:

• Multi tabs?

Honestly, I can't see this happening, unless a corporation is doing a desktop refresh which happen periodically.

Answer 3

The switch from IE6 is a painful one, because they would have to apply it to every single computer in the company. Depending on the number of exployees, that becomes a logistical nightmare.

Also, they will commonly use whatever browser comes with the default install of the OS they use for new computers.

Changing default programs introduces unknown risk, and the benefit of switching must outweigh that risk. Currently the hassle of attempting to upgrade every single computer probably outweighs the convenience of having a better browser, especially when most of the users will not take advantage of any of the new features.

Answer 4

I wouldn't exactly call it a "favourite" among any organisations. In my mind, it's simply that large companies consider it a big effort to upgrade everyone to IE7 (or in fact IE8 now that it's recently been released). It's a benefit versus cost decision that many executives seem to think has the simple answer that it just doesn't matter to the business. This may even be the truth in many cases if there's no system set up for automatically upgrading the (possibly vast number of) computers on the network. Many people (including myself) would argue having even a moderately decent browser (i.e. IE7 onwards, Firefox, or Safari) is would be a worthwhile thing for any business. The fact that IE8 has just been released, which now makes IE6 outdated by two versions is certainly going to encourage companies to start upgrading. The problem here is that as long as there's a significant market share for IE6, the vast majority of web designers are going to keep on designing sites to be compatible with IE6, regardless of it's poorness as a browser. Finally, if you're really keen on getting everyone to upgrade from IE6, I ought to point you to the Stop living in the past website. Perhaps if you campaign strongly enough within your organisation, you may just convince the people who make the decisions to upgrade, though I wouldn't like to bet on it...

Answer 5

We actually have a bunch of legacy applications on our intranet, some written in house, others that we quite a lot of money for, which don't work well on IE7 (or IE8, or Firefox, or Safari, or ...)

Yes, Mercury, I'm looking at you...

Answer 6

IE6 market share is rapidly dropping, so I'd expect that in a year or so authors of AJAX UI libraries will stop testing against IE6 (just like now they don't test against IE5.5). When that happens corporations will have no choice, but to adapt.

Answer 7

Why bother changing if IE does what it's supposed to do: browse the internet. The so-called benefits of newer browsers, which to us actually mean something, have little to no value in the minds of the people who run the corporate environments you describe.

In other words: ignorance and/or apathy