Live data from Hacker News

This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

thenextweb.com

111–120 of 177 posts

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you've got a system that is, for example, underpinning your whole business operation (eg billing, machine controls, whatever) and that cost thousands (often tens or hundreds of thousands) to implement and it only works on a legacy version of an operating system (be that Win 3.11, Linux 2.4, or even just XP) you WILL move heaven and earth to avoid disrupting that system. Even if it's a smooth migration to a curre…

What's wrong with continuous improvement? Our entire ethos is that software is never finished.

much like "perfect is the enemy of good", one might even say "better is the enemy of 'good enough'"

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#112
post #81

I really don't get the concept of people being "stuck on XP": Vista shipped in 2007, so if your company wrote software after that that was locked to XP they made a mistake - one they've had EIGHT YEARS to fix. Everything except the most expensive, vertical-market hardware (that might require XP for driver support) has nigh-certainly already been depreciated to zero on the books.

This is a frustrating thing as a software developer: not enough people outside the industry know how to audit what they're buying. The expectation is that you reward a developer for simply implementing X, and no attention is given to whether or not the implementation sucks. A lack of open-source mandates may be one factor, and a lack of quality regulation may be another.

It is entirely possible to implement a "working" system that will require Herculean efforts to make the slightest change: a system that will collapse in on itself entirely if anything is touched anywhere else. And if you already spent a lot of money to get this far, you may assume a lot more is required to patch it.

Sadly, although we as an industry do know how to build hardened systems that are a lot more likely to adapt with the times and provide stable operation, people outside of the software industry really don't seem to know the difference. And if better software comes at a premium up front, cheap organizations may always pick the lower bid because they're thinking of software like an office chair and not a bridge that's holding up a road.

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to 'cite' what I can see with my own eyes from the stats of my payment services provider. Browsers are very easily released, they take a very long time to die. This is one reason why I tend to keep things simple, this vastly reduces the amount of resources required to make something work on a lot of different platforms and browser combinations. Of course if your web app relies on all kinds of sexy stuff…

> I don't need to 'cite' what I can see with my own eyes from the stats of my payment services provider You could be a liar, idiot, troll, or just really love IE. Why would anyone take your word for it.

I can speak to the fact that on the ecommerce site I work, only 1-2% of users are on older IE, but they account for many thousands of dollars of sales.

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#114

Unfortunately this is not true: "Beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical supports and security updates." The latest Internet Explorer version that runs on Windows Vista is Internet Explorer 9. So there will still be users using that... Windows Vista will have security updates till 2020.

> Windows Vista will have security updates till 2020

This isn't true. Windows Vista EOL is April 11, 2017. See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle What makes you think it is 2020?

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#115
post #79
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft were kind of correct in the "browser choice" lawsuit that they'd used the browser as an OS component, and everyone else was correct that this was kind of a bad idea. Unfortunately, Microsoft signed a consent decree with the DoJ in 1995 which allowed them to add features to the operating system but meant they couldn't tie a separate program to the operating system. Therefore the browser had to be an added…

The consent decree is a large part of why we have browser (and OS!) choice at the moment. Imagine the world where IE6 won and use of ActiveX controls on websites was routine.

I don't see how that follows, seeing as the IE dominance era came years after the consent decree was signed (2000-2003).

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#116
post #16

IE9 support is already in a sad state. Many new websites already look in IE9 as bad as in IE6. Chrome should spawns less processes (hold some more tabs in one process). IE spawns less processes than Chrome and therefor is less of a memory hog. Firefox finally needs a proper multi-process implementation. Even the latest Developer edition just uses two processes (firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe) - I just tried it…

It's not the default yet, but you can already enable multi-process in Firefox by toggling the "browser.tabs.remote" option in about:config. It should ship as the default this year.

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still install Firefox.

> They can still install Firefox. Latest versions of Firefox cannot be installed on XP. Though, Chrome still works.

This seems really short-sighted on Firefox's part.

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#119
post #20

I don't understand why Microsoft divides its browsers this way. They seem to be the only one that actually has versions, and [security] updates within a version. Instead just have a single browser (instead of 5 or more counting from IE6) and any update increments the version. Both Firefox and Chrome work this way. They would have to allow installing the latest version of IE on any machine all the way back to XP, but…

I don't think they can. IE's (since IE5) is not your usual standalone browser application - it's an operating system component, that's used in a lot of places, starting right from the desktop. Tighter integration and mutual OS-browser dependence means it's not as easy as saying "ok, let's allow IE10 to run on Vista".

...it's an operating system component, that's used in a lot of places...

This is a strategy tax, for a strategy that stopped being reasonable a decade ago. Numerous alternate browsers have had no problems competing with an "integrated" IE, for many years now. The DOJ case was settled by a completely different set of executives, so the current bunch don't have to pretend that OS integration is somehow vital to the function of a browser. Someone should draft a memo to the browser department: that stupid shit you were supposed to do 15 years ago? stop doing that. An organization that continues with such a farce for so many years is puzzling.

Re: This is party time; Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 die on Tuesday

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't need to 'cite' what I can see with my own eyes from the stats of my payment services provider You could be a liar, idiot, troll, or just really love IE. Why would anyone take your word for it.

I can speak to the fact that on the ecommerce site I work, only 1-2% of users are on older IE, but they account for many thousands of dollars of sales.

Well, i know of sites that still support IE7, IE8 and the revenues from those users are in millions.
Post reply on HN