No, goshdarnit, I can’t upgrade my browser

In the “something that irritates me” department….

At work, I am stuck using IE6. I get messages all the time about “upgrading my browser”, and there are a few sites that don’t allow me on at all (thankfully none work-related, just sites I run across at lunch or on breaks). It’s a well-meaning attempt to get people to upgrade, but sometimes, for various reasons, the end-user has no choice but to use an elderly browser.

With me, for example, if I have to access something on the internet during work hours, I can either use my work computer, or I can use Dolphin, my current browser-of-choice, on my cellphone. Dolphin is pretty good for a mobile browser, but it has the same limitation as any mobile browser, which is a small screen. It has limited-to-no-flash support. My work IE is outdated (and has censorware to boot), but I don’t have to squint.

(And as an aside to Google? It’s more than a bit sucky that phones running Android, your own operating system, cannot edit word processing documents in Google Docs. And I would have embraced Wave had it been way more mobile-friendly.)

But this is not the first time where I’ve been stuck on an older program. I remember that for the longest time, I was stuck on dialup on an elderly Mac Color Classic. I was forever going nuts because Eudora did not like HTML email and my computer did not not do then-modern browsers. (I also was tying up the phone line and annoying relatives until I convinced them to do broadband.) Thing is, for one reason or another, people and companies forget that not everybody can use the latest browser. I don’t mind a small reminder, but I get tired of the large banners and the sites I can’t use because of choices I can’t make.

Crossposted from Ramblings Yet Once More here.