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.