# Need Internet Explorer help-IE6 and 7



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

I've been fighting with this issue, and I'm asking around on several different places to see if this issue is unique to us or widespread. Could someone with IE6 (hoping there's someone left!) and someone with IE7 go to Delta Airlines and go through the motions of selecting a flight? If you happen to need to book one, great, go all the way, but otherwise, just put in fake flight info. What we're seeing is we get a Windows error, operation aborted. I've had it come up at several stages, but not every time. Delta says there's nothing wrong with their site. This is driving me batty. It works fine in Firefox 3.6 and looks like it works fine in IE8.

Thanks for any help!


----------



## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

Out of curiosity, why not just use a newer browser then? Any system with IE6 should support a newer browser.


----------



## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Grentz said:


> Out of curiosity, why not just use a newer browser then? Any system with IE6 should support a newer browser.


Grentz is right... Install IE 8 and be done with it.

I no longer have any machines with even virtual IE6 or IE7... there just isn't any need.


----------



## BAHitman (Oct 24, 2007)

yeah, IE8 is the answer... Why not just upgrade... much more secure and safe browsing experience...


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Unfortunately, it's not up to me. This is an issue with work systems, but one of our techs says he reproduced the issue on a dsl connection. Still, one person blames our firewall, one says it's our antivirus. I say it's the old browsers, but they can't believe there would be issues on IE 7. I'm trying to look further into the issue from standard systems, and trying to avoid actually loading XP or something at home. If a user calls Delta, Delta says there is no issue, and their site lists IE6 as compatible, so to our users, it has to be on our end.

We're just now upgrading systems to IE7 from 6.


----------



## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Unable to replicate with a WinXP/IE6 system here at work.


----------



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

dpters - just don't book your travel at work - Your company is foolish for allowing IE6 to run - they're just asking to be attacked.


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

LarryFlowers said:


> I no longer have any machines with even virtual IE6 or IE7... there just isn't any need.


That's good for you, but there are a number of widely used applications that were written around IE6 back when Microsoft was trying to insure that IE would remain the dominant browser.


----------



## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

Yep, we have the same issue here at work. There are vendor apps that will not run on IE7 & there is no money to pay the vendor to update the app (or get a newer version). Companies are not spending IT money right now. We're still on Windows XP SP2.


----------



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

All these IT types who cling to XP and IE6 are delusional, as are the vendors who refuse to upgrade their products. Shades of Y2K!:eek2:


----------



## cdizzy (Jul 29, 2007)

wilbur_the_goose said:


> dpters - just don't book your travel at work - Your company is foolish for allowing IE6 to run - they're just asking to be attacked.


You would be surprised how many companies still use IE6. I work for a well known chipmaker and we just recently(couple months) started an optional roll out of IE8. Assuming it goes fine then they will make it mandatory.


----------



## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

Cholly said:


> All these IT types who cling to XP and IE6 are delusional, as are the vendors who refuse to upgrade their products. Shades of Y2K!:eek2:


It's not IT that's clinging to XP & IE6 -- it is the business refusing to pay for upgrades & the testing required to certify the upgrades. All IT time costs money & there's just not much money being spent. Upgrades are way low on the list. And it is not IT deciding what to spend the money on. The business says what they want done with the dollars.


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

HDJulie said:


> It's not IT that's clinging to XP & IE6 -- it is the business refusing to pay for upgrades & the testing required to certify the upgrades. All IT time costs money & there's just not much money being spent. Upgrades are way low on the list. And it is not IT deciding what to spend the money on. The business says what they want done with the dollars.


Yeah, it's a lot of the custom or small apps that are the real issue. We can't update Acrobat reader to the latest version because the Patent Office hasn't approved it yet. It took them about a month to approve the previous version.

I hate IE6, I personally use Chrome or Firefox. But it is what it is. At least we're not on XP SP2 (which stops getting security updates next week.)


----------



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

HDJulie said:


> Yep, we have the same issue here at work. There are vendor apps that will not run on IE7 & there is no money to pay the vendor to update the app (or get a newer version). Companies are not spending IT money right now. We're still on Windows XP SP2.


Your company is foolish. XP SP2's support has ended. At the very least, get SP3 installed!


----------



## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

Yep -- they are in the process of rolling out SP3 but it's a slow rollout. I got it only because we've got a vendor app that will require SP3 & I need to test the new version of the app. With support going away for SP2 -- I see why the company is finally pushing out SP3.


----------



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

HDJulie said:


> It's not IT that's clinging to XP & IE6 -- it is the business refusing to pay for upgrades & the testing required to certify the upgrades. All IT time costs money & there's just not much money being spent. Upgrades are way low on the list. And it is not IT deciding what to spend the money on. The business says what they want done with the dollars.


Believe me, I fully understand. I didn't mean to single out IT, beccause they don't hold the purse strings. However, it behooves them to make a strong case for moving forward and embracing IE8. If Firefox or Opera were IE6 compatible, I'd urge my IT folks to adopt them, just to save themselves a bit of time. One of these days, Microsoft is going to stop acceding to the complaints of corporate America regarding hanging on to XP. The discontinuance of support for IE6 should be a wake up call.
One of the big problems with IE6 is the fact that it doesn't adhere to the html standards.This is made even worse by the fact that IE6 and Front Page were designed to work together. Front Page used a lot of nonstandard constructs and many, many vendors used Front Page as their development tool. I ran across this when I did some exploratory work on upgrading my Senior Center's web site. When I used Firefox or Opera to access it, page layouts were all messed up. I proposed that the code be rewritten so that ANY browser could be used and in addition, be remade to accommodate people who would be using dialup to access it. There was another guy involved in the study who wanted to use his own brute force method of design, and he made a big fuss about me coming in and "trying to take over", which wasn't the case. At any rate, it scared the center's director enough that she went outside to get the upgrade done.


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Cholly said:


> Believe me, I fully understand. I didn't mean to single out IT, beccause they don't hold the purse strings. However, it behooves them to make a strong case for moving forward and embracing IE8. If Firefox or Opera were IE6 compatible, I'd urge my IT folks to adopt them, just to save themselves a bit of time. One of these days, Microsoft is going to stop acceding to the complaints of corporate America regarding hanging on to XP. The discontinuance of support for IE6 should be a wake up call.


At least in terms of security patches, IE6 support isn't going away until 2014. It's only SP2 support going away, not SP3.


----------



## wingrider01 (Sep 9, 2005)

HDJulie said:


> It's not IT that's clinging to XP & IE6 -- it is the business refusing to pay for upgrades & the testing required to certify the upgrades. All IT time costs money & there's just not much money being spent. Upgrades are way low on the list. And it is not IT deciding what to spend the money on. The business says what they want done with the dollars.


It some cases it is a nightmare to upgrade especially if you are tied to systems that have to be validated and installation qualifications written. The IQ's get down to teh exact version of the major system components. Once you have the OS validiated every validated application that runs on the system has to be revalidated and new IQ's written and verified to show that they producre the exact same results and run the exact same way as they did on the old configuration.

everytime out supplier discontinues a particular configuration it takes us close to 10 days just to validate and IQ the hardware changes. FDA and drug companies can be a nightmare on upgrades.

We are budgeting for a forklift upgrade for our sites to Windows 7 and office 2010, the software upgrades are only going to be little over a million dollars, time, personal, validation and IQs for the systems are going to add about 1.5 million to that price

It can be a nightmare


----------



## wilbur_the_goose (Aug 16, 2006)

Having your infrastructure attacked is a much bigger nightmare.

You really need to assess your risk appetite.


----------



## flexoffset (Jul 16, 2007)

We've still got some NT 4 and Windows 2000 machines running on 400 MHz Pentiums at work. Win XP Professional is a relative cadillac. Still running Win 2K Server. They won't understand until we're attacked. Then they still won't understand.

FWIW, you can put IE 8 into compatibility mode and it will effectively become IE 7.


----------



## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

harsh said:


> That's good for you, but there are a number of widely used applications that were written around IE6 back when Microsoft was trying to insure that IE would remain the dominant browser.


Most IE6 stuff will run fine in IE7. They have it pretty well backwards compatible.


----------



## HDJulie (Aug 10, 2008)

Grentz said:


> Most IE6 stuff will run fine in IE7. They have it pretty well backwards compatible.


Unfortunately, not all IE6 stuff runs in IE7 & that's why we have not yet upgraded.


----------



## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Grentz said:


> Most IE6 stuff will run fine in IE7. They have it pretty well backwards compatible.


Regrettably, Microsoft didn't provide an easy replacement for drag-and-drop FTP. There are third party solutions but they require some investment and creativity to implement.

Outside of that, quite a few sites support IE7 using its IE6 emulation.


----------



## kevinwmsn (Aug 19, 2006)

The big thing was IE7 added tabs and popup blocker. When I worked at hospitals using Siemens software they didn't support it but it worked fine, just adjust popup blocker and how to open new page(new window/new tab). IE6 is just so open virus/spyware. IE7&8 are still open to getting hijacked.


----------



## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

kevinwmsn said:


> The big thing was IE7 added tabs and popup blocker. When I worked at hospitals using Siemens software they didn't support it but it worked fine, just adjust popup blocker and how to open new page(new window/new tab). IE6 is just so open virus/spyware. IE7&8 are still open to getting hijacked.


IE8 is not too bad at all actually. Pretty similar to the alternatives from what I have seen in real world usage as long as it is kept updated.

IE6 is just asking for it though.


----------

