With so many browsers IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera its quite an ask to just ensure everything works the way it should on all platforms!
Now, after all the efforts we connect to our customers to roll the new platform out. We demo the product and they like it all and looks like the only thing to do was sign the contract and cash the cheque.
When things could not get better, we hit an air pocket. Their users use IE6 and cannot move from that platform. Reason? It would cost them more to install IE 7 on all their user browser than the annual contract for using our software! Grrrrrrrrr...
The reason for the gnashing teeth is that our product does not 'officially' support IE6. Its such an antiquated browser that any sane person fears! Its like living in Baghdad! YOu could! but you'd rather not if you care for your life!
With all its security holes and non compliance with standards I wonder why anyone would still use IE6 in an age where users are spoilt for choice of good browsers that are also light years ahead of IE6.
Well, one could understand if home users are still struck with IE6 that came with the windows pre-installed on their desktop and just don't care to upgrade.
I just cannot fathom why an enterprise user would not. Any sane network administrator would see a higher security risk retaining IE 6 when there are better choices.
Nevertheless, my customers are struck with IE 6 for some forseeable future and I do not want to miss out on my cheque for a lame reason as this.
So, what do i do now?
Citrix anybody?
Install Citrix servers with IE 7 or IE 8 and allow users to access the app through a supported browser?
Not a good idea, an overkill and not scalable(cost wise) for tens and thousand of thousands of users.
Change code to support IE 6
Quick Fix from http://divitodesign.com/css/let-ie6-behave-like-ie7/ Some good folks had spent quality time to write some scripts that would ensure IE 6 behaves much like Ie 7 .
This definitely works and is a very easy solution to integrate into the mainstream application.
However, we found that our product had style elements that still broke the site.
Chromeframe
I had read about Google developers doing a very smart fix when they were struggling with solutions to make Google Wave work in IE 6. They made Google Chrome browser into a Plug-in called ChromeFrame and made it run from within IE 6 much like Flash . This way pages running on the Chromeframe technically ran on Chrome browser even through it was running from within an IE browser. This ensured that all users who were still struck with IE6 could run contemporary web sites without having to upgrade their browsers whatever be their reasons.
http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/
The only change I had to do was to ensure a meta tag is included in all my pages! I had to just change my intercepting filter/http handler and ensure i insert this m-eta tag in the response stream for all my requests.
I tried this out and boy I was impressed. It works like a dream. Of course users would have to install the chromeframe plug-in! but hey! they are not changing their 'browsers'! Trust me this is not an argument I like, but it works for some users!
I'm happy as long as my users are happy! Thank you Google, you saved me tons of work.
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