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Retiring Internet Explorer

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Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#71

Post by wvenable »

felipelemos wrote: post #65
wvenable wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as part of Windows 10? We have multi-million dollar software that relies on IE to run -- that's why. What good is an OS that can't run our software? Since Windows 10 we've setup an icon to just launch this application in IE and set the default browser for end-users to Chrome. Eventually that software will be replaced and we can end our use of…

You have to install Chrome anyway, why not also install IE? I'm sure this would not be a big deal for a multi-million dollar company.

IE is an OS component; it's not merely a browser.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#72

Post by bane »

kbumsik wrote: post #53
Ajedi32 wrote: post #26

> A fascinating set of circumstances led to Internet Explorer’s dominance in Asian markets. First, early browsers had poor support for Unicode and East Asian character sets, forcing website developers to build their own text rendering atop native code plugins (ActiveX). South Korea mandated use of a locally-developed cipher (SEED) for banking transactions, and this cipher was not implemented by browser developers… Ac…

I'm Korean so I glad to see someone speaks out this. Actually it was rather inevitable, partially because of the U.S. gov that time. The Korean gov wanted to grow e-commerce/e-banking in 1999 but the American gov did not allow to export cipher higher than 40 bits. As a result the Korean gov had to develop its own 128 bits cipher (SEED). It was even before AES/SSL/TLS were introduced so the whole crypto stack was impl…

What I think is kind of interesting is that South Korea arguably had/has the technical know-how to have built it's own domestic browser with SEED and good Hangul/Hanja language support built into it and ended up with a very siloed alternative web. As an example, I'm thinking of the ubiquity of the Hangul Word Processor over Microsoft Word (which apparently has been around for over 30 years!) which gained near ubiquity in its domestic market.

However, I think the present situation is possibly the better one as a siloed, South Korea only web, separate and distinct from the rest of the Web, would end up being a much harder one to eventually migrate to the regular global web ecosystem vs. the current problem of just getting banks to stop using SEED and moving users to modern browsers.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#73

Post by int_19h »

sjwright wrote: post #62
derefr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason they're still shipping Notepad, or the non-Powershell command interpreter: backwards compatibility with old enterprise software that hooks directly into those specific things (e.g. by targeting the mouse at specific pixels.) Basically, think of it like: LTSC ships without a browser. If you want a browser, go install one from the App Store. What it does ship with is an ActiveX-enabled-Intranet client.

What you describe is a valid reason for Windows to continue shipping with MSHTML.dll — not a valid reason to continue shipping the actual iexplore.exe GUI executable.

You might be surprised just how much legacy software does something like spawn("iexplore.exe").

And then there are all the internal corporate web portals that are still IE-only, and probably will remain so for as long as IE is supported in any shape or form.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#74

Post by wvenable »

cr0sh wrote: post #50
wvenable wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as part of Windows 10? We have multi-million dollar software that relies on IE to run -- that's why. What good is an OS that can't run our software? Since Windows 10 we've setup an icon to just launch this application in IE and set the default browser for end-users to Chrome. Eventually that software will be replaced and we can end our use of…

It's basically the same way with VB6 apps - so many of them out there, and MS can't get rid of the runtime DLL...

The desktop component of this very same application requires the VB6 runtime. And the server side requires Korn shell (for Windows)!

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#75

Post by makomk »

sjwright wrote: post #62
derefr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason they're still shipping Notepad, or the non-Powershell command interpreter: backwards compatibility with old enterprise software that hooks directly into those specific things (e.g. by targeting the mouse at specific pixels.) Basically, think of it like: LTSC ships without a browser. If you want a browser, go install one from the App Store. What it does ship with is an ActiveX-enabled-Intranet client.

What you describe is a valid reason for Windows to continue shipping with MSHTML.dll — not a valid reason to continue shipping the actual iexplore.exe GUI executable.

Internet Explorer has a COM API which enterprise software (or worse, weird company-specific VBA scripts) can and likely does use to drive it directly. That API launches the actual iexplore.exe GUI executable and lets your code control it and interact with web pages, much like you might do with something like Selenium these days - except that this dates back to the nineties.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#76

Post by sjwright »

int_19h wrote: post #73
sjwright wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe is a valid reason for Windows to continue shipping with MSHTML.dll — not a valid reason to continue shipping the actual iexplore.exe GUI executable.

You might be surprised just how much legacy software does something like spawn("iexplore.exe"). And then there are all the internal corporate web portals that are still IE-only, and probably will remain so for as long as IE is supported in any shape or form.

Microsoft should certainly make it easy for corporate deployments to re-enable iexplore.exe — but it shouldn't be available by default on your typical Windows 10 install. (It's already available to uninstall and reinstall as an "optional feature".)

Or at the very least, Explorer and the task bar should do everything in its power to hide the existence of Internet Explorer 11. It shouldn't be listed as a program anywhere by default and it shouldn't come up in search.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#77

Post by Aeolun »

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...

Because MS would sell exactly zero copies of windows to larger enterprises without it.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#78

Post by zamadatix »

kbumsik wrote: post #68
zamadatix wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSL had been available in IE since version 2 with Windows 95 it was just the high encryption pack that was export blocked and needed for higher bit ciphers until 5.5 released in 2000. I'm just guessing it was easier to do everything through ActiveX than trying to add the cipher to Windows/IE as a 3rd party. That's amazing it's still used per policy, I never would have imagined. Edit: clarification on which parts were…

> higher bit ciphers required the high encryption pack until 5.5 released in 2000 That thing exactly was export-restricted and was available only in U.S. and Canada: https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/159/Q159709/ But it was true that SSL was introduced before 1999. Thanks for the correction.

Yes, sorry didn't mean to make that sound like the high encryption pack was available internationally I meant to point out that was the only component of the built in encryption stack export blocked. Updated the comment to clarify.

Re: Retiring Internet Explorer

#80

Post by colejohnson66 »

sjwright wrote: post #76
int_19h wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised just how much legacy software does something like spawn("iexplore.exe"). And then there are all the internal corporate web portals that are still IE-only, and probably will remain so for as long as IE is supported in any shape or form.

Microsoft should certainly make it easy for corporate deployments to re-enable iexplore.exe — but it shouldn't be available by default on your typical Windows 10 install. (It's already available to uninstall and reinstall as an "optional feature".) Or at the very least, Explorer and the task bar should do everything in its power to hide the existence of Internet Explorer 11. It shouldn't be listed as a program anywhe…

So do something like what they did with .NET 2.0/3.0 where it’s a feature that has to be installed? But if it detects it’s needed, asks the user to install it right then? That’s actually a good idea. Why isn’t it like this?
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