is it me?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| salparadise Jan 24, 2005 10:04 PM EDT |
or this story over-cautious twaddle? They make it sound that changing to Firefox is something akin to say, replacing a 747 wing at 35,000 feet. |
| dinotrac Jan 25, 2005 3:13 AM EDT |
Well -- it's partly you and it's partly over-cautious twaddle. A company that relies on web-applications will need to ensure that they work properly with Firefox. It's not just sites for public consumption that have been badly/lazily/stupidly/quickly developed, especially in cases where time-to-market pressure meant getting it to work with IE because that's what the clients are using. The problem with the article is more a matter of tone than content. What's with all this caution crap? Try out the applications you need and see if they work. If they don't, lean on the provider. My current client, for example, operates a web portal that mostly works with Firefox, but not completely. Getting it to work with Mozilla based browsers is, by the way, a high priority. It seems that a number of their customers are fed up with IE's welcoming attitude towards malicious code. Fed-up customers are bad business. |
| Sauja Jan 25, 2005 4:09 AM EDT |
It's not so much cautious twaddle as over dramatization. The people the piece targets already know the issue. It's more about corporate intranets than public sites. An custom content management tool, and HR tool, a financial system with web front ends all can and ofter are tied to IE, because it has been easier to make highly interactive application using IE "extensions". As a corporate standard IE will be hard to replace, but many I would think, could offer both. Use IE for internal stuff (no risk of malicious site on the intranet) and use Firefox for public sites. Keep in mind that the dollar amount to re-engineer these systems to remove dependencies on IE are not trivial. But like I said IT managers already know all this. So the piece, to me, is just negative PR for Firefox. Sauja |
| sbergman27 Jan 25, 2005 5:43 AM EDT |
As someone who actually supports Linux business desktops, I can tell you that there is absolutely nothing over-cautious about it. I, as a regular user, have the option of simply not using sites if they don't support my browser. But if my client needs to be able to use "FillInTheBlank.com" to process their warranty service claims, I've got to make it work. Many, many, many sites which provide services to businesses only work with IE. Usually, when you complain, they tell you to just use IE. And before you say that I should just find an alternative, let me say that very often there isn't one. My solution is to use FF where possible. But I also have to creatively mix in some Opera, Netscape 4.7, and IE under Crossover. In one instance in which printing did not work from Crossover, I had to move the user to IE under Windows. I abhored doing it, but what's the alternative? Tell them they can't run their business because they're using Linux? |
| pendraco Jan 25, 2005 8:34 AM EDT |
I think the author of the article is well-meaning enough, if not a bit misguided. His point is made not in respect to the average time-wasting web-browsing enterprise worker, but in respect to the bread-and-butter enterprise applications those workers use when not spending their "idle" time web-surfing. With respect to the former class, a switch to Firefox can mean a sigh of relief to the IS/IT administration staff, not to mention the CFO, who are likely quick to promote it in those periods of "malware" fighting, which have grown increasingly more frequent in the years since the "browser war" ended. Yet, with respect to the latter class, a switch to Firefox represents a near-term productivity loss, and long-term unplanned expenditures as those same IT/IS staff spend their precious "malware" fighting and e-mail unclogging time dealing with superfluous desktop and networking "problems". Unfortunately for our Inter-networked world, MS has been allowed to establish a monopoly on desktops with an O/S that was never designed for networked computing, much less for /secure/ networked computing. The problem was made no less common-place with the bundling of Spyglass Mosaic... oops, I mean "MS Internet Explorer"... as a free "value add" to Windows, which also enabled MS to handily defeat Netscape in the "browser wars" by sheer virtue of its growing monopoly; it may be remembered that Netscape's Navigator browser was, at one time, the leading product in the web browser market space, "competing", as it were, at a $40 price point against one of its chief rivals (Spyglass), who's product was suddenly made "free of charge". What followed was a long string of "innovations" by MS, including the creation of ActiveX for rich [web] content (created to compete principally against Java), and integration of IE as a central component of the O/S (to the point that MS claims it is now impossible to resegregate them). Taken together, these "innovations" spawned the conception in enterprises that IE represents a viable platform for web-based rich-client application development (based on the ActiveX component model). By this is meant internally used applications upon which an enterprise's operations rely, not the publicly accessible portal apps "idle-time" surfers explore. Enterprises, including small ones, devote a lot of time and resources to developing such applications. Though world economies are /recovering/ from their post-dot-com-bust recessions, they are not yet fully recovered and enterprises, including large ones, still feel cash-strapped when it comes to decisions over new application development vs. old application re-development. Favor is usually given to the former choice, as enterprises grow eager to take advantage of emerging technologies in order to /enhance/ those internally used applications, rather than supplant or re-envision them. A typical response, including by the author, is "well, fine then... give 'em both". "Shyaah, right!" It's hard enough to train operations staff to actually read the pop-ups requesting to install, e.g., Yahoo!'s HotBar and not always answer in the affirmative :-p ... harder still to train them to use two browsers for differing purposes, especially when the typical operations staffer barely knows the difference, if at all, sadly, between an application hosted on a remote server and the desktop "client" application used to access it! As heard in the [internal] customer support center of ['your enterprise here']: ******* Bewildered Operations Staffer: "Uh, 'Support', I'm logging in to /['client application']/ but it won't let me..." Frustrated Tech Supporter: "What's the error message?" BOS: "It says ['host not found' | 'page cannot be displayed' | etc.]..." FTS: "What address are you trying to connect to?" BOS: "Uh... I don't know... I'm just trying to log in to ['client application']..." FTS: [forehead hitting desk] ******* ...and, this [BOS] is a person who is supposed to understand that "IE is used when connecting to 'these enterprise URLs', and ['the other, standards compliant, security concious, browser'] is used when connecting to everywhere else"... I think not. Yes, the author has a point: IE is already entrenched in enterprise culture, IT/IS staff already have a "routine" for handling the daily issues commensurate with that entrenchment, and, above all, re-development costs far more than new development. Yet, luckily, the lessons have nearly been learned: trust in a monopolist is bad, "standardization" on an unsecure platform is bad, product development around "embraced and extended" standards is bad... chasing lemmings off a cliff is bad. Enterprises /are/ migrating towards open standards, not to mention "open" products, on the client-side, but like the earlier migrations from big iron legacy systems to web-based distributed systems on the server-side, it is being done slowly, if not cautiously, while the new technologies based on those standards slowly approach an up swell of adoption in the home consumer space. By the time "Longhorn" sees the light of day as an officially released product, the "new browser war" should again be close to being "over", but this time it is a war fought in an arena of monopolistic backlash and for long-term cost and personal privacy benefits, not one quelled by monopoly-born defacto standardization and the impression of short-term cost savings. In my opinion, being one of the "IT/IS staffers", the author is right, but incomplete. Those enterprises which "aren't dependent upon Internet Explorer technology" (sic), certainly should look to embracing Firefox, et al, /en masse/. However, IE must, at the same time, also be "removed" from the user's immediate control (it can not, as yet, be fully removed from the underlying O/S, but a user's 'point-n-click' access to it can be). As for those sites that "require IE" (*cough* Windows Update *cough*), plugins, and similar IT/IS staff-installable workarounds, are available that enable loading of those sites in IE, though accessed from within Firefox. In any case, as for those "entrenched" enterprises, they will eventually find themselves with little choice but to re-develop those IE/ActiveX-dependent applications with open standards-friendly ones. Until then, let them have their breathing space and time to plan... their IT/IS staffers already have enough on their hands, and their CIO's development budget is still sapped by the BSA Protection... oops, I mean "Software Assurance 6.0"... payments their CFO is still fainting over... |
| pendraco Jan 25, 2005 9:07 AM EDT |
With regard to sbergman's post concerning the use of "Linux business desktops" (Lbd)... In my experience, another, cleaner, solution is the addition of a Win2000 server with enough Terminal Server licenses to support a number of concurrent users needing to access "IE only" web sites (SBS makes a cheap enough and suitable enough solution for most departmental level installations). The addition of tsclient to the Lbd makes this a snap solution to set up and manage. It also keeps the users from pulling out their hair (and yours :) ), over having to contend with half-a-dozen "solution sets" to do pretty much all the same things. Additional benefits to this solution include: * being able to make available "needed" or legacy Windows applications to those still requiring access to them; * retaining administrative control over and 'lock down' of the [RDP accessed] "Windows desktop" being made available; * limiting compromise of IS and network security that is otherwise [again] at risk by the re-introduction of Windows on the user's desktop. I have found that this works *quite well* in the greater majority of situations, and keeps the user's Lbd "experience" simple and satisfying, with the long term result being very little time actually being spent accessing the TS box, in preference to the Lbd, by what may have formerly been thought of as "staunch Windows users"... |
| Sauja Jan 25, 2005 11:57 AM EDT |
I don't think it would be that hard to use both. You could deploy application specific icons to the desktop that launch IE and go directly to the application URL, remove the IE address bar and non essential button, set the security to high for all non-intranet zones, etc.. Then replace the icon that says "Internet Explorer" with firefox, you could even call it "Internet Explorer" and change the icon to a blue E, so long as all html and internet shortcuts are associated with firefox, and use an IE theme, most users would not even notice. Its not like you can get rid of IE anyway, it'll still be there, just make it hard to get to unless it is for a specific business application. And cripple it through security when going outside. This is all about internal web site that use ActiveX for functionality of Challenge response for security and other IE specifics, whether it be Commercial off the self products or custom built sites, both are expensive to replace (if possible)! Sauja |
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