We all know how much Internet Explorer 6 blows. Developers have ran­ted on about it’s inad­equa­cies for years now. If you’re not a web dev, but maybe know someone that is, chances are that you’ve been on the receiv­ing end of a sur­rog­ate rant about it at some point. Today, how­ever, Google might have done some­thing to reduce the chances of such vit­riol ever hap­pen­ing again.

Google Chrome Frame is an IE6 plug-in that will render any html page (that con­tains a spe­cific script tag in the page’s header) with the full majesty of the Google Chrome engine, giv­ing the late browser adop­ters the chance to view some of the more advanced mod­ern web pages in glor­i­ous stand­ards com­pli­ant CSS3-o-vision. Unmodified pages, those without the script, would be left to be rendered in the sav­age waste­land that is Internet Explorer 6. This is great news for those users in cor­por­ate envir­on­ments that still require IE6 to to func­tion – but still want access to pop­u­lar sites such as YouTube that are now start­ing to scale down their IE6 sup­port.

Who actu­ally *needs* IE6?

‘Why do so many cor­por­a­tions keep hold of such out­dated soft­ware?’ you may ask. A lot of the usual reasons/myths are there – the per­ceived cost, out­dated hard­ware that can­not sup­port newer browsers; the major­ity, to be hon­est, wrong.

However, one viable reason is that a lot of com­pan­ies are bound to vari­ous bought-in web-based man­age­ment and cus­tomer sup­port sys­tems that simply can­not func­tion in mod­ern browsers. A large por­tion of soft­ware out there, developed at a time when the only viable browser choice was Microsoft, and tied into a pleth­ora of MS-only com­pon­ents and con­trols, have not moved with the times and allowed for the next gen­er­a­tion of browsers to work with their sys­tems. Their solu­tion? Only allow IE6 to be sup­por­ted. The cor­por­ate sec­tors and their reti­cence to upgrade (in part due to restric­tions imposed on them by their soft­ware sup­pli­ers) have been widely repor­ted as one of the reas­ons for the longev­ity of IE6.

Having worked in IT depart­ments in the past, I feel that I can speak on behalf of a goodly por­tion of them when I say that, by and large, most depart­ments want to upgrade browsers. They might not neces­sar­ily care about stand­ards com­pli­ant code and how it renders in rela­tion to other browsers, but act­ively enjoy the extra secur­ity enhance­ments that newer browsers provide. They love the fact that the gap­ing maw of secur­ity loop­holes can be plugged up in IE7 and 8. It makes their lives easier not hav­ing to clear up the mess that secur­ity exploits in IE6 leaves them sus­cept­ible to. They can’t get enough of that sh*t. It’s not the IT depart­ments that are pre­vent­ing the upgrades. Usually it’s because their hands are tied by the require­ments of their software.

The Downside

If I have a con­cern, it’s that in my exper­i­ence, some of the com­pan­ies that have developed this soft­ware for IE6 alone, have a… fail­ure to pri­or­it­ise (yes, I’m put­ting that nicely). They’ve had 4 years –FOUR! – since the first announce­ment of IE7 to upgrade their soft­ware to allow for mod­ern browsers, but instead have been… what? Tracking bugs? Adding more super­flu­ous fea­tures into their mix in a bid to catch up with more pro­gress­ive soft­ware houses? Putting their fin­gers in their ears and loudly shout­ing whenever any­one men­tions the HTML5 spec?

Whatever it is, up until these last few days, there were quite a few devel­op­ment houses out there becom­ing more and more uncom­fort­able about the fact that their cli­ents are start­ing to enquire about upgrad­ing their out­dated soft­ware. If they wanted to retain their busi­ness, they were going to have to look into spend­ing some actual cash and look into upgrad­ing the sys­tem whole­sale. It wasn’t going to be easy. The soft­ware is a mish-mash of old ActiveX con­trols and out­dated pro­gram­ming meth­ods. The ini­tial site developers have left and no-one knows how to use their impen­et­rable code.

With the news from Google, there’ll be a huge sigh of relief as they inform their tech sup­port guy to tell their cus­tom­ers to install this vir­tual ‘get out of jail free’ card, oh, and whilst they’re at it, up the annual licens­ing costs as well, will you? Economic down­fall and all that.

Google have come up with an excel­lent viable and work­able option for allow­ing IT depart­ments to have some way of allow­ing their users access to the corners of the web that IE6 wouldn’t go. They’ve also (‘incid­ent­ally’, I’m sure) found an excel­lent method of gain­ing access to a large por­tion of the mar­ket share that Firefox and the other browsers have no cur­rent chance of get­ting into. What they’ve also done, how­ever, is give a quick and easy ‘out’ for lazy developers that have no busi­ness provid­ing mod­ern web soft­ware, and poten­tially extend­ing the lifespan of many woe­fully inad­equate web applic­a­tions that should have died years ago.

Look at the web stats of IE6’s share of the mar­ket over the last few months. There’s a steady and notice­able drop there that I’d like to see con­tinue – but I have a nasty sus­pi­cion that this may no longer be the case for a good while.