Live data from Hacker News

Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

blogs.windows.com

161–170 of 304 posts

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's what happens when your root is in enterprise software or at least some of your heritage is in enterprise. I have no great love for MSFT but I agree with you about their willingness to support things well past their expected expiration. IIRC they even went so far as to detect programs that used some "bugs" in earlier versions of Windows and emulated those same buggy behaviors just for those programs.

Too lazy to look but I believe someone in a vm went from windows 1.0 to windows 7 (with all upgrades in between) and some of their personalization options from 1.0 (or maybe 3.11) were still present in 7. Insane!

https://youtu.be/l60HHWWo9z4

There are also timelapses for those not into having a multi-hour windows nostalgia marathon.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure almost no one is. There are tons of IE11 layout bugs (not missing features, straight-up bugs) that have not gotten fixed in 8 years. I get the vibe that MS may have totally cut off development and all but the most critical security maintenance in order to speed the plow of Edge adoption.

The bugs did get fixed. In Edge. If you are using IE11 you want the bugs to stay exactly the same so your legacy silverlight app still works the same.

MSFT goes so far as to have said bugs in Edge's IE11 compatibility mode. They've truly become features.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#163
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Outlook becomes a PWA (currently in test, I think it's probably two-three years from stable), it'll be rendering mail with all the functionality of Blink. Which depending on your point of view, means a sigh of relief or time to buy more RAM. https://www.windowscentral.com/project-monarch-outlook-web-u...

But Gmail is already a web app, and only supports a tiny subset of modern HTML and CSS. The limitation is of course arbitrary, it could in theory support any modern standards. But HTML mail is so quirky and full of hacks, that they probably have to do it that way to preserve compatibility. Apple's Mail app is one of the few modern mail clients that can render modern HTML/CSS

> Apple's Mail app is one of the few modern mail clients that can render modern HTML/CSS

That's kinda funny given how my Calendar.app event notes are just full of unparsed HTML tags

Though I don't know which is worse, putting HTML in calendar invite descriptions, or refusing to render basic tags.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#164
One of my former employer will be devastated (a fortune 10). There was absolutely no other way for employees to use the company's websites without IE. (payroll, hr, internal services, etc)

Even mac users had to use IE. I never figured out how they were running IE on the mac, but there it was running in all its glory.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#165
post #101
post #15

By moving to Microsoft Edge, you get everything described above plus you’ll be able to extend the life of your legacy websites and apps well beyond the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application retirement date using IE mode. Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge will be supported through at least 2029. While IE11 as an independent program is going away, the rendering engine is still around for 8+y. Here's hoping th…

This is what I love about Microsoft. While Google is eager to go ahead and cancel Google Cloud Print and say "find an alternative before next month", Microsoft would be the company to announce it'll be cancelled in 2023, extended support lasts until 2029, and you can buy Extended Warranty 365+ for Business that lasts until 2067.

You're definitely right that Microsoft is better about this, but it wasn't "find an alternative before next month". Cloud Print's shutdown was announced with a bit over a year of notice, in November 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20191121200236/https://support.g...

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair! I guess I just assume the codebase is terrible (not just because of age, but also judging by the end-product) and will remain terrible; why would you do a refactor, or optimize something, or add new features when it's become a niche project that nobody likes and is on its way out? It's probably just patching over critical bugs from here forward It's not just about doing something new; a bad codebase that…

If the task is just "keep this working", I could see plenty of people being alright with not making major changes to a codebase. It pays the bills, and that's all a good number of people care about.

And that is all they should care about if the product is EOL.

Good software engineering is all about building something that meets current business needs while being flexible enough to adapt to future needs. When you lose this flexibility, you need to refactor or changes become too difficult to implement.

IE11 isn’t getting any new features. It’s in maintenance mode. Cleaning up the code in major ways at this point would be a waste of time.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#167

My current employer will be devastated. The user interface of our currently in development program requires IE + Java applets.

What does it matter? Your users will just run it in Edge using IE11 compatibility mode, which "will be supported through at least 2029". I see no devastation here...

Not sure if Java apps will run in IE Mode?

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a defense program with a very very long timeline.

Wait, you're serious?

In 2014 the healthcare IT company I left was running this plus ActiveX controls written in Delphi

Re: Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going a bit further back, IE 5 and 6 were the best browser by far. Strange for me to think that my now-beloved Firefox has its heritage embedded in Netscape, which at the same time as IE5 was an absolute pig. - ed for some reason I have it in mind as IE5.5 specifically that was The Great IE.

I never got the feeling that IE was a good browser. It came by default with windows and that made it specially popular, but never good. Alternatives always looked like a better option.

As someone who used Netscape, IE and Opera back then, Netscape was unfortunately very buggy (and not just in terms of stability). It's offline cache didn't always work (i..e you could resize the window, and it would re-download things instead of using the local cache, which was very painful on 28.8 dialup!) I remember being able to browse some sites very quickly while dialed up in IE, and then later offline be able to view them more leisurely all fine in offline mode. Netscape couldn't consistently do that.

IE 5, 5.5 and 6.0 (this last one at least initially, but clearly it stayed around too long without development) were noticeably faster and more user-friendly in my experience.

Post reply on HN