[DUG] FW: Web development

[Jolyon Smith]

I took those observations to mean not that the "intranets" themselves rely
on IE6 but that they are using web apps that don't behave properly in the
new browsers.

Or perhaps more accurately that they behave "properly" in the new browsers
where "proper" is defined by the W3C, whereas "proper" used to be defined by
the specification of the web app itself and the behaviour elicited in the
browser by the HTML/CSS/JavaScript.


Once upon a time, that "old" software for which there is no excuse to be
using it used to be the cutting edge that people scoffed at you if you
/weren't/ using it and were using what was *then* considered the "old"
software.

And I think you missed the point when observing that new browsers are
"free".


The problem isn't the cost of upgrading the browsers. 

The problem is that once you have upgraded all your clients to the new
browser, your *apps* stop working, so you have to upgrade those apps and the
chances are that will incur direct and indirect costs not to mention
disruption and "downtime" to some extent.


Even for the browser upgrades, I suspect there is still a cost because not
all *users* are competent to upgrade themselves - we who live and breath IT
tend to forget that many people are confused by (and can royally screw up)
what we take for granted.  Plus, in this day and age, it's pretty certain
that users won't be able to just upgrade their browser software without
central IT/admin support, something that those concerned with "security"
questions would surely characterise as "a good thing".  After all, we can't
have everyone just able to willy nilly install/upgrade software on their
workstations...

Those who live by the sword etc...  ;)



-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at delphi.org.nz] On
Behalf Of John Bird
Sent: Tuesday, 7 June 2011 13:43
To: NZ Borland Developers Group - Delphi List
Subject: Re: [DUG] FW: Web development

I am mystified why any government organisations would be stuck on IE6 given 
its the best door for any hacker wanting to intrude into a system.   Its how

Google was penetrated 18 months ago - hackers found workstations that had to

use IE6 for historical reasons (reasons that were not all that good)

I was astonished about 3 years ago to see an unnamed government department 
workstation using a pre-release version of Firefox, ie it was so old it was 
basically the old Netscape - with diagonal arrow buttons and all, probably 
something like v0.5 and from probably 2003.

Surely any government IT department should not be relying on such old 
unpatched software if even to cover their own backsides when the inevitable 
problem occurs - its not a budget issue if free secure browsers abound.

If they have to use IE6 for intranets, do they prevent IE6 from accessing 
the outside internet?   And why can they not use later browsers for 
Intranets?

John

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