neuro-designs

I was on a meeting today, and together with our client, we went up to a discussion on why their new redesigned website should support IE6. Yes, you read it right, IE6.

Apparently, although based on worldwide statistics, IE6 users around the world are declining, the number of users visiting our client’s website is swarmed by IE6 users. Most of these are probably and are most likely corporate employees browsing the site using their office PCs. Worse than that, some even still use Windows ME with IE5.5. Even worse than that, some of our client’s clients from countries abroad such as Singapore, still suffer from the same conditions. Not to mention that some free browsing terminals in Changi Airport still use IE6 as well. That’s pretty surprising for the best airport in the world.

So based on this peculiar fact. We came up with several conclusions on most corporate IT departments:

• They usually don’t care about the vulnerability of IE6.
• They try to keep the costs low by using softwares with lower versions (which doesn’t make sense at all, as for example, IE7 is a free update for licensed Windows users, and fundamentally, the IT department should upgrade to better and more efficient equipments over time).
• They don’t want to go through all that hassle on upgrading an office floor full of outdated PCs. This is purely an excuse.
• They simply don’t know that there are many better browsers that conforms to web-standards exist out there. Most of them would just use whatever they have out of the box. This happens a lot when the IT department employees are not filtered perfectly for their knowledge. Lucky for Mac users, Apple provided Safari. And lucky for Linux users, the default browsers are definitely far superior than IE6.

I said to myself, this is pathetic. While the technology that’s been applied to international industries are going forward and the rest of the world is now starting to conform to web standards, most Asian IT departments are just plain too ignorant to even grasp the concept. I can understand if this happens on underdeveloped regions, where downloading FireFox for example is too much of a hassle, they have no broadband connection, or their PCs are just too old to take modern software at their full potential. But when it goes to offices that can afford paying for reasonable PCs with multiple licensed Windows XPs, still having IE6 as their default browsers and ignorant about it is just pathetic. Seriously pathetic.

Therefore, as a design company that relies mostly on technology, along with this post (And hopefully, some of outdated IT departments read this), let me tell you that the internet technology is moving forward, and people are constantly getting themselves connected. This is also the ideal step that your company should plan (Or what you should consider advise to your Board of Directors) since we’re no longer live in the 20th century. So let me help you with this. If your company’s PCs run Windows XP, the least you can do is to upgrade to IE7. It’s free. The second thing you can do is to use more secure and modern browsers, such as FireFox, Safari, Opera, or Chrome. And yes, in case you didn’t know, they are free as well and they don’t add any cost to your IT operations budget if that’s what you’re worrying about.

For goodness’ sake, you are the IT department, you are the ones who should tell your company what modern technology is like. And shouldn’t it be IT guys telling designers what technology is like, and not the other way around?