kthxbye
Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
141–150 of 219 posts
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#142There was a time in 1998-99 when Internet Explorer 4 / 5 was actually the best browser by far. Netscape 4 was unstable and had completely botched all the fancy new features: its implementation of CSS (brand new at the time) was so bad that even font sizes didn't work right, its homegrown "layers" API for JavaScript DOM access was awful, and many web developers were wishing they could somehow get away with only supporting IE.
25 years after the release of IE4, I'm just glad both of those browser codebases are now dead.
IE was really done in by Microsoft's "Longhorn" OS project. After Windows XP, Microsoft was planning a very ambitious update that would completely reset core APIs. File systems would be largely replaced by an OS-level database, and the Win32 GUI API would be replaced by an XML-based UI framework codenamed Avalon.
A new Avalon browser would ship with the OS, and thus IE + HTML would become legacy technologies as Microsoft confidently assumed most developers would flock to building their web apps in Avalon instead.
To Microsoft strategists, it seemed that they had succeeded in containing the web: Netscape was dead, Mozilla had almost no users, Apple was shipping their IE in Mac OS X, Google wasn't on Microsoft's radar, and the HTML standard process was stalled. So while a lot of content was being delivered as HTML4, there didn't seem to be any reason left for Microsoft to invest in IE — they'd already nailed the browser, owned the market, and would push Avalon as the next step.
Fortunately, Longhorn failed. Some parts of the project eventually shipped years late as Windows Vista. Avalon became WPF + XAML and still exists in Windows, but the dream of a XAML browser replacing IE was dead.
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#143First time I ever wanted to embed an image into a HN comment. This image is so fitting! https://i.imgur.com/MgGvQHH.png
This is so fitting because even if Microsoft is deprecating and giving up on this monstrosity the executable is still sitting there. Serving legacy web apps that should have been abandoned a long time ago...
No post body was provided.
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly remember using Firebug in Firefox (mind-blowing tools, for the time) in ~2008 and having to debug issues in IE, which had the equivalent of a Check Engine Light for debugging.
Firebug and firebug lite were amazing but to keep the record clear it was possible to debug client-side JavaScript (and other script types) using Visual Studio since very early on in IE. It was granted a major pain to setup properly for breakpoints and code highlighting but it was a full fledged debugger and IDE. I remember doing it often. I don’t remember if there was a debugger for IE for mac and early Safari. For…
I had forgotten about those days. The VS debugger slowed down my computer so much though that I often just used alert anyway. Firebug was a huge improvement.
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't that be Chrome? Internet Explorer had dominant market share, non-standardized features, and powerful corporate backing. Chrome has dominant market share, non-standardized features, and powerful corporate backing. Safari doesn't have the newest standards always, but mostly sticks to the standards from what I know. The major difference seems to be a lot of devs liking Chrome.
They both have some parallels to IE in their own ways. Chrome for the reasons you mentioned, safari because: -Coupled to OS updates, meaning that people on older versions of the OS will also have an older browser, with worse standards support (thankfully apples upgrade policies aren't as bad as android manufacturers, or this would be way worse) -lagging behind on standard features with less frequent, big updates that…
WebP is NOT a web standard, it's just a format a lot of browsers happen to support.
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
All versions of Windows Server are (for now) unaffected, i.e., Internet Explorer 11 continues to run [1]. There is also "Internet Explorer Mode" in Edge, which uses iexplore.exe under the hood. Additionally, if somebody were _really_ desperate to launch iexplore.exe itself, then there are unsupported means to do so. For example, via manually modifying the registry key "NotifyDisableIEOptions" under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE…
If one is desperate, there is also the option of the classic Webview control in Visual Studio (or even the old VB6 version) which with little bit of UI added around it, can substitute for the real IE for certain enterprise legacy webapps. A bit more effort, can also lock the control to only browse to the intended web service, and launch the default browser for any external links. There's kind of a market for this typ…
No post body was provided.
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#147I started my career 2008 building real estate and stock news websites. Back then, sooooo much of my days were spent making things "IE compatible" using techniques like: - creating sprite sheets of transparent png corners and sides that one could arrange in a table around an element to create drop-shadows and rounded corners - putting single pixel, transparent gifs at the end of floated containers because clearfix use…
[deleted]
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#148Does anyone work in an “enterprise” environment who have been dreading this day? Any apps / mainframes / industrials systems that needs IE to run?
I need it to access my firewall.
Yeah.
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#149Does anyone work in an “enterprise” environment who have been dreading this day? Any apps / mainframes / industrials systems that needs IE to run?
I support an EMR running on AIX that is accessed through a Java Web applet that only works with Internet Explorer. Since you cannot install Java in any other modern browser, IE mode works on Windows 10 but not 11. The menus and setting you need to configure just do not exist in Edge and without the full Internet Options menu from IE, the site cannot load. The vendor allegedly has an update coming soon to allow other…
The bigger deal here is that you have an AIX-based EMR in 2022.
Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support
#150Is this Groundhog Day? How many more times will IE be declared dead? Official support is irrelevant if the browser is still stubbornly used by users. Most websites have moved on more than 5 years ago. This news is meaningless. This confirms it: > For supported operating systems, Internet Explorer 11 will continue receiving security updates and technical support for the lifecycle of the Windows version on which it is…
In conservative IT businesses like hospitals this date is a deal breaker: No more security updates. In consequence IT will switch it off immediately. Guess why edge has an IE Mode.
That's not what conservative means. My conservative hospital client recently downgraded to Windows 7! If you pay MS enough you get security updates no problem. Not to mention that even the less conservative are probably on Windows 10 LTSC where IE11 will keep running