Browser Selection in Businesses

We all know what it's like at home: you find out that one of the browser manufacturers have released an upgrade. After a bit of "shall I overwrite my old browser with this new one" thinking, you bite the bullet. The thing installs, you check your own sites, and have a good surf around the Web to see how your new toy works. After that, it's a case of seeing what level of support the new browser has for CSS, XML, and so on, before either roundly applauding the work of the company concerned or deploring the fact that you've been waiting years for a particular feature to be supported only to find out that it still isn't!

"Browsers may not actually cost money to purchase, but there will be a cost to the business in terms of rolling it out."

Well, on an intranet it's often a bit different, usually slower. Businesses will always have their eye on the bottom line, and there will be plenty of other things further up the budget pecking order than a browser upgrade. Browsers may not actually cost money to purchase, but there will be a cost to the business in terms of rolling it out. It may be that it has to be packaged up in network distribution software, it will need testing before it is rolled out, and there will be the post-install support needed for all of the businesses non-tech people who are suddenly faced with a new bit of software that they don't recognize. In the grand scheme of things, you could well be fighting it out against Human Resource's desire for a nice glossy staff magazine, a business re-branding, or perhaps even an office refurbishment program.

In a large corporate environment, probably the only people really pushing for the installation of a new browser will be the people like us - the ones that design and develop intranets. You may well find that the attitude is that of "well, the existing browser works, the pages work, our people can see what they need to, so what's the big deal?". And if you take a step back from being a web professional for a bit, your colleagues are right. As frustrating as this is, deep down you know that you really can do without that CSS position:fixed or that you could probably find a workaround for something you've been wanting to use XML for.

Large organizations tend to have a central browser rollout - that is every computer attached to the network will get an updated browser at the same time. The larger the organization becomes the more complex, and prone to problems, this process is, and the time between upgrades lengthens. This means that you can be waiting several years to upgrade from, for example, Internet Explorer 5 to Internet Explorer 6 (missing out 5.5 altogether). In fact, what you might find is that you'll get a browser upgrade along with a new operating system, which will probably be Windows-based. So, if you're currently on Windows 2000 with IE5.5 keep those fingers crossed for IE6, or resign yourself to waiting for the successor of Windows XP and IE7+.

Unless you're the person in the company that decides what goes with the intranet, there will pretty much always be someone above you that has the final say on things. You'll hopefully be asked for your opinion, but the end decision may well not be what you wanted. This is why coding to standards is important. The Gecko-based browsers are much pickier when it comes to rendering code, which is a good thing. Internet Explorer on the other hand will happily ignore some errors and display the page, which can lull you into a false sense of security. If somebody else makes a decision to switch, your pages must be able to cope with it.

Modern businesses will tend to gravitate towards the known, which is why Windows is used predominately. This will usually mean that Internet Explorer is the browser of choice in this environment. It obviously makes sense to use a browser that integrates well with the operating system and is easily updatable.

However, not all organizations will be using Windows exclusively. If your company includes a design department, they may be working with Mac OS X, some organizations may have some brand of Solaris workstation. This disparity can mean that the IT department has opted for a browser that will be consistent on the majority of systems, or it may mean that you have an obscure mix of browsers. In this situation you may be forced to take account of more than one browser on more than one platform.