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

blogs.windows.com

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

#191

Post by fomine3 »

whakim wrote: post #183
fomine3 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web standard is continuously evolving but email don't need most of them. I think whitelist approach is better than blacklist for email.

Yes, but then who maintains the whitelist? What's to stop individual email providers from deciding they do/don't like certain standards? I agree that email doesn't need much of the CSS spec, but nor do the vast majority of web sites and yet we don't like it when browsers aren't standards-compliant...

HTML/CSS is designed to be safe for web by browser vendors and working groups. Unused HTML/CSS feature is fine as long as it's not vulnerable, but blacklist for email is problem because new feature is not designed to be safe for email.

Theoretically email client vendor can host working group like WHATWG to define standard by picking subset from web HTML/CSS. I don't know why it's not happened.

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

#192

Post by derefr »

djxfade wrote: post #117
easton wrote: 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

Given that email is MIME (i.e. you can add multiple “bodies” to a message, with different content-types, and the email client will select the best one it can render), you’d think we could just come up with a new content-type for email meaning “HTML, but for real”, and add that to email in addition to the current “HTML, but sucky” semantics we get from text/html-typed bodies.

For a while, people would be sending both text/html and text/html-for-real, but eventually we’d maybe be able to switch to only sending text/html-for-real (while also continuing to send text/plain for fallback.)

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

#193

Post by derefr »

SilverRed wrote: post #133
whakim wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, and I wish that emails could just work like everything else on the web. But simply removing Outlook and all its baggage from the equation would be a big, big improvement on the status quo.

There are good reasons to reject a lot of it. You don't want JS running in an email for example. Or even some of the fancier CSS abilities.

Sounds like you’re talking about the subset of HTML+CSS used in ePub. Come to think, ebooks and emails have pretty similar “richness” needs.

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

#194

Post by whakim »

fomine3 wrote: post #191
whakim wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but then who maintains the whitelist? What's to stop individual email providers from deciding they do/don't like certain standards? I agree that email doesn't need much of the CSS spec, but nor do the vast majority of web sites and yet we don't like it when browsers aren't standards-compliant...

HTML/CSS is designed to be safe for web by browser vendors and working groups. Unused HTML/CSS feature is fine as long as it's not vulnerable, but blacklist for email is problem because new feature is not designed to be safe for email. Theoretically email client vendor can host working group like WHATWG to define standard by picking subset from web HTML/CSS. I don't know why it's not happened.

Can you share some CSS vulnerabilities that would work in email but not in a browser? I can certainly think of CSS vulnerabilities that would not work in email because email can't execute javascript, but can't come up with the reverse off the top of my head. Genuinely curious here.

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

#196

Post by TheRealNGenius »

easton wrote: post #80
skrebbel wrote: post #74

I smell a lot of nostalgia in this thread, and rightfully so! IE has been a terrible browser, but it was our terrible browser. But fear not! Outlook still uses the HTML parsing engine from MS Word (!) to display your HTML emails, and it's not going anywhere.

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...

Outlook is a PWA

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

#197

Post by philistine »

fomine3 wrote: post #191
whakim wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but then who maintains the whitelist? What's to stop individual email providers from deciding they do/don't like certain standards? I agree that email doesn't need much of the CSS spec, but nor do the vast majority of web sites and yet we don't like it when browsers aren't standards-compliant...

HTML/CSS is designed to be safe for web by browser vendors and working groups. Unused HTML/CSS feature is fine as long as it's not vulnerable, but blacklist for email is problem because new feature is not designed to be safe for email. Theoretically email client vendor can host working group like WHATWG to define standard by picking subset from web HTML/CSS. I don't know why it's not happened.

I don't think there's any HTML or CSS that is problematic in an email. The problem is Javascript.

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

#198

Post by craig131 »

derefr wrote: post #193
SilverRed wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good reasons to reject a lot of it. You don't want JS running in an email for example. Or even some of the fancier CSS abilities.

Sounds like you’re talking about the subset of HTML+CSS used in ePub. Come to think, ebooks and emails have pretty similar “richness” needs.

That's a great idea, just use the ePub standard. Never made the connection between ebook formatting and email formatting before, nice.

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

#199

Post by dragonwriter »

derefr wrote: post #193
SilverRed wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are good reasons to reject a lot of it. You don't want JS running in an email for example. Or even some of the fancier CSS abilities.

Sounds like you’re talking about the subset of HTML+CSS used in ePub. Come to think, ebooks and emails have pretty similar “richness” needs.

> Sounds like you’re talking about the subset of HTML+CSS used in ePub.

EPUB3 supports JS.

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

#200

Post by paledot »

shaicoleman wrote: post #28

FYI, You can send an email to Microsoft requesting the your website will automatically reopen in Edge when someone visits it with IE https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform...

> The IE compatibility List only adds a website when the following actions occur.

> * Shows an IE user a message suggesting the user should use a different browser for compatibility reasons.

Looks like you can have your site automatically added to the list by telling your users to use Firefox instead of IE.

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