It looks like SharePoint 2010 will be the death knell for Internet Explorer 6. 

As a long-term developer of Sharepoint solutions for government and commercial clients, something that Webworld Technologies has been watching with interest are the client and server requirements for the upcoming SharePoint 2010 release. 

One of those requirements will have quite a heavy impact on those in the government and business world that have standarized on IE6, but have not corporately moved on to newer versions of Internet Explorer. 

Microsoft has stated on their SharePoint 2010 site that (in a surprise) they will be discontinuing support for IE6, but will be supporting Firefox 3.x and better. 

This will have curious repercussions on both developers, but also those looking to deploy SharePoint solutions to their organization.  

For one, a lack of IE6 support means that IT divisions will finally need to really buckle down and decide on rolling forward to official IE7 or IE8 support, or <gasp> even Firefox support – as many organizations have grown into their SharePoint deployments to a point where they are integral to the very soul of their organizations data flow.

Mobile Implications

But even more interesting than the lack of IE6 support on SharePoint 2010 is the addition of Firefox support.  This opens the door to a bevy of potential mobile deployments and mobile templates for SharePoint 2010.  Windows Mobile devices are the only ones that run Internet Explorer, but this may be the big break that the mobile version of Firefox needs to really take off with business users.  Just think of the number of applications a fully-functional version of SharePoint would have to mobile users – opens a broad range of possibilities.

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