4 ms·

Why IE will continue to win the enterprise browser wars

19 points by snydeq 18y ago

ken 18y ago
Hmm. Here's a really stupid question. Would it be possible to write a proxy which would convert IE-only (or IE6-only) webpages into equivalent standards-compliant webpages on the fly? (I don't know CSS, and especially IE's mangling of it, well enough to know if this problem is AI-complete or not.) Edit: In case it wasn't obvious, the point would be to make the app work just as before. Simply running an anti-htmltidy would be pointless.
- dmose 18y ago
  Anything is possible but the end result would be a clean response stream thats' compliant but the application would be horribly broken. My mind melts just thinking of the king of regex matching you would need to do to pull this off.
sanj 18y ago
Put up your hand if you've successfully sold into an enterprise. No one? Then come back when you have. The ability for the IT shop to have control over their users is a real reason that apps don't get deployed. Walk into the mouth of LDAP once and you'll understand. When you have 10k users, with 200 people worth of turnover or changes a day, you won't understand why they "won't just use our web interface!" Until you believe it and understand it, you're going to keep writing off customers because their priorities in keeping their users happy and functional don't jibe with your new whizzy app.
- edw519 18y ago
  My hand is up. (You said "No one?" too quickly.) True, the enterprise is a different animal, but it can be sold and you can make a difference. Some of my most memorable successes have been turning an ocean liner by selling them my software and creating a win-win-win for everyone. The ability for the IT shop to have control over their users is a real reason that apps don't get deployed. Not my experience. you're going to keep writing off customers I have never "written off" a customer because they were hard to sell. I only "write them off" if I don't see a profit opportunity.
iigs 18y ago
Notably, Moskowitz explained that Firefox -- which you would think would be designed to easily administrate with Group Policy -- cannot be controlled. The reason: "It uses JavaScript files," he says. "There's no Group Policy way, right now, to handle 'odd' file types like .JS or XML files." So it's Mozilla's problem that Microsoft's Policy tools are ridiculously rigid and inflexible? Actually, I don't know anybody who cares if IE wins or loses in the corporate browser world. It's nice to delineate your business/intranet and public/personal activity into other browsers. In fact, to me it's preferable that there's a "legacy" browser to fulfill the web application equivalent of fax-machine duty. I don't envy the work that the IE team has to do to maintain compatibility with ancient and awful applications kludged together for IE 5.5, and I _really_ don't want that stuff in the browser I visit public sites with. As for the set of people that think the power goes from the wall into the "hard drive" and that the internet is a blue "e" icon on the desktop, I stand by a previous comment I made ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=302947 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=302947 ), in that I think IE should be vehicle for modern web experience ActiveX controls.
makecheck 18y ago
I agree with the conclusion, but not the logic. A much more likely cause for IE supremacy is an established set of enterprise "web" applications, where these (badly written) "web" applications are so broken outside IE that they might as well be Win32. If executives sank money into applications that now run the business, and find that IE keeps those applications running, they're more likely to establish an easy policy like "IE only". They are not likely to spend money to "fix" the "problem" that non-IE users "created". As ideal as it would be to inform executives that it is Microsoft's broken code that actually created the problem of bringing in new browsers, I guarantee they won't see it that way.
- josefresco 18y ago
  Can you point to at least one "established set of enterprise "web" applications" that supports this claim?
  - edw519 18y ago
    Every enterprise has their own. It's called their "intranet". Many written for ie only (they may not have even realized it at the time). No one wants to rewrite their intranet just to support a marginally better browser.
    - whatusername 18y ago
      As far as I can tell - IBM have finally finished porting all of their intranet apps to support firefox. So there 350,000 users or so..
  - aaronblohowiak 18y ago
    established internal projects, in my experience, tend to target the browsers used by the employees of the company. a lot of shops are still windows-only shops, and so there is no cost-savings gained from worrying about support for other browsers.
  - michaelmurphy 18y ago
    I think the other two responses to this comment are spot-on. Lots of corporate intranets and internal applications are IE-only by default. It's certainly not justifiable from a cost standpoint to rewrite those. Aside from corporate users, individual consumers who aren't necessarily computer-savvy (like my parents) don't have the knowledge (or desire) to download additional software and install extensions, plug-ins, etc. They go with the default browser of their O/S.
mattmaroon 18y ago
"What is your motive or business case for orchestrating the rollout into your environment?" That right there is why business IT changes at such a snail's pace. There's a tremendous difference in mindset between tech businesses, and businesses that use tech to save money, streamline processes, etc. A lot of people in the startup community proclaim that businesses will be switching en masse from Windows and Blackberries and Office to Apples and iPhones and Google Docs, and it's exactly that sentence that they don't get. Even if newer products would be better for them (and they might) it would have to be a lot better to justify the expense. All Microsoft has to do is remain good enough.
mlLK 18y ago
The fact that IE is still pulling in big numbers is simply a sign of the times, and I believe it's volume of use and prevalence will eventually die off in the years to come. In short, the majority of computer users i.e. people are technically irrational and old, aka your typical Baby Boomer. I speak in stereotypes only to illustrate my point. sighs
loumf 18y ago
The easiest thing browsers can fix is to tie into Windows Authentication so that when I go to my intranet, they just log in for me with my OS credentials.
umjames 18y ago
What a great advertisement for getting out of enterprise IT and starting your own business! I'd always prefer to just try a new idea, then to get permission from my manager and my manager's manager to try that same idea.
chaostheory 18y ago
I'm not a network admin but I don't quite understand his logic... why can't you enforce group policy on a higher level (something like how OpenDNS can filter specific sets of sites)? Am I missing something?
- Niten 18y ago
  IE's Group Policy encompasses a whole lot more than which particular sites the web browser is allowed to visit. http://www.ie-vista.com/group_policy.html http://www.ie-vista.com/group_policy.html
  - chaostheory 18y ago
    most of IE policy control seems shallow except for permission to modify settings...

19 points by snydeq 18y ago

ken 18y ago

Hmm. Here's a really stupid question. Would it be possible to write a proxy which would convert IE-only (or IE6-only) webpages into equivalent standards-compliant webpages on the fly? (I don't know CSS, and especially IE's mangling of it, well enough to know if this problem is AI-complete or not.) Edit: In case it wasn't obvious, the point would be to make the app work just as before. Simply running an anti-htmltidy would be pointless.

dmose 18y ago
Anything is possible but the end result would be a clean response stream thats' compliant but the application would be horribly broken. My mind melts just thinking of the king of regex matching you would need to do to pull this off.

sanj 18y ago

Put up your hand if you've successfully sold into an enterprise. No one? Then come back when you have. The ability for the IT shop to have control over their users is a real reason that apps don't get deployed. Walk into the mouth of LDAP once and you'll understand. When you have 10k users, with 200 people worth of turnover or changes a day, you won't understand why they "won't just use our web interface!" Until you believe it and understand it, you're going to keep writing off customers because their priorities in keeping their users happy and functional don't jibe with your new whizzy app.

edw519 18y ago
My hand is up. (You said "No one?" too quickly.) True, the enterprise is a different animal, but it can be sold and you can make a difference. Some of my most memorable successes have been turning an ocean liner by selling them my software and creating a win-win-win for everyone. The ability for the IT shop to have control over their users is a real reason that apps don't get deployed. Not my experience. you're going to keep writing off customers I have never "written off" a customer because they were hard to sell. I only "write them off" if I don't see a profit opportunity.

iigs 18y ago

Notably, Moskowitz explained that Firefox -- which you would think would be designed to easily administrate with Group Policy -- cannot be controlled. The reason: "It uses JavaScript files," he says. "There's no Group Policy way, right now, to handle 'odd' file types like .JS or XML files." So it's Mozilla's problem that Microsoft's Policy tools are ridiculously rigid and inflexible? Actually, I don't know anybody who cares if IE wins or loses in the corporate browser world. It's nice to delineate your business/intranet and public/personal activity into other browsers. In fact, to me it's preferable that there's a "legacy" browser to fulfill the web application equivalent of fax-machine duty. I don't envy the work that the IE team has to do to maintain compatibility with ancient and awful applications kludged together for IE 5.5, and I _really_ don't want that stuff in the browser I visit public sites with. As for the set of people that think the power goes from the wall into the "hard drive" and that the internet is a blue "e" icon on the desktop, I stand by a previous comment I made ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=302947 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=302947 ), in that I think IE should be vehicle for modern web experience ActiveX controls.

makecheck 18y ago

I agree with the conclusion, but not the logic. A much more likely cause for IE supremacy is an established set of enterprise "web" applications, where these (badly written) "web" applications are so broken outside IE that they might as well be Win32. If executives sank money into applications that now run the business, and find that IE keeps those applications running, they're more likely to establish an easy policy like "IE only". They are not likely to spend money to "fix" the "problem" that non-IE users "created". As ideal as it would be to inform executives that it is Microsoft's broken code that actually created the problem of bringing in new browsers, I guarantee they won't see it that way.

josefresco 18y ago
Can you point to at least one "established set of enterprise "web" applications" that supports this claim?
- edw519 18y ago
  Every enterprise has their own. It's called their "intranet". Many written for ie only (they may not have even realized it at the time). No one wants to rewrite their intranet just to support a marginally better browser.
  - whatusername 18y ago
    As far as I can tell - IBM have finally finished porting all of their intranet apps to support firefox. So there 350,000 users or so..
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  established internal projects, in my experience, tend to target the browsers used by the employees of the company. a lot of shops are still windows-only shops, and so there is no cost-savings gained from worrying about support for other browsers.
- michaelmurphy 18y ago
  I think the other two responses to this comment are spot-on. Lots of corporate intranets and internal applications are IE-only by default. It's certainly not justifiable from a cost standpoint to rewrite those. Aside from corporate users, individual consumers who aren't necessarily computer-savvy (like my parents) don't have the knowledge (or desire) to download additional software and install extensions, plug-ins, etc. They go with the default browser of their O/S.

mattmaroon 18y ago

"What is your motive or business case for orchestrating the rollout into your environment?" That right there is why business IT changes at such a snail's pace. There's a tremendous difference in mindset between tech businesses, and businesses that use tech to save money, streamline processes, etc. A lot of people in the startup community proclaim that businesses will be switching en masse from Windows and Blackberries and Office to Apples and iPhones and Google Docs, and it's exactly that sentence that they don't get. Even if newer products would be better for them (and they might) it would have to be a lot better to justify the expense. All Microsoft has to do is remain good enough.

mlLK 18y ago

The fact that IE is still pulling in big numbers is simply a sign of the times, and I believe it's volume of use and prevalence will eventually die off in the years to come. In short, the majority of computer users i.e. people are technically irrational and old, aka your typical Baby Boomer. I speak in stereotypes only to illustrate my point. sighs

loumf 18y ago

The easiest thing browsers can fix is to tie into Windows Authentication so that when I go to my intranet, they just log in for me with my OS credentials.

umjames 18y ago

What a great advertisement for getting out of enterprise IT and starting your own business! I'd always prefer to just try a new idea, then to get permission from my manager and my manager's manager to try that same idea.

chaostheory 18y ago

I'm not a network admin but I don't quite understand his logic... why can't you enforce group policy on a higher level (something like how OpenDNS can filter specific sets of sites)? Am I missing something?

Niten 18y ago
IE's Group Policy encompasses a whole lot more than which particular sites the web browser is allowed to visit. http://www.ie-vista.com/group_policy.html http://www.ie-vista.com/group_policy.html
- chaostheory 18y ago
  most of IE policy control seems shallow except for permission to modify settings...