Retiring Internet Explorer • Hacker News Board

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#11

Post by logifail » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as part of Windows 10?

Specifically, why is it still shipping IE as the only browser as part of Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, including LTSC 2019? Yes, that is the version of Windows 10 with an "extended support end date of 9 January 2029"*

* https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifec...

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#12

Post by taf2 » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

We fully stopped supporting IE11. Refactoring code to use ES6 and reducing code size by 20% is proving a big win for the vast majority of customers. If any customers are still on IE11 - they can run Edge, which now that that is Edgium we have even more code size reduction we can implement to improve load time and user experience.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#13

Post by catach » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #11

If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as part of Windows 10? Specifically, why is it still shipping IE as the only browser as part of Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, including LTSC 2019? Yes, that is the version of Windows 10 with an "extended support end date of 9 January 2029"* * https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifec...

Minimizing their support surface makes a ton of sense for a long-term release, and of course if you just choose one browser for Enterprise you're gonna choose the one people built their internal apps on for the last few decades.

I expect it's not not that MS believes no one needs IE, it's that they know they're stuck with it and would really rather not be.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#14

Post by mrtweetyhack » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:26 PM UTC

No, don't do it. We need more diversity...and security holes

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#15

Post by iSnow » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #5

Someone needs to tell Microsoft. The Microsoft License Advisor, which has the pricing info for Windows, https://mla.microsoft.com/ on Firefox pops up a box which reads "Internet Explorer Notification NaN and newer versions. Download latest version of Internet Explorer"

Same for Safari, Chrome, Brave. The NaN is an especially nice touch.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#16

Post by iSnow » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

dedosk wrote: post #2

> I printed out the source code for the network stack and sat > down with a red pen. Does anyone still do this to get to know new code base?

Did this once to make sense of an especially hairy class structure I inherited. Would actually do this again, 4K displays notwithstanding.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#17

Post by iSnow » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

erickhill wrote: post #8

The last great version of IE that I personally used was IE 5.1 for Mac OS 9. It was - at the time - my preferred browser on the platform and really shone brightly. As a web designer, IE - since 6 - has been the bane of my existence. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but it's there.

IE5/Mac was the best browser of the time, hands down. The only galling bug was that it stubbornly cached CSS (at least locally read CSS), so you had to always close and re-start it.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#18

Post by bitwize » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

erickhill wrote: post #8

The last great version of IE that I personally used was IE 5.1 for Mac OS 9. It was - at the time - my preferred browser on the platform and really shone brightly. As a web designer, IE - since 6 - has been the bane of my existence. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but it's there.

I remember Adobe (then Macromedia) Flash only worked well on IE5 for Mac OS 9. Every other OS/browser combination exhibited problems, especially slower framerates and audio/video desync issues. (When Linux got its own flash player, it was the worst of the lot.) Back then, Flash was a tool by and for designers, and it was only tested well on the platform that all designers used -- Mac. Mac OS X was still too new, a lot of designers didn't trust it yet, and it would take time to update the already existing 90s code base anyway.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#19

Post by enturn » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

I understand Microsoft needs to continue supporting IE for old websites but my boss a couple days ago used the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy as a reason why we, as website developers, need to support IE11 also. I would like articles saying people shouldn't use IE to also explicity answer the question, "Should website developers support IE?"

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#20

Post by p1necone » Wed, Jan 22, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

enturn wrote: post #19

I understand Microsoft needs to continue supporting IE for old websites but my boss a couple days ago used the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy as a reason why we, as website developers, need to support IE11 also. I would like articles saying people shouldn't use IE to also explicity answer the question, "Should website developers support IE?"

To me the answer to that question is another question - "what market share does IE11 still have amongst our target users, how fast is it decreasing, and what's the development effort required to support it?"