Here’s another reason to dust out the bomb shelter:
As we get close to the final availability of Internet Explorer 7, I want to provide an update on our distribution plans. To help our customers become more secure and up-to-date, we will distribute IE7 as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates (AU) shortly after the final version is released for Windows XP, planned for the fourth quarter of this year.
So… they’re just going to compel people to upgrade without any regard for whether Internet Explorer 7 is:
- Compatible with custom corporate applications, and
- Compatible with most sites on the web in general.
That’s spectacular. The bright side is this probably ensures job security for another five years or so.
Rusty, everyone will scream no matter which way we go on this. Web developers and designers desperately want us to make this a high-priority update; indeed, many have asked for it to be a critical update. We have provided a set of tools to allow corporate administrators to prevent the high-pri update; we have also been spending the last 6-9 months working on getting most web sites to BE compatible.
-Chris Wilson
Group Program Manager, IE Platform
I’m confused. Chris, in this interview with you, it sounded like you were saying just the opposite. So which is it?
Ooh, ooh! This is the part where I get to start off a comment with As a web developer…
You’re right, in that the panic this mandatory upgrade will likely cause ensures more work for me. Either that, or it will force companies confronted with the choice of making their sites Firefox-compliant or IE7-compliant to switch to Firefox.
But I’ve been wrong before…
Does that mean they’re actively getting webmasters to make their sites compatible, like, gestapo style? Or, is he really saying they’re making some honest effort to make IE7 compatible?
@Rusty
Oh so today every browser is the same and no on has to worry about the quirks in Safari, FireFox, Opera, Netscape, IE or PIE, but IE 7 will change all this?
AJenbo,
It’s the uncountable number of internal corporate apps that rely on IE6 and don’t run in any other browser that will be broken by a forced IE7 upgrade.
Just to clarify -
The full blog post you link to makes clear that users and enterprises will be able to choose whether to install IE7. AU delivery will provide users with options of Install, Don’t Install, and Ask Me Later. The blog has screenshots of the process.
Enterprises can continue using IE6 until they are ready to upgrade to IE7. Enterprises can either manage deployment of the update using their update management solution (such as WSUS or SMS) or, if they are using Automatic Updates, deploy a non-expiring blocker via Group Policy or script to prevent delivery to their users.
Marc Steiner - Windows Product Marketing Group
Marc,
I’m sure large enterprises with dedicated IT staff can handle blocking the upgrade fine, but what about smaller companies that don’t have a dedicated IT staff? …that, say, might be doing work for a larger company that uses an IE6-only app, but that has no way to immediately know that an upgrade might break their ability to do business with that client? Seems like it could be a big problem, particularly if rolling back to the older version is no more reliable than it’s been with MS products before.
Someone still has Automatic Updates enabled?
Companies can install their own update server, if i’m not mistaken, that sits behind a firewall–on which they can stop the mandatory udpate, if I’m not mistaken.
That’s why I use that “download and prompt to install” setting…
Some can ignore with pleasure another nusty M$ approach to force another ’standard’ called ‘IE7′ instead of giving a respect to Web Standards. What an affort, ‘6-9 month to ensure most of the web sites to BE compatible’?! Is it a joke, Chris? Or just ‘the big boy ignorance’?
I will stick to Mac OS X and ignore all this panic.
The company I work in uses custom web apps and a proxy server that doesn’t play well with IE7. We also use WSUS and SMS. We test MS hotfixes before we deploy them (you have to).
But nothing (this blocker tool nor the reg key) can prevent IE6 from occasionally forcing the user to visit the Windows Update site instead of the homepage. Users can easily click on Update, and IE7 will come down to their machine, breaking it.
I can block the Windows Update site on the proxy, but that isn’t practical.
What is the reg key setting that prevents IE from visiting the Window Update site occasionally?
Squidward, I think this page will help you out.