Forcing IE upgrades

On the one hand, this sounds like a good policy change from Microsoft.

'As we note each month, while the majority of Chrome and Firefox users are all using the newest version of those browsers, Internet Explorer has a large user base that's using old versions. Internet Explorer 8 is currently the most widely used version of the browser. Microsoft started making Internet Explorer updates automatic with Internet Explorer 9 and made them automatic from day one with Internet Explorer 10. The result was that versions 10 and 11 spread much more quickly than their predecessors. But unlike the competition, the carrot of better performance and standards compliance never had a corresponding stick of non-support.'

In some ways here, Microsoft is the victim of its own success. By its historic ownership of a huge swathe of the browser market, a lot of web-based apps were written for — and are still supported by — older versions of IE.  This is a huge problem for my company in fact, where we have older versions of apps that only work with, say, IE8 (and would cost a significant bundle to upgrade), or older custom apps (or discontinued commercial apps) that only work with IE8 and would be non-trivial to replace.  We've been making efforts, but it's definitely one of those "don't spend money until you absolutely have to" kind of situations.

Don't get me wrong — I think the goal's a good one. But it's not just laziness or ignorance that leaves a lot of IE8 out there in the world, and while forcing this upgrade will ultimately pay off, it won't be done without a lot of pain.