Being reliant on IE6 as one’s sole gateway to the Internet, rather than Firefox 3 and a panoply of Net-enabled applications, is like borrowing your deadbeat cousin’s old junker while your car is in the shop — it’s slow, noisy, and there’s a distinct odor of cat urine wafting up from the back seat.
“Do you mind if I delete these browser profiles while trying to diagnose your machine?” Not at all. Do you mind if I dump all the contents of your desktop and drawers into a box while I try to clean your windows? I’ll give you the box back afterwards, I promise.
Hey, is Joe-Bob in the office today? I don’t know, because I use YIM to see if they’re online AND THAT DOESN’T WORK RIGHT NOW.
Hey, I wonder how that particular function in Excel works? I don’t know because EXCEL’S INTERNAL HELP SYSTEM CAN’T ACCESS THE BLOODY INTERNET, EITHER.
Repeat after me: If it’s affecting Excel, IT PROBABLY DOESN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH MY FIREFOX SETTINGS. Ditto for Word, YIM, and GTalk.
Okay, problem seems (based on Security group’s puzzlement) to not be policy based. They are going to run a scanner on my machine to see what the difficulty is. Though … there may be some indication that it’s due to my having previously been running the Symantic Firewall — which I turned off and uninstalled a few months back because it kept blocking stuff it shouldn’t. Why would there be a sudden change?
Tune in next time …
Ummmm…
So why haven’t you upgraded to IE8? That would seem to me to be the easiest fix to your problems.
Or at lest ie 7. Especially if it’s effecting excel or other ms products.
You don’t have to use it, but I would bet its bet it’s because newer MS software is tied to newer MS browsers…and frankly ie6 should be wiped from existence.
If it makes you feel better ie8 is actually more standards compliant (unlike 7) but as a web designer I understand your reluctance.
Then go back to the goodness that is firefox.
Only IE6 is “official” in the company. I have no idea whether some of the few programs that I’ve had to use IE for (rather than FF) would work properly in IE7.
But … now the problem has been solved, so I can go back to FFy goodness.
Yeah! it’s solved. ie6 company standards are really really dumb. But yeah, easier for IT to control.
I managed to convince my company to upgrade so I wouldn’t have to design websites for it anymore. It’s seems to be easier to get them to go to the next version of ie then to FF.
It’s mostly legacy stuff that was programmed once upon a time, ActiveX-dependent bits, etc. The list has actually shortened, but in a company with tens of thousands of computers around the world and different business units, such standards are probably the best idea, even if individually irksome.
Fact is, I never ask for assistance with FF, and never would ask anyone to diagnose a strictly FF issue. In this case, I wouldn’t have asked the help desk to assist, save that it was affecting other programs, too.
Dave, I saw this today and thought of you.
Excellent.