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by KB 6176 days ago
The largest IE6 population work wise is the US Government and they have little to no intention of upgrading to anything else anytime soon.

I'm currently stuck in the hell of developing web applications for government contracts that are targeted to IE6. For example... No multi css class support in IE6, which kills lots of JS libs. Horrible stuff.

1 comments

You MIGHT be right, but I do web application development for government, and I was recently surprised when my new laptop was delivered with IE8 on the standard image.

For this particular agency, EDS is their GSS provider, so if EDS is incorporating IE8 into their ESA image, I wouldn't expect that it's too far off at other agencies they provide general support services for.

Of course, now I've got to make all the apps I've written work in IE6 AND IE8, alongside Firefox, which they're also piloting. I'm pleased at their progress, while staying wary of all the work it's going to bring my way.

That's promising to hear. I worked IT for a large government contractor for years and it often took long amounts of time to roll out new images to the whole company. Considering the average lease time of 3 years, a full IE8 rollout could certainly take time.

I was especially surprised to hear about the piloting of Firefox. Is there a site somewhere to keep up on technology rollouts across the different US Gov't agencies? Or at least the ones EDS provides support for?

It's probably 'sensitive' information, as knowledge of the underlying tech gives the bad guys a guide on what to target, or at least that would be the ISSO friendly answer.

I don't know of anything that trends across gov, but if you had tie-ins with DOD, they'd probably give you the answer for that, as most of the other agencies I've dealt with sort of fall in line with them.