Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 167 posts

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#131

Post by gtk40 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #107

The document makes things wildly unclear as to which versions of IE are actually supported by Microsoft. In practical terms it's still IE9 and IE11 for a while (so far as I can tell)? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-I... I'm sure there is still a load of Windows Vista SP2 machines around...

My thoughts too. If versions of Windows less than Windows 7 are supported which cannot run IE11, and IE11 is the only version being supported, are those older versions of Windows still really supported?

Windows Vista has support through 2017 and Windows Server 2008 has support through 2020.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#132

Post by hippich »

randlet wrote: post #124
tow21 wrote: post #115

An unfortunate datapoint: for one of our products I'm still seeing >25% users on IE8. This is a (primarily UK) product most of whose users are on internal bank networks. It's come down from about 40% 2 years ago, so it's heading in the right direction - but I'm not sure I see it going away any time soon. There's huge organizational inertia inside these banks around IT systems - if we want to serve them, we need to su…

Same story for me. I run an open source project used by hospitals and I think I'm stuck supporting IE8 for another year or two.

hi, which project is that?

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#133

Post by randlet »

hippich wrote: post #132
randlet wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same story for me. I run an open source project used by hospitals and I think I'm stuck supporting IE8 for another year or two.

hi, which project is that?

http://qatrackplus.com It's a self hosted Django app for tracking quality assurance data for radiation therapy centres (although it could easily be adapted for other purposes).

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#134

Post by gtk40 »

debaserab2 wrote: post #61
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... But that's exactly what they're saying we DON'T want. A lot of browsers re-used IE 6's rendering engine because it had a monopoly. That only made the situation worse. A browser's rendering engine is the ONLY part that matters, and if anyone has a monopoly that is "bad" because competition helps innovation. Each rendering engine winds up, for good and bad, with a small group of people deciding what features do and…

What popular browser vendors used the IE6 rendering engine besides IE6? I have many memories of dealing with various Firefox/Chrome differences, but I never once dealt with a popular browser vendor outside of IE that used the IE6 rendering engine. I don't necessarily agree with your assertion that a browser's rendering engine is the only part that matters. Internet explorer ships with windows by default. Mozilla (fir…

A lot of ISPs shipped stuff that were IE shells, like AOL (and we had Walmart Connect for a time when I was growing up), in addition to browsers like Maxathon. Even Netscape (8?) at one point had an option to be an IE shell.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#136

Post by MarkyC4 »

douche wrote: post #122
isomorphic wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a beautiful dream sometimes, where I go to work, and I only have to care about supporting Chrome... I understand the sentiment, but to be clear: Ideally we do not want any one vendor with a majority browser share. Otherwise someone will get complacent and we'll have a repeat of the dark times (IE6). Having multiple browser vendors is good for the web.

I picked Chrome because it is, as far as I know, the most standards-compliant browser in wide use at the moment. Firefox is quite good, Safari quite less good, and IE 11 and Edge are okay. Nobody really uses Opera... Depending on which set of stats you like, Chrome might already have a majority share. I just wish that there was one unambiguous spec that they all supported. How many man-hours on aggregate have been wa…

> I picked Chrome because it is, as far as I know, the most standards-compliant browser in wide use at the moment

you sure? Firefox is ahead in at least 2 of the 3 categories on caniuse (though I will admit, they are _very_ close).

Look under "Summary" on these pages:

* http://caniuse.com/#cats=JS%20API

* http://caniuse.com/#cats=Other

* http://caniuse.com/#cats=CSS

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#138

Post by dccoolgai »

rogeryu wrote: post #125
tow21 wrote: post #115

An unfortunate datapoint: for one of our products I'm still seeing >25% users on IE8. This is a (primarily UK) product most of whose users are on internal bank networks. It's come down from about 40% 2 years ago, so it's heading in the right direction - but I'm not sure I see it going away any time soon. There's huge organizational inertia inside these banks around IT systems - if we want to serve them, we need to su…

They are probably XP users. You can create a small notification on top of your website, notifying them that they should move to Firefox or Chrome because their browser is not safe anymore...

"they should move to Firefox or Chrome because their browser is not safe anymore..."

You are assuming that they have a choice. A large chunk of them most likely don't.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#139

Post by ToastyMallows »

jvehent wrote: post #119
uxwtf wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a relief for front-end people. We'll be finally free of workarounds for IE.

Microsoft not supporting older IE doesn't mean front-end people won't have to if their sites have users who don't upgrade. It just means Microsoft can't be bothered to ship patches for those older browsers.

It's a good first step though. This means that websites can start telling users "we don't support this browser because Microsoft doesn't", etc., and they will die off quicker.

Re: Support for older versions of Internet Explorer ends on January 12, 2016

#140

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

isomorphic wrote: post #17
douche wrote: post #14

Thank goodness. IE 11 has enough warts and weirdness; having to deal with all the brokenness in IE 8 was driving my front-end colleagues to alcoholism... I have a beautiful dream sometimes, where I go to work, and I only have to care about supporting Chrome...

> I have a beautiful dream sometimes, where I go to work, and I only have to care about supporting Chrome... I understand the sentiment, but to be clear: Ideally we do not want any one vendor with a majority browser share. Otherwise someone will get complacent and we'll have a repeat of the dark times (IE6). Having multiple browser vendors is good for the web.

We're already in complacency. It is not uncommon for me to find a standards-compliant site but which has unfixed bugs in Firefox which make it unusable, so you have to use Chrome.
Post reply on HN