0 Dropping IE6 Support in the Enterprise
I’m sure everyone heard that 37signals dropped support for IE6 across their entire product line. They’re a reputable company with demanding customers. Was this a foolish move?
Every now and again you’ll find a company willing to break the rules, kill the standards and set some new ones. Personally I am extremely jealous that 37s can make such a broad decision and sleep better at night for it. But in the enterprise we don’t see this kind of decision making, hardly ever. If you do, it comes at a slow pace and almost slow enough to mark it as indecision.
Who the hell cares?
That’s right. Just because it’s an enterprise does not give developers any reason to skimp on great user experiences. My not caring about IE6 is much the same as Steve Jobs not caring that OS X only runs on Apple hardware. His rule is that great software runs on great hardware. If the hardware sucks, 9 out 10 times the software will suck as well. The only company who has made good software work on a turd pool of hardware is Microsoft. Then again, they’re Microsoft, it’s what they do.
Everybody wants a chance to put a jihad on IE6, right? I believe if developers actually realized that browsers are just as much a critical component and feature as the app itself, we’d see real change in the enterprise. Yes, it takes time, money and resources to migrate all those useless intranets and proprietary IE6-based tools to a new browser version/platform, but long-term loss is much greater than short-term status quo.
Normally you’d think if expectations of the platform are low, that the expectations of the consumer are low as well. Unfortunately that is not the case. Since the grass is always greener on the other-side, what are developers required to do? Typically we kill bug after bug after bug until we get something that works, not necessarily a good experience for the user, but working nonetheless.
Stubbornness in the Web Industry
At Apple I’d be willing to believe that limitations are all but actual limitations. They’re inspirations, instigators that push to ignore the norm and actually have an opinion about what works best for the end-consumer, enterprise or not.
If several thousand users have to install a better platform to get the richest experience, then so be it. In all cases, a consumer is a consumer and how they experience your software will determine it’s success.
And your point?
Create great user experiences and spare no cost to do it. Take limitations and use them as an instigation to move forward.