IE 7 - Alarmed

I was looking at our web stats today like 9 months after IE 7 was released. Of IE users more than 62% of them are still using IE 6!  Of the IE users only 5% were Windows 2000 users.

What this tells me is that IE 7 is not getting autoupdated!

Why?

I just installed a new computer and I saw why.

1. When the update for IE 7 came through, it came up behind the Windows Update progress screen.
2. It isn't automatic. Users are required to actually know what IE 7 is and then figure out that they need to click next and validate etc. Most just click cancel.

Hence the vast majority of users are just skipping the IE 7 installation.

MS: You really really really need to make IE 7 an automatic install which doesn't require any feedback from users.

Aside from how bad IE 6 renders web pages, the security considerations are staggering.

Please do something about this ASAP... it's brutal.

Forced adoption of IE7 is something that would make a lot of folks very unhappy, particularly in the business world. There are a lot of intranet sites that were specifically coded to deal with some of the broken behavior in IE6. While it's great that IE7 is more standards conforming, it also created backwards compatibility issues of its own.

Just what I was going to say, a lot of people might still work for companies that block IE7

(as far as I know) MS disabled the block so that you can't stop it. The problem is that people haven't installed it because they don't know what it is, or what the stupid installer means. Gotta make it good for the neophyts and install it automatically.

I can't tell you how many machines I've seen with people hitting cancel every time it comes up from Windows Update.

IE 6 will be around for as long as Windows XP is.

John Galt wrote:

(I can't tell you how many machines I've seen with people hitting cancel every time it comes up from Windows Update.

Yes, I encounter them all the time. They won't allow Windows Update to run because they've heard that there are thingies on the internet that can cause security problems. Hence they leave their system exposed to every security issue known.

In all honesty, you can't blame the average punter for knowing so little about how their system works, and what they should be doing.

John Galt wrote:



(as far as I know) MS disabled the block so that you can't stop it.

Not true. If you use a patch management solution such as WSUS (and you really should) then you can block it by simply not approving it. If you don't, an Administrative user has to approve the installation before it can be installed.

There is also a registry key to prevent IE7 being offered as an update, though it doesn't block manual or WSUS installation by an administrator.

There are still a lot of corporate apps out there that have very real compatability issues with IE7 though, which I suspect is one of the biggest reasons that it's uptake hasn't been massive.