Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#71

Post by traveler01 » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #55

DrBazza wrote: post #7

Having lived through the MS/IE6 era of being the monopoly web browser, and effectively determined and held back web standards for a long time, it's bittersweet that we now have Google/Chrome era. At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into their OSes any more. Oh wait.

Do you remember how we got into the IE6 situation? IE was actually very innovative, did stuff like AJAX before everyone else and the developers adopted the ways of IE. Websites did not work well on other browsers, every website had a disclaimer at the bottom: Works best in IE. Now I see similar situation with Chrome and gives me goosebumps. Some people say that Safari is the new IE but I think they got it wrong, I th…

I don't see the issue with Chrome. The new IE it's obviously Safari and it's in the worst way possible since in iOS you're actually forced to use it. Apple is also being accused of breaking their own browser to force you using their AppStore. Don't see Google doing that.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#72

Post by chrisseaton » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #55

DrBazza wrote: post #7

Having lived through the MS/IE6 era of being the monopoly web browser, and effectively determined and held back web standards for a long time, it's bittersweet that we now have Google/Chrome era. At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into their OSes any more. Oh wait.

Do you remember how we got into the IE6 situation? IE was actually very innovative, did stuff like AJAX before everyone else and the developers adopted the ways of IE. Websites did not work well on other browsers, every website had a disclaimer at the bottom: Works best in IE. Now I see similar situation with Chrome and gives me goosebumps. Some people say that Safari is the new IE but I think they got it wrong, I th…

> a browser with a reputation to crash all the time and bring down Windows with it

IE post-dates the addition of process isolation to Windows - IE never brought down Windows because it ran as a normal process. When people say IE was integrated into Windows they just mean applications like the shell used it as a component, it wasn't actually in the kernel.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#73

Post by eastbound » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #7

Having lived through the MS/IE6 era of being the monopoly web browser, and effectively determined and held back web standards for a long time, it's bittersweet that we now have Google/Chrome era. At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into their OSes any more. Oh wait.

Going ahead, the only OS war I’m afraid of is:

- A GDPR-style mandate to make cloud apps secure by certifying all libraries and upstream authors that run your stack, down to the OS,

- Thus cloud providers providing “Debian, only for amateur purposes, PII forbidden”,

- And “Amazon Linux, certified GDPR III, all upstream identified.”

That would be the end of free software. But at the same time, it would be the only reasonable move from EU, it drives me crazy that websites all use random NPM modules, half of them written by Russians we’re at war with.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#74

Post by calvinmorrison » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

leeter wrote: post #24

calvinmorrison wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you will (I am a sole firefox user for a decade +), at least chrome keeps improving and having development. Now that the web is more of a "VM in a window for applications", it's _not_ like the IE era of no updates, buggy crap, un-debuggable, etc.

Yes and no, Chrome does what's good for google with no regard for most of the rest. To make it worse google goes out of their way to break compatibility with other browsers when it comes to their stuff. It's really no different and in many ways just as bad. The only major difference is google's incentives do align with innovation for web; insofar as it furthers advertising revenue for google. https://www.developer-te…

I don't really care if there is only one implementation of Java, or if there is one implementation of "Web". It's all VMs to me.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#75

Post by grishka » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #7

Having lived through the MS/IE6 era of being the monopoly web browser, and effectively determined and held back web standards for a long time, it's bittersweet that we now have Google/Chrome era. At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into their OSes any more. Oh wait.

I'm not sure which is worse. The problem with Chrome is that Google isn't content with the web being a document platform. They want it to be this all-encompassing OS-like amalgamation of worst technologies possible that's never complete. This endless feature creep with WebUSB, WebMIDI, WebBluetooth, WebNFC... No, it's not "cool" that I'm for some reason able to install a beta version of Android on my phone using a macro in a hypertext document.

In the IE era, if you wanted a "web application", you simply used Flash. There was a clear separation between the document and the application. It was nice. I miss it.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#76

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #7

Having lived through the MS/IE6 era of being the monopoly web browser, and effectively determined and held back web standards for a long time, it's bittersweet that we now have Google/Chrome era. At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into their OSes any more. Oh wait.

[deleted]

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#77

Post by mostlysimilar » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

continuational wrote: post #54

fartcannon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox rose to power because people like you and me used it. We told people to use it. This can happen again, we just need to collectively stop feeding these monopoly wannabes.

Firefox was also clearly a better user experience at the time, which made it much easier to convince people to switch. I switched back to Firefox a while ago for ideological reasons, but the majority of people are not going to switch to something that is more or less the same, just without their bookmarks, passwords and history.

All major browsers have a dead-simple import tool, and they even asks you if you want to do it the first time you open them.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#78

Post by Jaruzel » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

isp wrote: post #21

timeimp wrote: post #5

Does anyone work in an “enterprise” environment who have been dreading this day? Any apps / mainframes / industrials systems that needs IE to run?

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 type of solution in the legacy enterprise app space I think.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#79

Post by mrtksn » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

traveler01 wrote: post #71

mrtksn wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember how we got into the IE6 situation? IE was actually very innovative, did stuff like AJAX before everyone else and the developers adopted the ways of IE. Websites did not work well on other browsers, every website had a disclaimer at the bottom: Works best in IE. Now I see similar situation with Chrome and gives me goosebumps. Some people say that Safari is the new IE but I think they got it wrong, I th…

I don't see the issue with Chrome. The new IE it's obviously Safari and it's in the worst way possible since in iOS you're actually forced to use it. Apple is also being accused of breaking their own browser to force you using their AppStore. Don't see Google doing that.

Apple forces you to use the rendering engine, not the browser. You can download Chrome to your iPhone.

Anyway, that's not the point. IE wasn't bad because it was a shitty browser. It was bad because it had features that other browsers did not have and it was very popular because it was very innovative and it was heavily marketed. This resulted in websites being made for IE only, which resulted in a lockdown of huge userbase that even Microsoft couldn't get rid of once decided to get rid of IE.

Safari is nothing like that and there's no Safari lockdown. On the other hand, Chrome does have non standard features and huge market share, forcing web developers to make everything for Chrome. That's exactly like IE.

If anything, Apple's refusal to allow the Chrome engine into iOS is the only thing that keeps us from complete lockdown into Chrome.

Re: Internet Explorer 11 has retired and is officially out of support

#80

Post by somehnacct3757 » Wed, Jun 15, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #55

DrBazza wrote: post #7

Having lived through the MS/IE6 era of being the monopoly web browser, and effectively determined and held back web standards for a long time, it's bittersweet that we now have Google/Chrome era. At least it's not hard wired into the OS and we're not going through another era of mega-corp hard wiring browsers into their OSes any more. Oh wait.

Do you remember how we got into the IE6 situation? IE was actually very innovative, did stuff like AJAX before everyone else and the developers adopted the ways of IE. Websites did not work well on other browsers, every website had a disclaimer at the bottom: Works best in IE. Now I see similar situation with Chrome and gives me goosebumps. Some people say that Safari is the new IE but I think they got it wrong, I th…

Why does there only need to be one web villain? We've unbundled IE's horrors.

Safari is now the browser that resists web standards and an open internet for its parent company's personal gain. See: PWAs, webgl, webview.

And Chrome is now the thousand pound gorilla forcing standards nobody wants, for its parent company's personal gain. See: manifest v3, cookie security.