Browser Support and SAP CRM

My default Web Browser is still Internet Explorer 6.0. Not that I particularly like IE 6, I happen to have Firefox, Opera and Safari installed as well.

But, most of my customers still use IE6 and some of their(woefully unpatched) SAP CRM 4.0 and 5.0 IC WebClient Systems still require IE6.

A quick run down on IC WebClient browser support(all the versions support IE6) from the PAM:

• CRM 4.0 – IE7 has been released(11 July 2007) conditionally to the implementation of notes 986254, 1005093 and 981710.
• SAP CRM 5.0 – IE7  is supported with CRM 5.0 Support Pack 10 since 29 July 2007. Also note that the WebClient on IE7 with Vista will only be supported by 30 September 2008!
• SAP CRM 2007 – IE7 support came standard. Also, there is limited support for Firefox 2(This really works, except for the bloody ActiveX controls).

Bottom line, IE6 is still the most trusted and reliable browser to use with the WebClient.

Microsoft released IE7 in October 2006 and it took SAP 9 months to get the WebClient to work with it. It seems IE8 is in beta on its way later this year. Time will tell if the final version 8 will fix the bugs and be as standards compliant as promised.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with SAP developing the IC WebClient(and most of its other BSP Applications) only for IE6 as that was what 99% of its customers were using at the time(I have never seen anything other than IE on a corporate network). However, I imagine SAP spent a truck load of money to make its 3 supported CRM versions work with IE7. Now, IE8 is coming and I wonder how much it will cost SAP to provide IE8 support.

My hope is that SAP realizes that by chasing compatibility for individual browser editions is inefficient. Developing to a standard such as XHTML, wasn’t feasible 2 years ago, but it surely must become the development direction now.

And there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to display SAP Notes(also a BSP application) with a relatively standards compliant browser such as Opera. By the way, Opera is not supported for any HTMLB based BSP applications, so this is not a CRM specific issue.

A final thought relating to the screenshot above. Why should SAP completely bomb me out if I use an unsupported browser? Why not just run the page and see what happens? Its not as if I am going to log a message about it as the PAM clearly omits Opera as a supported platform.