[HN Gopher] Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially o...
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Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
Author : alexobenauer
Score : 415 points
Date : 2022-06-15 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.windows.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.windows.com)
| layer8 wrote:
| I've still been using IE11 up to now by default (for the websites
| it still renders adequately, with Firefox as a fallback --
| there's a "Open current page in Firefox" add-in), for the
| following reasons:
|
| - crisper and higher-contrast font rendering on low-DPI monitors
|
| - Ctrl+N/Ctrl+K clone the current tab into a new window/tab
| including its history, letting you "fork" the tab and effectively
| navigate a history tree. Edit: And, maybe more importantly,
| opening a link in new window/tab also clones the history.
|
| - generally good keyboard usage, e.g. for the history tab (you
| can for example always blindly hit Ctrl+H, Home, Enter to go to
| the last visited page, something which is more fiddly in other
| browsers)
|
| - larger viewport height than possible on Chrome/Firefox/Edge
| (after hiding the toolbar and status bar, configuring tabs to be
| on the address bar, etc.)
|
| - allows yellow search highlighting (which Firefox doesn't on
| light backgrounds)
| user_7832 wrote:
| On a similar note IE and legacy Edge (non-chromium) had/still
| have _unparalleled_ snappy scrolling (on touchpads). I really
| wish I had never used those browsers because nothing today
| compares to it. UWP apps have decent scrolling, but these old
| browsers were _something else_ (apparently they took every
| touchpad movement for scrolling or something, I 'm not sure
| what that means. If anyone from MS would like to chime in I'd
| be grateful!)
| layer8 wrote:
| Right, even scrolling by keyboard feels more snappy to me on
| IE.
| Liquid_Fire wrote:
| > - Ctrl+N/Ctrl+K clone the current tab into a new window/tab
| including its history, letting you "fork" the tab and
| effectively navigate a history tree.
|
| You can do this in Firefox by middle (or Control) clicking the
| Reload button.
| mister_tee wrote:
| In Chrome those mouse actions work as well, or right-clicking
| a tab and selecting "Duplicate." I'm not sure if there's a
| keyboard command for it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Unfortunately there is no keyboard shortcut, and no option to
| open it in a new window (which is what I usually want). Also,
| what I initially forgot to mention, opening a link in new
| window/tab in IE also clones the history.
| wonderbore wrote:
| You are now banned from Hacker News.
| layer8 wrote:
| Currently karma is still positive. :D
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Curiously enough, IE is also the only one that allows properly
| selecting and copying CSS-generated content (i.e. both
| quotation marks added via "quotes:" as well as general free-
| form text added via "content:").
|
| Firefox does some semi-functional hack for handling quotation
| marks, but gives up on "content:", while Chrome and all other
| Blink-based browsers don't handle that kind of text at all and
| just skip it entirely. (No idea about Safari, but given its
| shared rendering engine history with Chrome it presumably
| doesn't handle it, either.)
| [deleted]
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| sad day, the day that we have one less web browser
|
| only webkit is left
|
| the king is dead, long live the king.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| what about Gecko?
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| I think that Gecko is more dead than IE 11, 3% of people use
| it, versus 0.3% using IE11, but those Gecko people will move
| to chrome, while the 0.3% people using IE11 will never move
| due to enterprise reasons.
| bombcar wrote:
| When Microsoft decided to cede the browser to Chrome with
| Edge it was clear they don't believe a browser to be an
| important part of their current strategy.
|
| If they had wanted to stop IE but keep competing they would
| have made Edge a Gecko-based browser and worked on it.
| sbf501 wrote:
| Many countries that access my company site still use some version
| of IE (France and Japan come to mind). But they are still on Win7
| too.
| err4nt wrote:
| Being in web development since 2004, I both thought the day would
| never arrive, and would have arrived a lot sooner than 2022.
| Tech-wise, there were times when IE was advanced, often in non-
| standard ways, but it was innovative. There are other ways where
| it was a major thorn in the side of every web developer and
| required much extra attention and care. And yet, since about 2014
| or 2015, the world of web standards had caught up to and
| surpassed IE in every area. So here's to a surprisingly
| bittersweet farewell
| zdragnar wrote:
| Back in the early 2010's, one of our more amusing interview
| questions for front-end developers was "What is your favorite
| thing about Internet Explorer?".
|
| We never really used the answer against anyone if they couldn't
| think of anything, but the advent of XHR and other improvements
| offered was something a lot of developers had already forgotten
| about, and it was interesting to see various responses and
| reactions.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Celebrate good times!
| Mattmrmatt wrote:
| Bye bye IE and thank you!
| charles_f wrote:
| I didn't realize that it was still alive, and that some devs were
| still maintaining it. I am wondering if there were still apps out
| there in the corp world that would only work with ie11, even if
| just for blocking other agents.
| logifail wrote:
| Q: What about the Internet Explorer versions that shipped in the
| Windows 10 LTSC[0], most (all?) of which are very much still "in
| support"[1]?
|
| [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/ltsc/ [1]
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/windows#what-...
| currysausage wrote:
| Ctrl+F is your friend: "For certain versions of Windows
| currently in-support and used in critical environments, we will
| continue to support Internet Explorer on those versions until
| they go out of support. These include all currently in-support
| Windows 10 LTSC releases (including IoT) and all Windows Server
| versions, as well as Windows 10 China Government Edition,
| Windows 8.1, and Windows 7 with Extended Security Updates
| (ESUs). Future versions of these editions will not include
| Internet Explorer."
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Windows 10 China Government Edition
|
| https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/05/23/annou.
| ..:
|
| > The Windows 10 China Government Edition is based on Windows
| 10 Enterprise Edition, which already includes many of the
| security, identity, deployment, and manageability features
| governments and enterprises need. The China Government
| Edition will use these manageability features to remove
| features that are not needed by Chinese government employees
| like OneDrive, to manage all telemetry and updates, and to
| enable the government to use its own encryption algorithms
| within its computer systems.
| hbn wrote:
| I love how their new hardware announcement is just tacked
| onto the end of the announcement of Windows 10 China
| Government Edition.
|
| Why would you even announce something like this in a cute
| PR blog post? Only thing I could think of is it's to
| impress shareholders with the fact that they're trusted by
| a rich and powerful government organization. Maybe that's a
| good enough reason alone.
| kingcharles wrote:
| LOL. That's the first time I've heard of that. I thought I
| had access to all Windows 10 versions, but that one's not
| on my access list. Includes its own _special_ encryption
| algorithms. Oh boy!
| aquova wrote:
| Slightly tangential, but does this mean that Wine prefixes will
| no longer need to include Internet Explorer? If you ever go
| digging through a Wine prefix's Program Files, there are a
| handful of default Windows applications, including IE and Windows
| Media Player. I've never been really sure why my Steam library is
| filled with a dozen copies of IE, but I'm curious if they will
| still be added.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Well, there's Internet Explorer as the complete browser, but
| there's also the rendering engine behind it that's still needed
| to power the web browser controls used by all sorts of
| applications. If I'm understanding things right by default Wine
| emulates it using Gecko, but you can still install the original
| Microsoft DLLs for maximum compatibility.
|
| Likewise on Windows itself, Microsoft will have to continue
| shipping IE's rendering engine for backwards compatibility with
| all those programs using the old web view control (as well as
| Edge's hidden IE11-mode).
| netr0ute wrote:
| Ironically, Wine has better support for older programs than
| Windows itself. Therefore, why would they remove backwards
| compat and get rid of a major selling point?
| xutopia wrote:
| So much effort from Microsoft to take over the web. They spent so
| much money and time on hurting all other browsers and web
| standards and for what?
| wonderbore wrote:
| Money?
| brainyz wrote:
| RIH
| maxpert wrote:
| // One last time remembering IE6
|
| var request = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
| effnorwood wrote:
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| MOSTLY.
|
| > Windows releases where Internet Explorer will still be
| available after June 15, 2022, include Windows 7 ESU, Windows
| 8.1, and all versions of Windows 10 LTSC client, IoT, and Server.
|
| > "The Internet Explorer (IE) 11 desktop application will end
| support for Windows 10 semi-annual channel starting June 15,
| 2022," Microsoft says on the IE11 lifecycle page.
|
| > As Microsoft further explains, "for supported operating
| systems, Internet Explorer 11 will continue receiving security
| updates and technical support for the lifecycle of the Windows
| version on which it is installed."
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/internet-exp...
|
| I gotta say... MS is serious about long-term support commitments
| and backwards compat!
| Sunspark wrote:
| I've never quite understood this MS policy of "ending support"
| but continuing support anyway for extended support contract
| customers or for specific versions, etc.
|
| The way I look at it, MS obviously is actually continuing to
| support the product, they are just choosing not to make it
| available to most people. It's still supported, just not for
| everyone.
|
| I feel that if security patches are still being produced, they
| should be released as opposed to expecting people to use
| nothing, or roll their own by getting patches from a third
| party.
|
| They could be released as "donations" to the public good from
| the big customers.
| CptJupiterNorth wrote:
| The more people using your old software legitimately, the
| more people you have to tell that the bug they found isn't a
| security issue worthy of your time. Plus it's a kick in the
| pants to get organizations who can to upgrade.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| At least Canonical and SUSE are doing the same with their
| extended support contracts. The patches are being produced,
| you just have to pay for them.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I wonder if it is because customer-specific patches break
| parts of the software that most users use, to make it easier
| to fix the bugs the customer cares about.
|
| But more than likely it is because deploying to that 1
| customer is always going to be easier that deploying it
| publically.
| krylon wrote:
| As I recall (vaguely) Microsoft did release a few security
| fixes for Windows XP and Windows 7 after their respective
| ends-of-lives on a case-by-case basis when the security issue
| was especially bad.
|
| I am by no means a fan of Microsoft's, but when you release
| an OS and some applications and provide security fixes for
| ten years, asking for people who want to continue using that
| OS/app beyond that point to buy a support contract is not a
| complete dick move. In the FLOSS world, you may get
| volunteers who maintain a piece of software as a labor of
| love, but with something like Windows or IE, someone needs to
| pay people to do that work.
|
| It might make sense to create something like a foundation to
| take care of the long term support for software, which would
| benefit everyone. I'm kind of surprised actually that this
| has not happened, yet (to my knowledge, at least).
| night-rider wrote:
| As the old meme goes: Internet Explorer was the first step to
| downloading Chrome or Firefox on a new computer.
| some-guy wrote:
| The large enterprise outfit I work for has 8% IE11 usage still,
| almost all of which is in Korea. Our customers there go out of
| their way to not use Edge on their machines.
| kriro wrote:
| The question is why? I want to put on my tin foil hat and
| speculate about Korean knowledge of Edge 0-days (maybe North
| Korea is known to hoard those for some reason) but then again
| if you have edge 0-days it's probably trivial to get IE11
| ones.
| Mixtape wrote:
| The answer is that a lot of companies and services in Korea
| require ActiveX, thereby making IE the de facto option for
| a majority of their users.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_compatibility_issues_in
| _...
| binbag wrote:
| Only after they were released. Many users used IE daily. It was
| fine until we had better options.
| Agamus wrote:
| I am eternally grateful to IE for shoving me early and squarely
| to the Linux/FOSS side.
|
| Thank you, IE - and good riddance!
| geniium wrote:
| kthxbye
| wonderbore wrote:
| Is this Groundhog Day? How many more times will IE be declared
| dead? Official support is irrelevant if the browser is still
| stubbornly used by users. Most websites have moved on more than 5
| years ago.
|
| This news is meaningless. This confirms it:
|
| > For supported operating systems, Internet Explorer 11 will
| continue receiving security updates and technical support for the
| lifecycle of the Windows version on which it is installed.
|
| From https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/internet-
| expl...
| oaiey wrote:
| In conservative IT businesses like hospitals this date is a
| deal breaker: No more security updates. In consequence IT will
| switch it off immediately. Guess why edge has an IE Mode.
| yread wrote:
| That's not what conservative means. My conservative hospital
| client recently downgraded to Windows 7! If you pay MS enough
| you get security updates no problem. Not to mention that even
| the less conservative are probably on Windows 10 LTSC where
| IE11 will keep running
| wonderbore wrote:
| Microsoft made the mistake of letting users keep IE11 next
| to Edge. Egregious.
|
| Having a IE mode for whitelisted websites would have killed
| IE11 on public internet a long time ago.
|
| "Website broken? Click here to try IE11 mode."
|
| But no, IE is still on the desktop and people will use it
| for both intranet and internet
| snarkyturtle wrote:
| There are two things that differentiate this from other
| announcements: They're disabling certain versions of IE and
| redirecting users to Edge [1] and the global usage of IE is
| far, far, lower than it was even a couple of years ago.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/15/microsoft...
| timeimp wrote:
| Does anyone work in an "enterprise" environment who have been
| dreading this day?
|
| Any apps / mainframes / industrials systems that _needs_ IE to
| run?
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| I used it to authenticate against some webdav intranet sites
| hosted on Sharepoint Online. Formerly on a SSO standard windows
| AD integrated system you needed to open internet explorer once.
| It did some arcane voodoo in the background you didn't need to
| do anything with it, just close it again. But if you did that
| you could connect to Sharepoint sites through the file explorer
| via webdav. This process needed to be repeated every other week
| when the arcane voodoo authentication needed to be refreshed.
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| Probably getting you a kerberos ticket (which would
| subsequently be available to other services like explorer).
| Hitting it with another browser (which need to be configured
| to use Kerberos) probably led to an NTLM auth in response to
| the Negotiate header. NTLM isn't a global credential and
| doesn't get a kerberos ticket.
| vetinari wrote:
| Both Firefox and Chrome can get the kerberos ticket
| themselves, but it is necessary to whitelist sites that can
| use spnego. For Firefox, the settings are separate for ntlm
| and spnego, so one can be disabled and the other
| whitelisted.
|
| Interestingly, Edge for Linux doesn't support spnego at
| all.
| ehPReth wrote:
| not dreading it, but we do have a couple of older photocopiers
| (with no fw updates) that won't let us do things like add
| emails to the address book without IE
| smm11 wrote:
| I need it to access my firewall.
|
| Yeah.
| baud147258 wrote:
| the software I'm working on still supports IE, but after years
| of pushing for it, in 2020 management let us start work on
| supporting Chrome/Edge. Though we'll have to see how our
| automated testing suite will be impacted by those redirections
| (FTA: "opening Internet Explorer will progressively redirect
| users to Microsoft Edge with IE mode."), because we're still
| testing with IE, though that's also planned to be phased out
| this summer.
| thetinguy wrote:
| Yes I use some ancient version of sharepoint and the edit in
| word button only worked in IE.
| [deleted]
| daigoba66 wrote:
| FWIW I don't think this changes anything, as those same usages
| often run on out-of-support versions of Windows too that are
| never updated. It usually doesn't matter - if it works, then it
| works.
| night-rider wrote:
| If there are legacy systems that would be too expensive to tear
| down and modernise, then some form of regulatory fine should be
| implemented to stop this. There is no excuse for running IE
| anywhere these days, especially now after this news which puts
| the final nail in the coffin.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Are you joking? Why would you punish people for using old
| tech?
| night-rider wrote:
| It's a liability. The problem with security measures is
| that there is no immediate reward, but a few years down the
| line and you get ransomware'd you would want to have
| replaced legacy systems with modernised software and
| hardware. You need to weigh the cost of modernisation
| versus getting embarrassingly pwned.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Ah I understand now.
|
| A fine is a bad idea since companies should be able to
| take risk freely as long as this risk isn't socialized. I
| don't get fined for leaving my door unlocked, because it
| is my prerogative whether I take that risk. If risky
| behaviour affects others, then fines would be appropriate
| (e.g. managing customer data)
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| We frequently encounter legacy industrial automation
| applications that use IE inside an ActiveX container. There are
| a few third-party apps that attempt to bundle Chrome or Edge
| inside an ActiveX object, but we've had limited success.
| electroly wrote:
| We have one third party app that requires IE. I opened Visual
| Studio, dropped a WebBrowser control onto a form, and voila:
| I've got IE again, even on Windows 11. I pushed the app out and
| it works great. I figure we've got years until this breaks
| again.
| gertlex wrote:
| HP Alm seemed to require IE where I work in the past 6 months.
| I told the person asking me to use HP Alm that I had no way of
| installing IE, with insinuations that the ask was BS.
|
| Probably outdated version or not a hard requirement...
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I support an enterprise Java app that uses SWT, and some
| clients _may_ still be using IE for the embedded i-frames,
| depending on their OS. But I think we have a way of overriding
| the registry and forcing the IE version, if it comes to that.
| frumper wrote:
| Edge has an IE mode
| izzydata wrote:
| At my office we use this software called Application Lifecycle
| Management that still requires Internet Explorer. Apparently
| they made some kind of containerized IE launcher for it. I
| suppose that was easier than porting it to a modern browser.
| prmoustache wrote:
| >Application Lifecycle Management that still requires
| Internet Explorer.
|
| That is so ironic. Love it.
| kemotep wrote:
| I support an EMR running on AIX that is accessed through a Java
| Web applet that only works with Internet Explorer. Since you
| cannot install Java in any other modern browser, IE mode works
| on Windows 10 but not 11. The menus and setting you need to
| configure just do not exist in Edge and without the full
| Internet Options menu from IE, the site cannot load.
|
| The vendor allegedly has an update coming soon to allow other
| browsers to work.
| smm11 wrote:
| The bigger deal here is that you have an AIX-based EMR in
| 2022.
| isp wrote:
| All versions of Windows Server are (for now) unaffected, i.e.,
| Internet Explorer 11 continues to run [1].
|
| There is also "Internet Explorer Mode" in Edge, which uses
| iexplore.exe under the hood.
|
| Additionally, if somebody were _really_ desperate to launch
| iexplore.exe itself, then there are unsupported means to do so.
|
| For example, via manually modifying the registry key
| "NotifyDisableIEOptions" under
| HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet
| Explorer\Main\
|
| My favourite hack though, which should not be used by anyone
| ever, is launching via the COM object interface, which bypasses
| the registry key check [2]. I have personally verified that
| this works(!)
|
| [1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-
| blog/i...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/aaaddress1/status/1523590203658862592
| Jaruzel wrote:
| If one is desperate, there is also the option of the classic
| Webview control in Visual Studio (or even the old VB6
| version) which with little bit of UI added around it, can
| substitute for the real IE for certain enterprise legacy
| webapps.
|
| A bit more effort, can also lock the control to only browse
| to the intended web service, and launch the default browser
| for any external links.
|
| There's kind of a market for this type of solution in the
| legacy enterprise app space I think.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| omnibrain wrote:
| You can even use a registry key (per Application using the
| WebView control) to specify the function level/version to
| emulate.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| these WebView on VB6 isn't the IE6 engine ?
| Jaruzel wrote:
| No it's a wrapper around the installed version of IE.
|
| As a sibling comment stated, you use the registry to tell
| the WebView what version of IE you want to emulate (on a
| per app basis).
| pavlov wrote:
| There was a time in 1998-99 when Internet Explorer 4 / 5 was
| actually the best browser by far. Netscape 4 was unstable and had
| completely botched all the fancy new features: its implementation
| of CSS (brand new at the time) was so bad that even font sizes
| didn't work right, its homegrown "layers" API for JavaScript DOM
| access was awful, and many web developers were wishing they could
| somehow get away with only supporting IE.
|
| 25 years after the release of IE4, I'm just glad both of those
| browser codebases are now dead.
|
| IE was really done in by Microsoft's "Longhorn" OS project. After
| Windows XP, Microsoft was planning a very ambitious update that
| would completely reset core APIs. File systems would be largely
| replaced by an OS-level database, and the Win32 GUI API would be
| replaced by an XML-based UI framework codenamed Avalon.
|
| A new Avalon browser would ship with the OS, and thus IE + HTML
| would become legacy technologies as Microsoft confidently assumed
| most developers would flock to building their web apps in Avalon
| instead.
|
| To Microsoft strategists, it seemed that they had succeeded in
| containing the web: Netscape was dead, Mozilla had almost no
| users, Apple was shipping their IE in Mac OS X, Google wasn't on
| Microsoft's radar, and the HTML standard process was stalled. So
| while a lot of content was being delivered as HTML4, there didn't
| seem to be any reason left for Microsoft to invest in IE --
| they'd already nailed the browser, owned the market, and would
| push Avalon as the next step.
|
| Fortunately, Longhorn failed. Some parts of the project
| eventually shipped years late as Windows Vista. Avalon became WPF
| + XAML and still exists in Windows, but the dream of a XAML
| browser replacing IE was dead.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| > There was a time in 1998-99 when Internet Explorer 4 / 5 was
| actually the best browser by far.
|
| Especially the Mac version of IE 5. Tasman was such a breath of
| fresh air. I never understood why they didn't use that engine
| everywhere.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The obvious reason is that the people with decision-making
| power actively wanted people to be locked in to Internet
| Explorer (and so Windows), so Tasman's improved standards-
| compliance was a negative.
| hulitu wrote:
| > There was a time in 1998-99 when Internet Explorer 4 / 5 was
| actually the best browser by far
|
| Only as a preview for web 3. Netscape, even when crashing, was
| faster and more user friendly. Error messages in IE were
| surrealistic. Unfortunately those are today standard in todays
| browsers.
| bombcar wrote:
| Internet Explorer was first released on August 16, 1995 -
| couldn't they have kept support for two more months!
| DrBazza wrote:
| Having lived through the MS/IE6 era of being the monopoly web
| browser, and effectively determined and held back web standards
| for a long time, it's bittersweet that we now have Google/Chrome
| era.
|
| At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going
| through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into their
| OSes any more.
|
| Oh wait.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going
| through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into
| their OSes any more.
|
| Welcome to the most popular OS in the world, called 'Android'.
| hda111 wrote:
| Look like browsers can only exist as monopoly.
| grishka wrote:
| All the standards required to render the modern web are too
| complex to be implemented from scratch in a reasonable amount
| of time by a reasonably sized team.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Firefox rose to power because people like you and me used it.
| We told people to use it.
|
| This can happen again, we just need to collectively stop
| feeding these monopoly wannabes.
| [deleted]
| tiborsaas wrote:
| If you don't feed the _wannabes_ then how do you dethrone
| the actual monopolies? :)
| fartcannon wrote:
| Ha, touche.
| continuational wrote:
| Firefox was also clearly a _better_ user experience at the
| time, which made it much easier to convince people to
| switch.
|
| I switched back to Firefox a while ago for ideological
| reasons, but the majority of people are not going to switch
| to something that is more or less the same, just without
| their bookmarks, passwords and history.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| All major browsers have a dead-simple import tool, and
| they even asks you if you want to do it the first time
| you open them.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Yeah, plus people use whatever they think is the best. If
| you're an authority on the subject, tell them.
| eastbound wrote:
| Going ahead, the only OS war I'm afraid of is:
|
| - A GDPR-style mandate to make cloud apps secure by certifying
| all libraries and upstream authors that run your stack, down to
| the OS,
|
| - Thus cloud providers providing "Debian, only for amateur
| purposes, PII forbidden",
|
| - And "Amazon Linux, certified GDPR III, all upstream
| identified."
|
| That would be the end of free software. But at the same time,
| it would be the only reasonable move from EU, it drives me
| crazy that websites all use random NPM modules, half of them
| written by Russians we're at war with.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Do you remember how we got into the IE6 situation?
|
| IE was actually very innovative, did stuff like AJAX before
| everyone else and the developers adopted the ways of IE.
| Websites did not work well on other browsers, every website had
| a disclaimer at the bottom: Works best in IE.
|
| Now I see similar situation with Chrome and gives me
| goosebumps. Some people say that Safari is the new IE but I
| think they got it wrong, I think the new IE is Google Chrome.
|
| IE become bad when Microsoft dropped the ball and made it into
| a browser with a reputation to crash all the time and bring
| down Windows with it.
|
| IE6 was hated by the developers because it had the largest
| userbase but had non-standart features, which meant that CSS
| and HTML and JS had to be written in a way to accommodate IE
| and Mozilla.
|
| Today Chrome is very good but if Google takes something from
| the Microsoft playbook, we will be screwed. Some already say
| that Chrome is not what it used to be and Google no longer
| abides by the "do no evil" motto. They are even notorious to
| favour their own services, i.e. if you sign in into a Google
| website, Chrome treats that website differently than the rest,
| assumes that session as the browser account.
| traveler01 wrote:
| I don't see the issue with Chrome. The new IE it's obviously
| Safari and it's in the worst way possible since in iOS you're
| actually forced to use it. Apple is also being accused of
| breaking their own browser to force you using their AppStore.
| Don't see Google doing that.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Apple forces you to use the rendering engine, not the
| browser. You can download Chrome to your iPhone.
|
| Anyway, that's not the point. IE wasn't bad because it was
| a shitty browser. It was bad because it had features that
| other browsers did not have and it was very popular because
| it was very innovative and it was heavily marketed. This
| resulted in websites being made for IE only, which resulted
| in a lockdown of huge userbase that even Microsoft couldn't
| get rid of once decided to get rid of IE.
|
| Safari is nothing like that and there's no Safari lockdown.
| On the other hand, Chrome does have non standard features
| and huge market share, forcing web developers to make
| everything for Chrome. That's exactly like IE.
|
| If anything, Apple's refusal to allow the Chrome engine
| into iOS is the only thing that keeps us from complete
| lockdown into Chrome.
| traveler01 wrote:
| I don't agree with you and as a developer I find way more
| issues with Safari than with Chrome/Firefox/Edge.
|
| Also, what matters in a browser it's the engine. If it's
| always WebKit and you find a issue or something else in
| iOS you can switch the browser but the result will always
| be the same since Chrome and Firefox are forced to use
| WebKit.
|
| Chrome's engine it's Chromium which is open-source and
| used by other browsers like Microsoft Edge for example,
| so I don't see as much of an issue with Google Chrome,
| since you're not actually forced to use it.
|
| > Chrome does have non standard features and huge market
| share
|
| Even Firefox has it's own non-standard features and I
| don't see people complaining about it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Okay, check out Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Exterminate
| strategy and I hope you understand what's the problem of
| having a dominant platform that does it's own thing
| instead of abiding by the standards. Now Chrome is in the
| "Extend" stage and obviously you don't feel any pain but
| if Google chooses to take another step, then you will
| feel it.
|
| Maybe they never will do it but I simply don't want
| Google has the option to go to the next step.
| traveler01 wrote:
| Google obviously has to gain by doing that, but not as
| much as Microsoft had. I mean, IE could run basically on
| one platform, which was Windows, so it makes sense
| Microsoft forced people to create dependency on IE.
|
| I'm more concerned about Apple nowadays, they're doing
| everything to keep people locked down on their own
| ecosystem.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's not obvious to me, Google has everything to gain by
| going evil. Google has power to choose how privacy will
| be managed, they can choose to kill Facebook(not that I'm
| fan of FB, but still).
|
| Apple makes a lot of money but Apple is an underdog with
| it's tiny market share. Apple can and does evil stuff but
| it's nothing compared to the potential of Google.
| traveler01 wrote:
| What you fear from Google it's what Apple's already
| doing. With their new iOS 15 privacy settings they are
| hurting Facebook (and other companies that rely on your
| data pretty bad). I mean, I don't feel sorry for Facebook
| or whatever company profits from your private data, but
| you can see how damage Apple can already do.
| mrtksn wrote:
| What's your argument? Have the Apple's AppStore model on
| the Web and governed by Google.
|
| No thanks. Apple might be in their rights to control
| their own platform but I like my Web free, not wholly
| owned by Google or anyone else.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > a browser with a reputation to crash all the time and bring
| down Windows with it
|
| IE post-dates the addition of process isolation to Windows -
| IE never brought down Windows because it ran as a normal
| process. When people say IE was integrated into Windows they
| just mean applications like the shell used it as a component,
| it wasn't actually in the kernel.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| Why does there only need to be one web villain? We've
| unbundled IE's horrors.
|
| Safari is now the browser that resists web standards and an
| open internet for its parent company's personal gain. See:
| PWAs, webgl, webview.
|
| And Chrome is now the thousand pound gorilla forcing
| standards nobody wants, for its parent company's personal
| gain. See: manifest v3, cookie security.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Resisting web standards is alright, if people make
| standards compliant websites it will simply mean that
| Safari users will miss out some stuff.
|
| The problem starts when you implement alternative standards
| and you have a market share to make people code for your
| standard. In this situation, your users don't suffer but
| everyone else suffer, that's what I call villain.
|
| Check Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Exterminate strategy.
| This is the evil thing, making browser that doesn't adopt
| some web standards is not evil.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| The market forces work the other way. If Safari can't do
| something, like say if it can't work with webgl 2.0 until
| four and a half years after every other major browser
| adds support, devs will avoid using it and middleware
| will have to maintain support for webgl 1.0 longer. This
| slows down adoption of web standards and affects
| everyone.
|
| The only property that benefits from dragging your heels
| on webgl 2.0 adoption is the App Store, which could see
| its influence and revenue easily be cannibalized by
| progressive web apps using modern gpu rendering. And
| would you look at that, those are exactly the two web
| standards Safari has dragged its heels on.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Sure, it will have an effect but Apple's market share is
| tiny. If there was something great to be done with the
| stuff that Apple is dragging their feet to implement, we
| would have it on other platforms and Apple will actually
| be forced to act on it.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| There's many ways to measure market share and when you
| look at monetizable users, Apple platforms have an
| outsized amount of big spenders compares to Android or
| web platforms. As I already said, this gives them
| considerable influence in what does and doesn't get
| adopted by developers. This is the opposite of how you
| claim it works.
|
| We're going to have to agree to disagree because your
| argument you've made twice now without adaptation is a
| bit absurd. If Safari doesn't implement it it must not be
| important? I am now conscious of my original comment
| being inexplicably downvoted and I'm worried I might be
| banging my head against Apple fanboys instead of having a
| discussion about corporate influence over web standards.
| There is considerable evidence for this and I've given it
| in this thread.
| xtracto wrote:
| IE6 also had the infamous ActiveX plugin architecture, which
| was a security hell, but were way better than Java Applets.
| Several pages with the "Works in IE" used ActiveX plugins
| grishka wrote:
| I'm not sure which is worse. The problem with Chrome is that
| Google isn't content with the web being a document platform.
| They want it to be this all-encompassing OS-like amalgamation
| of worst technologies possible that's never complete. This
| endless feature creep with WebUSB, WebMIDI, WebBluetooth,
| WebNFC... No, it's not "cool" that I'm for some reason able to
| install a beta version of Android on my phone using _a macro in
| a hypertext document_.
|
| In the IE era, if you wanted a "web application", you simply
| used Flash. There was a clear separation between the document
| and the application. It was nice. I miss it.
| [deleted]
| darkwinx wrote:
| We have OS hardwired into browser now.
| SadTrombone wrote:
| That's their point.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Now we have Safari...
| samwillis wrote:
| The situation with Safari is _nothing_ like what we had back
| in the IE6 days. It was like developing for multiple
| platforms, not just a multiple browsers.
|
| Thats not to say Safari isn't dragging it's heals, but it
| looks like Apple are finally ramping up development speed. I
| gather they have been expanding the Safari dev team, and the
| latest announcements at WWDC look really good.
|
| I actually use Safari as my primary browser, I prefer it (as
| a user) to Chrome. Although for debugging Chrome dev tools
| are better, I probably open it 2-3 times a day to check
| stuff, but never leave it running.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| It's not as bad in some aspects, but the iOS ecosystem is
| essentially another platform. My current client has an app
| that's built on Ionic, and the sheer amount of bullshit
| I've had to deal with, specific to Mobile Safari, is
| insane.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| In at least one way, it's worse. You have a large
| percentage of users (everyone on iOS) who is stuck using a
| single rendering engine (Safari's) and locked out of
| installing another one. Although you can install Firefox,
| Chrome, etc on iOS, it's still Safari's webkit engine
| underneath.
| [deleted]
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| ...and Chromebooks. And Windows reminds you to use Edge at
| every opportunity.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Say what you will (I am a sole firefox user for a decade +), at
| least chrome keeps improving and having development. Now that
| the web is more of a "VM in a window for applications", it's
| _not_ like the IE era of no updates, buggy crap, un-debuggable,
| etc.
| leeter wrote:
| Yes and no, Chrome does what's good for google with no regard
| for most of the rest. To make it worse google goes out of
| their way to break compatibility with other browsers when it
| comes to their stuff. It's really no different and in many
| ways just as bad. The only major difference is google's
| incentives do align with innovation for web; insofar as it
| furthers advertising revenue for google.
|
| https://www.developer-tech.com/news/2019/apr/17/mozilla-
| goog...
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I don't really care if there is only one implementation of
| Java, or if there is one implementation of "Web". It's all
| VMs to me.
| [deleted]
| zaarn wrote:
| No, instead it's a world of "works ~~best~~ only in Google
| Chrome" where other browser engines have no chance to claw
| back marketshare.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| When I clicked on this thread I was thinking when this thread
| will turn into Google bashing. This is the top comment. I am
| not disappointed.
| major505 wrote:
| Nice. Now I only have to support it for 11 more years because my
| stubborn clients will continue to use explorer in windows 7.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| First time I ever wanted to embed an image into a HN comment.
| This image is so fitting!
|
| https://i.imgur.com/MgGvQHH.png
| john567 wrote:
| This is so fitting because even if Microsoft is deprecating and
| giving up on this monstrosity the executable is still sitting
| there. Serving legacy web apps that should have been abandoned
| a long time ago...
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| And for more IE-related humor, I recommend the following
| webcomic: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/internet-
| explorer/list...
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| I clicked to laugh at a meme for a second and ended up
| reading an intriguing action packed drama about
| anthropomorphized web tech. This is awesome! Thanks for
| sharing :)
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Happy to see that HN is enjoying my recommendation :D
|
| I actually just discovered the same comic also has a voice-
| over: https://youtu.be/8rygV_MeudA
| user_7832 wrote:
| I was not sure what that would be, but it got a solid chuckle
| out of me, thanks for lifting my mood!
| evanelias wrote:
| In a similar vein, I can't help but love the impression of IE
| in this classic Firefox ad:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNy9iQ-l7wo
| open-paren wrote:
| I argue that moving it "out of support" doesn't mean anything for
| what browsers you have to support. Users and businesses still
| using IE11 aren't exactly those that are on the top of their IT
| policy game, so I doubt they will be jumping when the browser is
| "no longer supported by Microsoft."
| wakeupcall wrote:
| You can now brag that the software is out of support.
|
| Which yeah, doesn't mean absolutely anything for existing
| software that is still working and requires the old version to
| run. If by any chanche you need to support that configuration,
| the "official" deprecation simply means "good luck!" and a pat
| on the back.
|
| Just like XP, I've seen plenty of shops with custom software
| that still requires XP+IE6+activex that still get active
| development, because a total rewrite is out of the question
| when changes are small (and _that_ is totally understandable as
| well).
|
| The poor folks though will need to containerize and isolate
| everything from any network though to keep it somewhat safer.
| If they do that at all.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Heck, I've heard of DOS still being used in industrial
| applications. If it ain't broken, don't fix it... though I
| would hope these systems are air-gapped from the rest of the
| world and not connected to any network.
| yashap wrote:
| Official deprecation like this helps companies say "sorry, we
| don't support IE11 anymore either, you'll have to upgrade." Not
| all companies will do this, but plenty will.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| A couple of weeks back and edge update forced many many many
| users to Edge earlier than expected, if your tried to launch
| iexplorer.exe it would go to edge instead
|
| IEMode in Edge also works very well
|
| So if these companies are getting windows updates at all, or
| edge updates at all is somewhat not optional
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I have a friend who works for a VA Hospital and they've
| switched as of yesterday. So we know the DOD/VA is at least
| switching off old IE8/IE10 Apps.
|
| The funny part is the app they use still works, you're just
| forced to run it in compatibility mode on Edge (Holy, I
| forgot this existed) but their user profiles have limited
| access so they can't right-click, properties, unless they
| have admin priv.
|
| New browser, same old 2009 problems. Obviously this is not
| the browsers fault, it's just insane to hear about shops like
| this that still hold on to legacy apps FOREVER.
| Sunspark wrote:
| A big reason for why this is in my opinion, is not that
| they don't want to get an update, it's because of corporate
| politics. Someone has to be the manager that goes "boss, I
| want to spend money and resources to update an essential
| service and doing so will increase security and
| productivity." What is heard "<underling> boss, I want to
| spend money".
|
| Bosses never want to spend a cent, because of the
| "shareholders". They also don't want to say "yes" to
| something because if there is an issue, it is then their
| fault even if it was worth doing. They would rather kick
| the can down the road until the wheels come flying off the
| car.
|
| This is why nothing ever gets updated.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That could be some of it, by my experience when it comes
| to IT, we have a terrible track record for explaining why
| the BUSINESS should want to spend the money, not why IT
| wants to spend the money
|
| IT: Well IE is end of life so we need to Spend X to
| upgrade
|
| That is an IT reason, not a Business Reason.
|
| It needs to be put into a BUSINESS reason, and I admit I
| am terrible at that as well
| kazinator wrote:
| I found IE11 pretty useful recently.
|
| I made to the web UI of a firmware device, and needed to check
| whether it will work with old browsers as far back as IE9.
|
| Because IE11 has an emulation mode, I didn't have to install IE9.
|
| Thank you, IE11!
|
| :)
| asddubs wrote:
| yeesh, ie9, my condolences.
| wolframhempel wrote:
| I started my career 2008 building real estate and stock news
| websites. Back then, sooooo much of my days were spent making
| things "IE compatible" using techniques like:
|
| - creating sprite sheets of transparent png corners and sides
| that one could arrange in a table around an element to create
| drop-shadows and rounded corners
|
| - putting single pixel, transparent gifs at the end of floated
| containers because clearfix used a "before" CSS selector that
| earlier IEs didn't know about.
|
| - writing CSS rules like -ms-filter:
| "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=75)"; to make
| something semi-transparent...
|
| And so much more. Back then, we were certain we'd open a bottle
| of champagne once IE is not a requirement anymore.
|
| Today, fortunately, I have a different Job and Microsoft makes
| different browsers. But looking back, I wouldn't have believed
| this day to arrive.
| [deleted]
| xhrpost wrote:
| Imagine having a piece of software where you have 95% global
| market dominance, a near complete monopoly. And then decide not
| to update said software in the slightest (other than security
| fixes) for 6 straight years. Kind of mind blowing.
| deckard1 wrote:
| that was the point. The entire point of IE was to embrace and
| extinguish the nascent web. With Netscape being cross-
| platform and the rise of Java, MS was feeling the threat to
| their Windows platform. Apple is doing a similar thing with
| Safari. Their App Store is their money maker. It's the whole
| reason they force Firefox and Chrome to use standards-lagging
| and neutered WebKit on iOS.
|
| Google doesn't like the web, either. They control it at both
| ends. Search and the browser. Every web site today is built
| to conform to Google's blackbox SEO cargo cult. And Google
| performs an update regularly to their algorithm. At which
| point all websites have to do an SEO dance and hope it rains
| again. Google does this to prevent people from focusing on
| other search engines. If you always have to update for
| Google, then there is no time to focus on Bing or other
| avenues. Chrome also keeps people on Google search.
|
| We don't have an open web today. We have three platforms. We
| have the Microsoft Windows platform, the Apple App Store
| platform, and the Google Web Platform.
|
| And Facebook basically learned the lessons AOL failed to, on
| how to operate a walled garden on the internet.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| >We don't have an open web today. We have three platforms.
| We have the Microsoft Windows platform, the Apple App Store
| platform, and the Google Web Platform.
|
| Somewhat related: I had the pleasure of attending a talk
| given by Fernando Perez (Jupyter) a while back. He made a
| very similar point, saying "there are only 3 computers
| today: Azure, AWS, and GCP". I'm not quite cynical enough
| believe that Google or MS would ever do something to lock
| down their cloud services to only their consumer products,
| I think the scale of this oligopoly can't really be
| understated, and it seems that we're moving away from
| personal computers and back to the time-sharing systems
| from before.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> And Google performs an update regularly to their
| algorithm. At which point all websites have to do an SEO
| dance and hope it rains again. Google does this to prevent
| people from focusing on other search engines_
|
| Now that sounds really far fetched. It's like claiming
| Apple's developer documentation is so terrible to make sure
| devs have no time left to develop for other platforms :)
|
| What would you say if Google never changed its algorithm?
| Surely, that would be evidence of a stagnant monopolist no
| longer finding it necessary to invest in the product.
| benoketamad wrote:
| And people flock to vsCode and other offerings from MS like
| IE never happened. People really need long term memory...
| yaseer wrote:
| Microsoft's leadership and strategy has evolved under
| Nadella, at least enough to produce quality products like
| VSCode, and 'good enough' products like WSL.
|
| I say this as someone who has historically been very anti-
| Microsoft, that used to do all my work in Linux. Modern
| Windows with VSCode, running WSL, is something the
| Microsoft of the IE6 era would never have produced.
| krylon wrote:
| It's true.
|
| I'm using Linux and/or BSD on all my private machines,
| but from an outsider's perspective Microsoft appears to
| have undergone some significant changes since Nadella
| took over. From what I know, if someone had suggested
| making the .Net runtime open source in, say, 2008, under
| Ballmer, they would have been treated like a heretic.
|
| There's still plenty to complain about, it's gotten more
| nuanced.
|
| Also, it's important to keep in mind that Microsoft - and
| surely many other companies of that size - are like a
| feudal system internally, with different teams/divisions
| doing things their own way, not necessarily playing nice
| with the others if it doesn't suit their own agenda.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I think IE's monopoly is an important component that cannot
| be ignored when doing comparisons. If Microsoft stopped
| updating VSCode, 90% is Open Source, and there are multiple
| good competitors already on the market. So there's minimal
| captive-ness with VSCode, whereas IE held the browser
| market captive in outmoded web tech for years, with no real
| escape for web developers and competitive browsers
| struggling to make headway.
| xxpor wrote:
| And of course, remember that the base of VSCode is
| Chromium. Pretty hilarious in the scheme of things.
| mm007emko wrote:
| Well, VSCode is a bad example. It's open source so if
| Microsoft decides to ditch it, it can be community
| maintained until people move to something else. Or another
| foundation can take over or another company can fork it.
| Come on, VSCode is a "lightweight" IDE ("lightweight" in
| terms of features, not in terms of resource demands) and
| it's one of the better ones.
|
| I remember its first version and my first impression was
| "WTF". Nowadays it's pretty usable. IE of its era really
| wasn't. You can switch to anything else if you don't want
| to use VSCode. IE ... you either couldn't (on a company-
| issued computer) or you didn't know how (at home).
| Nadella's Microsoft is a far cry from Ballmer's.
| hiq wrote:
| > It's open source so if Microsoft decides to ditch it,
| it can be community maintained until people move to
| something else.
|
| Some would suggest that it's closer to open-core:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31605975
| wongarsu wrote:
| Exactly what happened to Netscape, just that Netscape wasn't
| nearly as entrenched (their market share fell from 70-90% in
| 1996 to about 0 in 2002).
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Isn't this what happened to products like PKZip and Lotus
| 1-2-3? Seems like there's ample precedent.
| vermaden wrote:
| > (...) Microsoft makes different browsers.
|
| They are not.
|
| They just took Chrome and added their logo and theme around.
| space_ghost wrote:
| I strongly remember using Firebug in Firefox (mind-blowing
| tools, for the time) in ~2008 and having to debug issues in IE,
| which had the equivalent of a Check Engine Light for debugging.
| amichal wrote:
| Firebug and firebug lite were amazing but to keep the record
| clear it was possible to debug client-side JavaScript (and
| other script types) using Visual Studio since very early on
| in IE. It was granted a major pain to setup properly for
| breakpoints and code highlighting but it was a full fledged
| debugger and IDE. I remember doing it often. I don't remember
| if there was a debugger for IE for mac and early Safari. For
| me those where where "alert" and "document.write" were my
| only options.
| zeven7 wrote:
| I had forgotten about those days. The VS debugger slowed
| down my computer so much though that I often just used
| alert anyway. Firebug was a huge improvement.
| samwillis wrote:
| So true, debugging with alert()...
|
| There was Firebug Light, which from memory was a bookmarklet
| that injected a cut down firebug into the page, but even that
| didn't help much.
| DrSiemer wrote:
| Not owning any Apple products myself, my only option was a
| free online emulator to try and fix a bug on older iOS
| systems. It did not support console logs, so I was trying
| to debug using alert() as far back as yesterday. It didn't
| help, I only managed to find the issue through xCode on a
| random Mac.
| microSnowball wrote:
| Lol I remember that little yellow triangle. The source of so
| much pain.
| z3t4 wrote:
| undefined is not a function
| dheerajvs wrote:
| I won't be able to celebrate for a long time to come. I have to
| support running an Outlook add-in in Outlook 2016 on Windows,
| which uses the IE11 rendering engine.
| ratww wrote:
| Just in case you haven't heard: Microsoft recently announced
| that they won't hold it against you if you drop support for
| IE11 in add-ins. Your customers might still complain, though.
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/office/dev/add-
| ins/develop/...
| Bilal_io wrote:
| I am sure Microsoft wouldn't have held it against you to
| drop support for IE back in 2010. It's always been about
| the customer.
| ratww wrote:
| Incorrect. For those add-ins, IE11 support was required
| until recently, and there was a _real_ review process,
| and it was actually pretty good. They even reported very
| subtle IE11 visual bugs to us.
| skittleson wrote:
| I remembered these days as well. There wasn't a lot of
| resources out their either. Getting everything pixel perfect
| was the goal. HTML emails were extra tricky since they
| displayed differently in each client.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Pixel perfect existed in an era where almost everyone had
| 800x600 screens. Today it's about adapting to many different
| screen sizes and devices. So when people say pixel perfect
| today they're 20+ years too late. :P
| 101008 wrote:
| I'd take any day the old internet with IE than our current
| internet with current browsers.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| From a previous thread (lost link): "For supported operating
| systems, Internet Explorer 11 will continue receiving security
| updates and technical support for the lifecycle of the Windows
| version on which it is installed."
|
| The King is dead, long live the King.
| pmarreck wrote:
| RIP, and good riddance
| caycep wrote:
| Except it's still required to run HIPAA-sensitive EHR's like
| Allscripts. _facepalm_
|
| (note, they say they are compatible with Edge etc. But sadly they
| are really not)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Seeing a timeline animation of browser share made me both
| nostalgic about the browser wars days and how IE took over after
| (and for a time was the best), and also sad about what happened
| to Firefox, which was so exciting in those early days becoming
| very much a standard but falling to the wayside as Chrome snuck
| up. It's just sad where it ended up today as an also ran for
| some/holdout for others (I still insist my parents use it etc)
| with difficult marketing and who knows what level of development
| behind the scenes. Sigh.
| user_7832 wrote:
| I posted this as a reply to a comment here but I felt it would be
| better to ask as a separate comment -
|
| Does anyone (especially from MS) know _why_ later versions of IE
| and pre-chromium Edge were _so_ good and snappy with scrolling?
| The level of accuracy and speed was incredible (on touchpads at
| least) - it was probably the last time I had an interaction on a
| computer that made me go "wow".
| kiririn wrote:
| I agree the input lag and scroll curves in later IE was some of
| the best I've seen. Firefox was as good for a time but is now
| (slightly) worse after changing to a more chrome-like curve
|
| They really went all out on input lag reduction for Windows 8
| touch interfaces. I remember some videos from the time where
| they showed off such low input lag that scrolling and drawing
| almost perfectly tracked finger movement. Perhaps not so
| impressive today with iOS as a benchmark, but Windows is still
| king for desktop input lag
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Does anyone know when the forced redirect from IE to Edge
| actually lands, particularly in Windows 10? In particular, does
| anyone know when it will affect users that open IE by entering
| "iexplore URL" in the Run dialog? Is anyone seeing this behavior
| yet? I'm not.
| upupandup wrote:
| Huzzah! The tyrant is no more!
| intrasight wrote:
| I started doing web development back in Netscape - adding
| graphics extensions. I think it was 1995.
|
| But I really dug into SPA/AJAX web apps in 2000 - building
| enterprise stuff. They were all "IE6 apps". IE6 was basically my
| X-windows. No other browsers were supported, and there as no
| pushback from customers back then. Only one of those apps made
| the transition to IE11.
|
| Last year I explained to my current client that our big
| enterprise reporting app had to move off IE11. And I was really
| surprised how much pushback on got on that.
| newbieuser wrote:
| Would the web have been a different place if IE had gone a
| different way instead of its current bullshit? I mean, I wonder
| what effect this would have on the current state of the web if it
| complied with general standards.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| im speculating that in a wild twist of events, MS announces the
| revival of Netscape Navigator, just to keep all the web
| developers on their toes and make sure they get enough practice
| working with cross browser compatability
| dekerta wrote:
| No need. Safari fills that role for us now
| ecshafer wrote:
| Wouldn't that be Chrome?
|
| Internet Explorer had dominant market share, non-standardized
| features, and powerful corporate backing.
|
| Chrome has dominant market share, non-standardized features,
| and powerful corporate backing.
|
| Safari doesn't have the newest standards always, but mostly
| sticks to the standards from what I know. The major
| difference seems to be a lot of devs liking Chrome.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Chrome and Safari each took half of the ways that IE was
| terrible.
|
| Chrome got the non-standard extensions and dominant market-
| share.
|
| Safari got deliberately lagging behind standards and trying
| to hold back the web so that people have to build native
| apps.
| asddubs wrote:
| They both have some parallels to IE in their own ways.
| Chrome for the reasons you mentioned, safari because:
|
| -Coupled to OS updates, meaning that people on older
| versions of the OS will also have an older browser, with
| worse standards support (thankfully apples upgrade policies
| aren't as bad as android manufacturers, or this would be
| way worse)
|
| -lagging behind on standard features with less frequent,
| big updates that still often end up missing crucial things
| (my prime example is how long it took them to support webp,
| which they thankfully finally support now, but there's
| plenty of others)
| robertoandred wrote:
| WebP is NOT a web standard, it's just a format a lot of
| browsers happen to support.
| asddubs wrote:
| tomato, tomato
| Spooky23 wrote:
| ...on Windows 10. It's still a thing on server.
| hidden-spyder wrote:
| Why is IE still in use and what's stopping people from switching
| over to something new?
| psim1 wrote:
| IE may have been problematic from a tech point of view, but I'll
| eulogize that IE was important in advancing the web. The OS-
| integrated browser meant that in 1995, users had a full Internet
| stack readily available on their home PCs -- the widespread
| launch of Web 1.0. Later, IE was the pioneer of XMLHttpRequest,
| the beginning of Web 2.0. For these, we can say thanks,
| Microsoft! (for everything else, see other comments)
| anthk wrote:
| > users had a full Internet stack readily available on their
| home PCs
|
| No.
| warning26 wrote:
| People often forget that in the IE4 days, IE was leagues beyond
| Netscape. It had far better CSS and JS support, and you could
| do things that wouldn't be possible in Netscape for years.
|
| That said, it all came to an end after Microsoft "won" and
| disbanded the IE dev team, resulting in that era of stagnation
| we all remember.
| kasajian wrote:
| That's awesome. But what happens if you double-click on an .hta
| file?
| suff wrote:
| neatze wrote:
| Windows Server should be retired next, arguably, if MS would
| focus on making UI and Dev tools for Linux instead of Windows and
| nothing else, it will be better off.
| geraldcombs wrote:
| Windows Server provides a cleaner, more enjoyable desktop
| experience that the desktop version.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Have you _seen_ Microsoft 's latest work on UIs? They're less
| responsive, less readable, less discoverable, and less
| functional than anything that came out of the IE era.
|
| Not that GNOME is any better, suffering as it does from the
| same tabletitis disease that has infected today's UI designers.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| If you have some time between two cocktails while celebrating, do
| your visitors a favour and add this meta tag to your <head>:
| <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/ie_standards/ms-i...
|
| This will make IE very insisting to upgrade to Edge if possible.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| "Google Chrome Frame was discontinued in January 2014"
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22059060/is-it-still-val...
| electroly wrote:
| That's not what that is. "Edge" there doesn't mean Edge the
| browser, it means "latest"; it predates the Edge browser by
| many years. It has nothing to do with the Edge upgrade. It
| switches IE into the latest document mode that it supports. For
| IE11, it just puts it into IE11 mode.
| simongray wrote:
| Thank you for that tip.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| A red letter day for us web devs. A collective sigh of relief.
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