Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 167 posts

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#91

Post by EvanPlaice »

watson wrote: post #46

Am I the only one who finds all the happy faces Microsoft have injected into the page a bit weird? It feels like they are trying to sell me some bad news but make me feel happy at the same time. Don't get me wrong - I think it's a good move to discontinue support for older IE versions... There is just something with all the smiling and laughing faces all over the page that make all my alarms go off

Believe it or not, that's a huge improvement compared to Microsoft's past marketing endeavors.

Checkout the photoshopped freaks they used for VS2008 http://www.secretgeek.net/vs2008_bugeye

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#92

Post by blencdr »

_ak wrote: post #71
isomorphic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a beautiful dream sometimes, where I go to work, and I only have to care about supporting Chrome... I understand the sentiment, but to be clear: Ideally we do not want any one vendor with a majority browser share. Otherwise someone will get complacent and we'll have a repeat of the dark times (IE6). Having multiple browser vendors is good for the web.

While diversity is certainly good, the major difference here is that Google has an intrisic reason to constantly improve and innovate in Chrome, while Microsoft back then clearly didn't: the whole IE development was driven by trying to get rid of the competition (in particular Netscape), and when that was done, development stopped for a long time.

Do you trust a company whose major revenues are coming from online advertising to improve Chrome for the web or for the companies revenues ? Think to ChromeOS for instance.

I don't want to be too suspicious, but to improve the web I'd rather bet on the Mozilla fundation.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#93

Post by runholm »

mrmondo wrote: post #48
tempestn wrote: post #29

Wow, I'm all for EOL'ing old versions of IE, but I'm surprised at the complete lack of notice (on a corporate scale). Was this known to be in the works for a while? My thinking is just that most larger companies will have zero chance of hitting a January deadline, and once the deadline passes, there's really no urgency to upgrade by any particular time. I would think a ~12 month deadline might be more effective in ge…

I think a lot of people would have seen this coming, I'm surprised they 'supported' older browsers for so long.

Corporate scale business does not want to depend on "seeing things coming". When you have millions upon millions invested you want to get explicit deadlines for when support for products you depend upon will be dropped. It is very expensive to either do unnecessary rewrites or getting started too late on necessary rewrites.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#95

Post by robzyb »

davidjgraph wrote: post #88

I love the way they can't even give a straight answer to their own questions: "Does this mean Microsoft is changing the support lifecycle policy for Internet Explorer?" "The latest version of Internet Explorer will continue to follow the component policy, which means that it follows the support lifecycle and is supported for as long as the Windows operating system on which it is installed. Focusing support on the lat…

> A simple yes or no will do.

Haven't they done better than that? Except they've dealt with the possible issue that the reader has an incorrect understanding of the support lifecycle policy for Internet Explorer.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#96

Post by oliv__ »

watson wrote: post #46

Am I the only one who finds all the happy faces Microsoft have injected into the page a bit weird? It feels like they are trying to sell me some bad news but make me feel happy at the same time. Don't get me wrong - I think it's a good move to discontinue support for older IE versions... There is just something with all the smiling and laughing faces all over the page that make all my alarms go off

It's super creepy.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#98

Post by Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd »

dtech wrote: post #89
zenir wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea has(or had, they may have changed it in the last few months) a law that enforces the usage of ActiveX for everything which needs security (e. g. online banking, online shopping)

That sounds like a prime example of incredible technical incompetence of the lawmakers or incredibly good lobbying by MS. Maybe both.

It made some sense at the time the law was conceived. SSL was crippled to uselessness by US export restrictions. IE 6 had a monopoly. So they built their own much more secure encryption (using ActiveX to plug into IE) and mandated its use for everything that matters.

The incompetence was in mandating a certain implementation instead of writing a technology-neutral law requiring a certain security level.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#99

Post by tempestn »

toyg wrote: post #83
mtgx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstream supports means no more features, but it's still getting patches, I imagine.

Nope. "End of support refers to the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance. [...] you will no longer receive security updates"

That refers to the end of extended support, which just recently happened for Windows XP. Vista is under extended support until April 2017, as mentioned on the page you quoted from.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#100

Post by Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd »

toyg wrote: post #83
mtgx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainstream supports means no more features, but it's still getting patches, I imagine.

Nope. "End of support refers to the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance. [...] you will no longer receive security updates"

I think Microsoft is deliberately confusing there, but that's referring to the end of extended support. Extended support means only security fixes (and fixes you pay tons of money for).

Scroll down to the table on this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/gp/lifepolicy

Post reply on HN