We talk with enterprise customers every day who are trapped on IE6 because they have web applications that are too expensive or time-consuming to rewrite for IE8. For years they’ve stayed with the status quo (IE6 on Windows XP) because it worked and few external forces were pushing them to change. But now they’re evaluating migration options, including UniBrows, because they finally have a compelling Windows upgrade with Windows 7, not to mention facing the end of support by Microsoft for both XP and IE6 in 2014.
But losing support for XP and IE6, or missing out on the many benefits of Windows 7, are just a few of the downsides to staying on those old platforms. Increasingly these organizations and their end-users are missing out on the best of the new applications the web has to offer today because more and more sites are dropping support for IE6. Just this week 37signals “signaled” plans to stop allowing IE6 users to access its Basecamp collaboration solution because the cost to maintain support for IE6 is just too high for their web developers.
Posting on 37signals Basecamp forum
37signals is not alone. Web developers have been complaining for years that they typically spend 10% of their time building their site to work in standards-based browsers and 90% making that same site work in IE6. Clearly that’s not sustainable. In fact, many consumer sites, and enterprise software solutions, provide limited support for IE6, or none at all. Google is not shy about their lack of IE6 support, and neither is Microsoft with SharePoint 2010, as the screen captures below clearly indicate.
YouTube Homepage Graphic as seen in IE6
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Support Matrix on Technet
Enterprise customers find themselves stuck between the proverbial “rock and hard place”. They must stay on IE6 for their legacy apps, which means they can’t use the best new software and websites. If only there was a way to do both. Fortunately there is … and UniBrows is nearing its commercial release. There’s no longer a need for your organization to be stuck. Sign up for the UniBrows evaluation kit and get out from between that rock and hard place.
