The browser of choice?
Paul O'Dell
Helping businesses save money on and through effective IT systems and IT support and management
Until recently Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) was the browser of choice for most organisations. Indeed if you are working in the motor industry it was mandated by many of the manufacturers as the only browser they would support. This was great for both the end user and the IT Department. For the end user it meant a single browser that worked for everything, for the IT Department it meant only 1 browser to maintain.
Over the last year or two IE’s crown has slipped and we have seen various functions on manufacturer and service provider sites that require Mozilla FireFox or Google Chrome. In fact this week those of you working in the VW Group arena will have seen a requirement for one site needing IE 11, only to find another part of the same site will not work on IE 11. The suggested solution from the manufacturer is to use FireFox or Chrome for the new upgraded part of the site and IE 8 for the other part. This may be acceptable if it was the only website you ever access but with so many other websites requiring the latest version of IE leaving it on version 8 is probably not a viable solution.
With multiple browsers installed life starts to become complicated for the end user as they need to keep track of which browser they need to use for each site. For the IT Department it becomes equally as complicated as they need to install and update multiple browsers and they all want to become the default browser for the system.
At Inside I.T. Solutions we have ensured our customers IE versions have been automatically upgraded to 11 via their local servers. We also have systems to ensure all devices have the correct IE settings including which websites need to run in “compatibility view”. We have also automated software deployment for the installation and updating of additional browsers.
With Windows 10 on the horizon and IE being replaced with an entirely new browser service providers developers will surely have even more difficulty ensuring multiple browser compatibility and the list of browsers that IT Departments will have to support will have grown again.
How is this impacting your daily work process? How many browser do you have on your business computer and what is your browser of choice?