http://www.webdevelopmentblog.net/post/2009/07/25/The-End-of-Internet-Explorer-6-Finally.aspx

Which leaves them with only one choice: upgrade to Internet Explorer 7. The problem is most large corporate companies also happen to still be using Microsoft Windows 2000, which Internet Explorer 7 won’t run on.

The problem isn’t IT afraid of upgrading to IE7, it’s IT afraid of everything that could stop working if they upgrade Windows from 2000 to XP/Vista.

To the commenter who talked about little web apps becoming critical: I assert to you that most internal applications utelizing a browser control can and probably should be rewritten–especially since IE6 is unsecure compared with IE7/8/Firefox. In the situation where the employee was fired after creating the ap: you really want him on your internal network the day he finds out looking through confidential accounting and forcasting data stored in the temporary internet files of every employee on your intranet?

Data can be displayed in much more secure ways than through an internal website and web browser…like a simple desktop application/dashboard. Microsoft.net is great at that stuff…if you are talking about viewing .doc files through the intranet….there’s the concept of viewing it with word, which doesn’t break if you install a new IE browser.

As far as there being little difference between IE7and IE6, there are tones of css layout differences, behaviors, etc. And, as someone kindly pointed out, IE6 is OLD AS DIRT, and really quite slow and cumbersome to use. Time to move on.

That being said, join me in adding warnings similar to these to your sites, warning users that on Aug 27, 2009 (their 8th birthday) their browser will no longer be supported and will require an update to continue. Providing users with half a year to update should be plenty.

http://www.znetdevelopment.com/blogs/2009/02/19/end-ie6-support-campaign/

It only takes one internal app breaking for the upgrade to be put off.

But I have to think as IE6′s numbers go into the low single digits that developers will be less and less interested in testing against IE6.

I’d keep my eye on jQuery. When will it stop testing against IE6? 2010? 2011?

At my work, most of what I do is targeted towards IE, so I have IE7 running for work-related stuff / internal applications / etc, but any Personal browsing that I do is in FF. Thankfully, for now – we have control to install what we’d like on our desktops.

1. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Sysadmins usually have bigger fish to fry than being kind to web developers.

2. Internal unmaintained apps. This happens more with word, excel, and so on, but it’s not unheard of for some employee to develop a little web app to solve a need, that app becoming critical, and then for the employee to leave the company.

3. Embedded browser controls. Quite a lot of business apps embed a browser control to show part of their user interface. It’s not possible to upgrade ie without upgrading the embedded browser control. I speak from personal experience here. I had a business app that I developed break across the IE7 upgrade because the IE security model changed.

I understand wanting to write next generation apps, and not waste time coding for horrible browsers, but do realize that these business users spend lots of their daily time on the internet, much of it for personal uses, and if you restrict your site, you may be restricting users unable to help themselves. damned if you do…. damned if you don’t

People have to use free and modern browsers.