David M Smith

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David Mitchell Smith
VP & Gartner Fellow
16 years at Gartner
30 years IT industry

David Mitchell Smith is a vice president and Gartner Fellow in Gartner Research, where he specializes in the impact of catalytic technologies such as the Internet, Web 2.0, cloud computing and consumer technologies. Read Full Bio

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Browsers in the Cloud?

by David M. Smith  |  March 19, 2009  |  Comments Off

Taking in all the news and ambiance at MIX09, one thing struck me as I was watching the first day keynote. The first actual product or tool discussed was something called Expression SuperView, a tool that allows web developers to view their pages in multiple browsers side-by-side. Eventually it will support other browsers, but for now it works with, as you might expect, IE6, 7 and 8.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on the issues many of our clients are facing as they start to seriously look at moving off of Windows XP (which means moving off of IE6). Clients can see the entire piece on www.gartner.com called “IE6 Apps are Windows XP Apps so treat them that way in migration planning”. In it, I explore possible solutions for those stuck in IE6 prison. Watching the keynote and hearing about how this tool is implemented suggested another possible option. This tool uses a way of running the IE6 app in the cloud, a necessity since it is not possible to have multiple IE versions installed simultaneously and there is no way to run IE6 on Vista or Windows 7.

Could running IE6 in the cloud be another option? Does running browsers in the cloud make any sense at all? I used to think not. But now, maybe.

Is IE6 dependence holding you back from moving off of XP?

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