How often are customers willing to install Silverlight when they are not willing to update from IE6?

Question

Assuming you are trying to sell large business/government software then IE6 will be a fact of life for many years to come. If you are dealing with the UK government, NHS, or local government in the UK then IE6 support is a given.

A lot of customers will not move from IE6 as they have other web apps that will only work on IE6, they are also not willing to install other browsers for control reasons.

However I have come across cases when the customers would install Silverlight on all of their machines. How common is this?

(I am not asking if you like IE6, or if you like Microsoft, Sorry we have to many money in the world as it is today.)

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Some people think this is off-topic; however as a programmer I have to decide the best technology to use when asked to create a “web app”. Most users just think of “web app” = “no need to install” and “it runs in the browser window”, so this is an important questions when planning a product.

Answer 1

To my knowledge, that's quite common. The main difference between Silverlight and IE7/8/9, Firefox, Chrome, etc. is that Silverlight, like Flash, is a browser plug-in the user can install by himself.

Most large businesses and government offices have an IT department managing all the machines, and the users aren't allowed to install any setup package by themselves. And if IT says it's gonna be IE6, then it's gonna be IE6, period. No IE7, no Firefox, no nothing.

However, assuming management allows the users access to the Internet, they often leave them in control of what they do with their browser, including installing plug-ins. The users then usually install Flash (essentially so YouTube works) and/or Silverlight.

Answer 2

The trouble is that the issue isn't usually so much "we'll install some things, but only things we think are safe", but more like "we won't install anything". The kind of organisations that are still using IE6 are the kind that are so risk-averse that you'll have a hard time getting them to install anything.

Therefore you're more likely to get satisfaction with Flash than Silverlight. The simple reason being that Flash has been around long enough that it might actually be in place on their systems already, thus negating the "we won't install anything" argument. (if they haven't even got Flash installed already, then good luck getting them to accept Silverlight)

If they are willing to install Silverlight, you might also consider trying them on the Google Frame plug-in for Explorer, which effectively turns MSIE into Chrome, but only for sites that specifically request it. The security imlications for that are pretty much the same as for Silverlight (or Flash for that matter), and if they accept it it'll mean you can write standards compliant HTML to your heart's content.