Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Just Browsing

Have you downloaded Google's slick new Chrome Web browser yet? Or the latest version of Firefox? Or perhaps you're test-driving one of the beta versions of Microsoft's next Internet Explorer upgrade. Heck, are you even using the current version of IE, which celebrates its second birthday this month?

The Web browser wars are heating up again, giving Web users a variety of choices in the tools and features they can use to surf from site to site. The latest browsers offer significant improvements in speed, security and compatibility.

So why are some government tech shops slow to deploy even the latest versions of the tools to the staffs they support? I try to explain in the October edition of GOVERNING's Managing Technology e-mail newsletter. One major obstacle to upgrading: legacy applications, such as an online employee payroll system used by the state of Utah that turns out to be dependent on Internet Explorer 6.

Reporting this out helped me figure out why we we're continuing to see so many IE6 visits on our Web site, Governing.com.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, we desperately need IE upgrades on our computers at work. IE on our internet-accessible computer has so many bugs an entomologist would have a field day.

Anonymous said...

Why are some payroll applications so browser-specific? If "security" is the reason, it doesn't make any sense. Consider this list of things that you can do online, no matter what (relatively new) browser you might be using: banking, buying stocks, paying bills, changing your primary-care physician, applying for loans, booking airplane flights, etc. etc. etc.

What's so hard about payroll?

Larisa said...

The IMF is also far behind on the upgrades to the web browsers on employee computers. This drove me nuts.