browsers (Photo credit: kjhosein)
What’s your browser of choice?
In today’s computing environment there are an abundance of different web browsers on the market. In my experience, most corporate websites are recommended to run from Internet Explorer, since they use particular activeX components and plugins. Many IT companies prefer only IE on the desktop since it’s easiest to manage as it’s built into the Windows desktop. There are also many “fat” and “thin” clients that base themselves on the IE framework – which means that many options in IE need to be tweaked, as well as added to specific trusted domains.
The trouble is that most websites often run best in self-contained browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. This makes it easy to add multiple plugins that can be quite useful for different tasks, or block specific scripts from running. It might also discourage viruses and malware from entering the desktop easily through ads or images.
Of course, the more browsers you support and the more plugins you add, the more complex your support model becomes and the more training your help desk people need (and the longer your incidents take to close).
What’s your company’s policy for browsers?
Do you allow 3rd party browsers on your desktops? (Other than IE or Safari).
Do you let users download their own browsers and plugins? Let us know in the comments!
-Liz
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We have a pretty liberal policy and are typically allowed to download any browser we choose however most people stick with the default (IE).
In my opinion use of browsers are directly depended on type of applications users are using. In few years we have seen drastic change in browser usage. Earlier IE use to be a first choice of corporate IT, because applications were developed for one browser. Now day’s applications are browser independent.
Having a liberal policy is way to go. We cannot stop users from having rich browsing experience with HTML 5 and CSS 3.
Not to forget we do not have set standards for website and applications development.
We allow users to use whatever browser they find fit, but we only offer official support for IE.