Nothing gets a web developer’s hackles up quite like older versions of Internet Explorer. The web browser we all love to hate still manages to hang around after all these years — in the case of IE 6, the persistence is strong enough that even Microsoft has a website dedicated to getting rid of it.

While almost no one likes older versions of IE, most of us still need to support it to varying degrees. Mobile web expert Peter-Paul Koch recently ended an informal survey of web developers asking them which versions of IE they supported, tested in and whether or not they charged extra to support older versions of IE.

The results — from nearly 18,000 replies (1,150 for the least answered question) — are surprising in several ways, like the fact that 2 percent of web developers surveyed still support IE 5.5.

MORE:  For Most, Supporting Older Versions of IE Remains a Necessity

In an enterprise environment, speed is simply one concern among many. There are bigger questions: How secure are these browsers, and how well do they keep users from getting viruses or visiting fraudulent websites? How often are they updated, and how easy is it to apply these updates to multiple managed systems? How important do the companies behind these browsers think that the enterprise is? We set out to compare Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera to answer these questions and more.

For our purposes, we’ll assume that all else is equal in your environment—that your shop doesn’t live and die by a particular Firefox add-on or an Intranet site that won’t render in anything that’s not Internet Explorer 6. If you’ve got extenuating circumstances that dictate which browser you use, as many businesses do, consider these facts if you’re trying to decide on a secondary or alternate browser for your systems.

READ MORE:

via Ars browser shootout: which Web browser is best for business?.