WordPress Ie9 Compatibility

Monday, August 22nd, 2011 at 10:51 am

The debate IE6 great ... Microsoft is delaying the web?

In developing a web-based application such as MIDAS (http://mid.as/), we had to make some decisions about web browsers, we would support. When we started working on MIDAS in 2005, was the only time really two major players in the browser market - Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, and support them. Today, there are now five key players in this market, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Apple Safari ... all of which compete for market share. There was a time when Internet Explorer dominates the market, about a 90% stake in its beak, but its dominance has been steadily declining in recent years as evidence of our own website visitors what goes from 2011:

Left Graph: Percentage current browser, right chart: Current use of IE

From our own statistics, we see that 6.96% of users of Internet Explorer is still using IE6, (a little surprising that you are using the latest version, IE9 (only 6.92%)). Most Internet Explorer users currently use Internet Explorer 8 (67%) or Internet Explorer 7 (19%)

The current versions of our application site, MIDAS, will run on recent versions of the top 5 browsers, but finally fell Internet Explorer 6 support for last year.

However, know that many organizations around the world continues to require employees to use Internet Explorer 6 on their corporate networks .. but why is this? Why do companies insist to stay with a web browser that is ten years now, considering how quickly the Internet has changed and evolved during that time? We set out to try to find out why ...

IE6 until now ..
Internet Explorer 6 was first released in August 2001, just one year after the release of IE5.5. From Press IE6, Microsoft has subsequently released three major versions of its Internet Explorer software. Internet Explorer 7 was released in October 2006 IE8 in June 2009 and this year saw the release of Internet Explorer 9, IE10 already well into development. But there was a difference too long between the release of IE6 and IE7 (5 years, in fact!), Enabling the widespread adoption of IE6 for IT departments around the world during this period.

The importance of keeping up to date
Now, any home user knows it is important to keep your browser up to date, not only to ensure the best possible viewing experience with the latest web technologies (moving at a rapid pace these days!), but also and more importantly for keep your browser and your computer safe and protected from security vulnerabilities and exploits new. Browser updates are free and always available - some even automatically update themselves! ... then why IT departments continue with IE6 and do not keep their software infrastructure to date?

Should Corporations and IT departments do more?
We always put the main reason that organizations do not have been upgraded from IE6 down to laziness, but talking to an IT professional from their own experiences of recent company launch of IE8 throws a different light on the topic:
"We went from (Internet Explorer) 6 to 8 and is a nightmare, it's like random things some of our Web applications that use authentication Windows no longer work, others who use the "Remember Me" option now do not go well, we have problems retaining our server configuration proxy and to top it off is so slow! ... (IE6) works better! "

So are businesses, not only because of improved usability and compatibility issues with existing software infrastructure? At Midas, we always make sure that our Web-based application programming room is fully compatible with the very latest versions (and development is based) of the 5 major browsers. Developers need of other web applications to do the same? Us think so! ... But could Microsoft be doing more as well?

Microsoft should do more?
While Microsoft provided some resources to help through its www.ie6countdown.com site for IT departments looking migrate from IE6, Microsoft has committed to continue supporting IE6 to 2014 (coinciding with the "End of Life" of Windows XP), mainly due to this business! In our opinion, Microsoft should have ended support for IE6 for a long time. If they had, it would force businesses and developers alike to act together and update and upgrade their software. Ultimately, this benefits the entire Internet community as developers can focus on the use of new and emerging web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and so on, providing a better user experience, more stable and secure, rather than developers having to spend time trying to make their software compatible with modern than a decade outdated browser!

The future for IE6
Google, YouTube, Hotmail, WordPress and many other places, and have dropped support for IE6 in recent times, and we made the decision last year to focus not on achieving IE6 compatibility for our web based application, MIDAS, as he was holding back the development and prevents us from implementing new features, building advantage of emerging web technologies.

Conclusions
While we are encouraged by the recent Microsoft revitalized focus and commitment to further development of Internet Explorer, IE6 should never have left to stagnate for so long as it did between versions of IE6 and IE7. This has led many companies become too dependent on an obsolete browser and vulnerable. Microsoft's commitment to continue supporting IE6 until 2014 is, and will constrain the development the web.

We encourage any organization or IT department still using IE6, do not wait for your "End of Life," but to update as soon as possible! If there are compatibility problems with 3rd party applications or software, contact the publishers / developers of software that ... if as committed as we are the MIDAS software, they'll want to ensure full compatibility of its products with the latest web browsers. If they can not do this, perhaps it's time to start looking for alternatives now before it's too late!

We are very excited about the future direction it is taking the web, with new standards and technologies that are emerging, but we need corporations to help drive the web forward! This is hampered by the continued use of IE6!

About the Author

Mark Harrington is the creator and lead developer of the popular web based scheduling app, MIDAS (http://mid.as/) and has over 16 years experience in developing and coding web sites and web apps