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

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

#31

Post by douche »

drdaeman wrote: post #25
ars wrote: 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".

Not even counting all the things like COM integration and embedded browser components in WinForms and the like...

I do some work with various embedded extension APIs in different office and collaboration tools, and it's quite a mess trying to figure out what those web browsers actually are

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

#32

Post by jlgaddis »

ars wrote: post #19
cmurf wrote: post #17

I think it should have a built in kill switch. It knows it's own EOL date, and just wouldn't work after that.

Really? I know that would be easier for developers, but think about it from a "it's my computer" point of view - do you really want people doing that to you? It's your computer, you should be able to to run whatever software you like. A reminder to upgrade, OK, that's fine. But actually disabling? You go too far.

I laughed a little bit imagining a user yelling out "it's my computer!" and actually believing they should have full, absolute control over anything it does... while running a Microsoft operating system.

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

#34

Post by xg15 »

inlined wrote: post #11
TwoBit wrote: post #4

I have no idea how confident I should be in Edge's security. Microsoft just doesn't have a great history there.

A major category of IE vulnerabilities involved tricking it into loading COM objects. The Chakra JS engine moved from a COM based implementation to compiled JS. And Edge doesn't support ActiveX or Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) like IE did either. It looks like most of the COM attack vectors have now been shut down, though some components like the clipboard still use COM to interact with the broader OS.

Out of couriosity: As BHOs were the closest IE had to browser extensions, does that mean Edge doesn't support extensions at all - or is there a different system in place?

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

#35

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

ars wrote: post #19
cmurf wrote: post #17

I think it should have a built in kill switch. It knows it's own EOL date, and just wouldn't work after that.

Really? I know that would be easier for developers, but think about it from a "it's my computer" point of view - do you really want people doing that to you? It's your computer, you should be able to to run whatever software you like. A reminder to upgrade, OK, that's fine. But actually disabling? You go too far.

That's definitely the direction we appear to be heading, though. Different 'app stores' are varying degrees of the way there, but auto-updates coupled with an inability to download past versions makes this almost a thing.

I don't want to be overly negative, though. I foresee a future in which there is a split between completely walled gardens and completely open systems, so those who really want the latter will still be catered for.

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

#36

Post by madaxe_again »

flohofwoe wrote: post #18

Very funny, End of Life for a popular product just means more trouble for 3rd-party-devs since they need to continue supporting the product as long as a significant chunk of their users don't feel like upgrading, but with support for the required SDKs cut off. Case in point: WindowsXP's End of Life was 2 years ago, but between 25% and 35% of (mostly casual) gamers still run it worldwide (this is heavily skewed by XP…

Yeah. Microsoft may no longer support them but we'll be stuck supporting them until june 2018 at least, when the tls apocalypse may cause holdouts to upgrade - or just complain loudly at Web developers for "breaking my Internet".

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

#37

Post by Eric_WVGG »

xg15 wrote: post #34
inlined wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major category of IE vulnerabilities involved tricking it into loading COM objects. The Chakra JS engine moved from a COM based implementation to compiled JS. And Edge doesn't support ActiveX or Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) like IE did either. It looks like most of the COM attack vectors have now been shut down, though some components like the clipboard still use COM to interact with the broader OS.

Out of couriosity: As BHOs were the closest IE had to browser extensions, does that mean Edge doesn't support extensions at all - or is there a different system in place?

Edge will actually support both Chrome and Firefox extensions,,, http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/29/8515771/microsofts-edge-br... But not until later this year.

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

#38

Post by jaxb »

ars wrote: post #21
cm2187 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are stuck on XP it's not really a choice. I work for a major European corporation and I am also stuck on XP. We don't exactly have the best in class IT dept (despite claims by a senior IT guy that we have more developpers than google and facebook together... we don't really have much to show for it).

> If they are stuck on XP it's not really a choice. I never understood why users stuck on XP don't just install a different browser (Chrome or Firefox). You don't have to use IE, especially not in the version is so old it barely works with modern sites.

Because corporate policy says "no Chrome or Firefox Portable for you".

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

#39

Post by danieltillett »

flohofwoe wrote: post #18

Very funny, End of Life for a popular product just means more trouble for 3rd-party-devs since they need to continue supporting the product as long as a significant chunk of their users don't feel like upgrading, but with support for the required SDKs cut off. Case in point: WindowsXP's End of Life was 2 years ago, but between 25% and 35% of (mostly casual) gamers still run it worldwide (this is heavily skewed by XP…

I am in this situation. A good chunk of my users are stuck on xp so I am stuck on supporting xp too. There is no way around this for me as the reason my users are stuck on xp is because of hardware. Arg!

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

#40

Post by pjc50 »

ars wrote: post #26
drdaeman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I've heard that, but no one is forcing them to program it that way. They could do the equivalent of static linking and include the necessary components in the browser instead of the OS. That's more or less what the Utilu IE Collection does I think.

It's the other way round: programs include the browser as a COM component. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa752040%28VS.85%29...

So on the older operating systems, programs that shipped with the OS will be embedding the browser as a COM component, usually for help purposes. If they're rendering local HTML (or generated HTML!) then they require that to keep working. So that particular interface has to be maintained, making it very difficult to upgrade.

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.

On the other hand, how do you embed a browser component in a forward-compatible way?

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