NASAdude's Journal: Penn State tells users to drop IE

This article submission was rejected (12/10/04 12:54p), so I guess I'll put it here. Maybe someone will still find it interesting.

On Wednesday (12/8/04), Penn State University announced that users should switch from using Microsoft Internet Explorer to another browser. The College of Engineering recommends its faculty/staff/students switch to Firefox, with Safari as an alternative. Also mentioned are Mozilla, Netscape Communicator, and Opera.

Here's a better news article: The Chronicle of Higher Education (only available to non-subscribers for 5 days from post-date). It's also covered on ZDnet.

The notice is receiving criticism among PSU IT personnel at various levels within the university. (Listserv archive URL omitted to prevent the slashdot effect.)

1. Some wonder why they weren't given a heads-up on the recommendation to prepare for the onslaught of user calls and emails.
2. Another criticized that only IE has tools for enterprise management, making patching 500+ installations of Firefox or any other "alternative" browser impractical. In reply, someone mentioned using MSI files for installing (and updating?) Firefox, which can be forcibly pushed to domain users by Active Directory.
3. Another person wondered how many users will voluntarily change to a non-IE browser after receiving this notice (even if Firefox is pushed to all users), considering that IE must remain installed for compatibility with a few critical websites (some at PSU, some outside). This brought up the question of why any service would be developed that isn't cross-platform/browser-compatible.

Also noteworthy:
EIS webpage (updated on 12/7/04, a day before the news release (coincidence?)). Summary: Firefox is not a supported browser in EIS.

I get shot down from time to time

[adaminnj]

I know how you feel and I gave you a mod up as underrated, some times I feel shanked by the admin / editors but I don't let it get me to down.

Thanks

[NASAdude]

Thanks for the sentiment.

I'll admit I was whining a bit when I posted my comment [slashdot.org] on the other person's accepted article [slashdot.org].

What surprised me about the rejection was that my article was a lot more informative, had more links, and (in my opinion) linked to articles that gave better coverage and analysis of the situation. I felt that I had wasted a lot of time putting together all the information (including internal comments by PSU IT folks) in a clean, well-organized article when I found out it was rejected.