How about keeping ie6 for the specific stuff that needs it and installing a non ie browser for everything else?

A system might have been perfectly specified back when IE6 was the de-facto standard. How can you specify "And must be 100% compatible with all future changes in technology"


That's unhelpful. The immensely complicated and expensive system has been tendered, installed and paid for. What is your IT bod going to do when he finds it doesn't work with IE12?

Anyone who assumed that IE6 was going to be around forever was not doing their job correctly. The fact that this was version 6 should have been clue. Future proofing should have been specified at the point of commissioning the project, and a proper maintenance contract with updates in browser technology should have been put in place.



You are telling us that the IT bod isn’t putting contingency plans in place and researching updates that keep up with technologies? Hmm. What’s he being paid for, I wonder.

With any luck, he’ll at least be considering https://developers.google.com/chrome/chrome-frame/

There will be a time when websites and other resources, which are likely to be mission critical to an organisation starts to fail because those managing the organisations IT structure have not kept up, whilst those in the real world have updated. We can take YouTube as an example. It’s not supporting IE6 anymore, and it’s trialling HTML5 as a delivery platform. Those with IE6 will eventually find that the site just does not work for them. YouTube may not be important to some, but other sites may well be, and when those jump on the compliancy bandwagon, start to leverage HTML5 features, CSS3 and more (which is happening right now) that’s when things will start to fall apart. I’ve not even mentioned security fixes which will dry up soon.

It is in the organisation’s best interest to keep up.

Since no one has a crystal ball and no one has infinite budget, once a project is finished and working with today's browser the only possible "future proofing" is to simply specify "don't upgrade your browser until we commission a new system in 10 years time". When these projects costs billions of pounds and take 5 years to implement, you just can't realistically keep paying for new versions which will be delivered too late anyway.


IT bod is paid to do IT stuff. He isn't going to have the £billions in his budget to rip out the entire UK government / military / NHS infrastructure and put it up to tender.

The point is, it's not your website or mine that's keeping people using IE6 - its BIG stuff that costs BIG money that no one individual is responsible for, let alone some IT bod who probably wants it all changed more than anyone.

We were on 6 in work until relatively recently... Wasn't it years before they even took it to 7?

I also remember deleting it off my PC only to find that it also handled the rendering

We upgraded our office to IE8 some time ago as we needed it for our new systems. Thankfully we don't have anything that needed IE6 so it was painless. The only thing of concern was Amadeus flights system but that was compatible with IE8 at the time of the upgrade.

Completely agree with JW009 - it isn't a simple upgrade. You can only "future-proof" for the forseeable future. If standards change after you've designed, produced and implemented something, you can't change the IT people.

The Govt spent billions on the NHS system. In the surgeries I've worked in, they require IE6. I missed tabbed browsing so I installed IE7 and everything just crashed. It's not just the browser - it's all the software that was based around IE6 - the software for appointments, for notes, for prescriptions and for letters - all require IE6. On top of this, the computers are provided by the Govt and won't be the "best" or most "future-proof" - they're the minimum requirement to run the programs needed.

In the end, it boils down to £££.

Isn't there an IE6 compatibility mode in IE9?

It's useless for us. Doesn't work with the WLR2 BT systems we had to use until recently.

Totally by the side, the new WLR3 BT system is even more broken than the last one but it doesn't use a browser at all. Parts of it seem to be written in VB3 since the project probably began over a decade ago...

Saying that, I couldn't access our Mitel switches properly in IE9 until we upgraded them recently. Uploading files to them only worked in IE6 until the upgrade but their OS' were at least 4 years out of date.

So, when hardware is replaced, that will ship with IE6 and the OS required to run it? I guess someone somewhere is stockpiling the things.

HM Revenue & Customs are using Browsium to get around the high cost of updating their web-based applications. HMRC will be standardising on IE8 and Windows 7.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/browsium_mhrc/

I will also add that HMRC's main programme - NPS - was brought into live service in 2009, 8 years after the release of IE6 and over 2 years after the release of IE7. You can't tell me it spent 8 years in development.