Chrome: When registering an account, the process seems to work until the end of the “wizard”, and then it errors out with a message of “Sorry, our system temporarily down for maintenance.” Works fine in Internet Explorer.

Chrome: When trying to administer the HP Laserjet 600 M602 printers and the HP Laserjet M4555 MFP, some features don’t function. Most work, but a few, like setting the email server, seem to complete, but the settings aren’t applied.

Chrome:  You enter your credentials, it prompts you with a security question. Correct answer to security question, but takes you right back to the main login screen. (rinse and repeat…). Works fine in IE9 without asking for the security question. Uggh… https://www.certify.com/Login.aspx

This is a very large site that works with IE7, IE8 and IE9, but is hit or miss with any other browsers. Some portions seem to work okay, with some strange anomalies. Others are completely unusable. The many different versions of Java runtime that are required have been a maintenance nightmare for IT as well. https://portal.covisint.com/web/portal/home (login required)

I follow the latest trends and opinions on web development very closely. I’m also a big believer in the latest, greatest technologies. I LOVE the newest tech!

Being a computer nerd, I own or have access to all kinds of devices, and on those devices I almost always have 3 or 4 web browsers installed. Typically it’s for cross browser testing, but mostly it’s just because I can.

In the web development community that I follow, when people mention IE7 or IE8, they groan, roll their eyes and typically respond with the, “Just upgrade to IE9″ or “Use Chrome/Firefox/Safari/(next popular browser here…)”

As a network engineer and web developer, I have a little different perspective on this. I’m constantly running into sites that I and my fellow employees require for their day to day jobs. I think a lot of developers believe that the problem is with custom written (old) apps that we have in house. But that isn’t the case. All of our incompatibilities are with sites that are public facing internet sites that anyone can access. I’ve run into a lot of them, and I’ve decided to start documenting them here.

Another issue that I have with the above argument is that corporate america wants to get as much life out of their computers as possible. As I write this, about 80% of our computers are over 4 years old and still run Windows XP SP3. That limits them to nothing more than IE8. Unless the system dies or there is a software requirement that pushes the upgrade of the computer, then they’ll keep using that system indefinitely. For our users that are running Windows 7 with IE9, I’m constantly telling users to switch to compatibility mode to get a site working.

So, it’s not as simple as most developer would have you believe. I wish we could run Chrome or Firefox on every system in the company, but that JUST isn’t the reality.

The customer support portal for Sage Software:  https://customers.sagenorthamerica.com/ displays this message when opened in Chrome:

It works in IE7, IE8 and IE9.

The account management page for the Wells Fargo multi-card https://www.centresuite.com/Centre/Public/Logon.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fCentre%2fDefault.aspx&site=multicard will only work with IE7 or IE8.  Uggh…