Microsoft ends Internet Explorer support in Windows 10 tomorrow:
Internet Explorer is bowing out just short of its 27th birthday. As revealed last May, Microsoft will no longer support the Internet Explorer 11 desktop app for Windows 10's usual Semi Annual Channel as of June 15th. You'll still receive IE11 support if you're using Windows Server 2022 or an earlier OS release with a long-term service extension, but this marks the effective end of software updates for most people. Windows 11 doesn't include an IE desktop app.
The Edge browser's IE Mode will still receive support through 2029 or later, so you won't be stuck if you just need compatibility with the older web engine. Microsoft won't be subtle in pushing you toward its newer browser, however. The company will "progressively" redirect users from IE to Edge in the next few months, and will permanently disable the old software through a Windows update.
Is anyone going to miss it?
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:21AM (3 children)
MSIE originated from Spyglass Mosaic [zdnet.com] when M$ offered to buy it in exchange for a portion of the sales. Since M$ gave it away as a means to illegally extend their desktop monopoly in to the browser market, that meant $0 in sales. Spyglass sued and eventually M$ settled for a paltry sum. M$ has been getting its shills to rewrite both of those aspects of history either by omission of key facts or outright lies or both.
Another bit was when M$, actually Bill [youtube.com], asked for the date the court would make a decision and rushed to get their then forthcoming edition of Windoze onto store shelves prior to the decision. The court would have been able to block shipping the product, but forcing a recall was beyond their abilities or at least their will to take on M$. That rushed version of Windoze had one main trait: that MSIE components were metastacized throughout the code base and tied into as many disparate functions as possible. That made it all but impossible for the court to force M$ to back out the changes in a timely manner. Eventually the case dragged on until an election placed a regime favorable to Bill into power and the judge was kicked off the case before he could render a punishment to follow his decision.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @10:08AM (1 child)
ah yes, the early days of any industry, gurranteeing early monopolies thru corruption, cheating the little(other) guys thru sly action and dealings, and outright graft. the corporate american dream.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:03AM
How is that worse than open government graft?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @07:09PM
When MSIE first came out, it was 700KB, which was a big deal at 14.4 Kbps. Started it up, and it commenced to taking over the computer. I never, ever tried it again. Netscape Navigator, even though it crashed at the drop of a bit, was my standard until zero-point-nothing Mozilla. Mozilla, no matter how good it felt to use, proved the theory that once you have a code base that mostly works, you should never, ever throw it all away and start over.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday June 16 2022, @10:30AM (7 children)
Am I going to miss the browser? Not really. I know a lot of people are going to miss the Icon tho, for them it has sort of become synonymous with the internet or browsing and it's what they look at on the desktop. The big blue e.
With that in mind on some kind of historical flashback note it wasn't great when Explorer had some kind of stranglehold on the net. Sort of like it still sucks today when Chrome has it. Just replacing one shit browser for the next, from one shit company to another. It's still sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @03:19PM (2 children)
I don't know much about these things any more, but does Chrome adhere to web standards? IE, of course, was famous for explicitly breaking them (I mean, extending them). If Chrome and its decedents adhere to it, that would at least be some small victory of sorts.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @03:22PM (1 child)
Chrome has a enough of a dominant market share that they define the standards. There are standards organizations, but it's the tail wagging the dog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @05:16PM
Back in the day, the standards organizations were supposed to codify what the browsers were already doing and make compromises between conflicting implementations. Now Google is almost the only game in town and their people are staffing the standards organizations.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 16 2022, @04:14PM (3 children)
I have a slightly different view of browsers.
It isn't exactly 'one shit browser replacing another'. We started with some rather lame browsers, that weren't capable of much. Browsers got better, but corporations hijacked the browsers for their own purposes. Ever better browsers, and ever worse hijacks. Seriously, WTF really needs javascript? Is there no other safer way to perform the tasks that javascript is used for? Really?
Browsers have improved, but corporations have improved their behind-the-scenes nonsense, largely canceling out real improvements.
What was it Henry Ford said? You can have any color car you like, as long as you like black - or something like that.
Today, you can have any kind of browser you want, so long as you want to be spied on and tracked endlessly. Thanks, Google. (Bear in mind that Microsoft is using Google's browser, they've only changed who gets all the telemetry, tracking, etc ad nauseum.)
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @04:55PM (1 child)
Not particularly. Much of what JS is used for is running code on the user's browser. There's a lot of things that can and should be done on the server side, but there's also a lot of stuff that really only makes sense on the client side. For example, anything involving formatting of content to fit the user's display really is better off on the client side. Otherwise, you're stuck sending traffic back and forth every time the window size or shape changes. As well as things like password validation whenever the user sets a password.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:59PM
CSS is used for platform-independent formatting, not JavaScript.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @04:31AM
I have been using the same browser for over 25 years. Love the tabs!
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:29AM
All they are doing right now is (eventually) preventing users from starting the program directly.
The core of IE is still used by Microsoft Edge's IE Compatibility Mode, and for all the other Windows applications that embedded IE or called IE DLLs. Depreciated, yes, gone, no. As long as that is there, at least security updates will have to be made for it.
The really interesting day will be when/if they ever try to purge IE's rotting guts from Windows. In the Win9x/2000 days they intertwined IE with Windows so much, that it may not even be possible to scrape that rotting corpse out of there.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday June 16 2022, @11:40AM (1 child)
Haven't missed it for a second lo these past 23ish years. No IE and no Windows, but i can see things more clearly because Windows is really just a bricked up hole.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @01:03PM
True, but Linux has been turning into Windows over the years. It's not the simple, reliable, and understandable OS it used to be. Security sucks too on it now. Linux is a mess of third party components integrated in a half-assed manner by development groups pumping out buggy stuff and leaving it to the users to deal with. The one saving grace of Linux, that it doesn't spy on you, is threatened as popular apps (well, somewhat popular apps) attempt to include built in spying. The webpages we surf certainly do that.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday June 16 2022, @12:07PM (7 children)
Good riddance, I say. Mostly because I've had to deal with the fact that IE's scripting engine only supports a fraction of Javascript for a very long time. Largely in an effort to, in Microsoft's own words, "de-commoditize protocols & applications [catb.org]", intentionally trying to screw up the development of web applications to make desktop applications more attractive and try to lock web developers into using IE-specific stuff as much as possible. They wanted developers to make websites that only functioned in IE to try to keep people from running, say, a Mac or a Linux box and enjoying access to the same Internet that everybody else had.
And of course it long ago succeeded in its main purpose of destroying Netscape.
The US government under Bill Clinton put them on trial for antitrust over this, and won, but then let them off with a very firm slap on the wrist in the form of an agreement where Microsoft swore up and down they'd never do anything like this again (but with no mechanism to check to see if they'd kept those promises and no punishment prescribed if they didn't, so largely they didn't).
Edge has its problems, but it's nowhere near the nightmare that IE support has been for its entire existence.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @03:12PM (3 children)
I've made a Best Viewed With Google Chrome application in the past. How long until Firefail folds?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Thursday June 16 2022, @03:23PM (1 child)
How long until Firefail folds?
It will last until Google no longer needs to keep it around for the illusion of competition, and not a minute longer. Follow the money [androidheadlines.com]. Google is supporting the project as a whole all the while the money which the project spends is all about blue-haired stuff and nothing technical any more [mozilla.org]. That and executive compensation. Firefox has suffered almost as badly as Thunderbird has since both compete with Google. The illusion of continued programming and development has been maintained with only minimal effort. Under Mitchell Baker's tenure, Mozilla has more or less gotten out of the software business and continues to exist only at the whim of Google.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EEMac on Thursday June 16 2022, @04:19PM
> Mozilla has more or less gotten out of the software business and continues to exist only at the whim of Google.
The current situation reminds me strongly of Microsoft
bailing outinvesting in Apple in 1997. Microsoft could claim to not have a desktop monopoly so long as people had the option to buy a Mac.(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @04:58PM
Congratulations, you are part of the problem. As long as developers do that, it makes it harder and harder for 3rd parties to enter the market and for non-dominant browsers to remain. It's already hard enough for new competitors to enter the market as it is, with such complicated standards, but if developers just support the most common browsers, it becomes even more of an issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @08:53PM (2 children)
G**gl* Gmail recently stopped working without Javascript, at the same time they required birthdays, at the same time they outlawed SeaMonkey. How long until FireFox is excommunicated?
The birthday issue is bigger than it sounds. G**gl* is tied to all sorts of money people, which means that birthday will end up in many unexpected spaces. Better not use a fake birthday if someday you may want to get an online... anything.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday June 16 2022, @09:52PM (1 child)
None of what I wrote above was intended to suggest that Google are the good guys. Nor Apple, for that matter.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @02:08AM
Not to worry. We were the last good guys.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Thursday June 16 2022, @12:31PM (1 child)
This just makes me feel old. I wouldn't say I ever particularly liked IE. I quite liked using Windows 98 (I know, I know). But like most people, I'm more comfortable when my brain is familiar with most of the objects in its environment, and for better or worse, some of my neurons are dedicated to modeling Micro$oft's web browsers. For a while now it has had to dedicate extra neurons to Edge as well. Those bastards, wasting my tired old neurons!
I don't think it's just older people that don't like lots of change. I don't think most young people like it either. It's just that the older you get, the more of the things you grew up on disappear.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Friday June 17 2022, @02:53AM
And the less patience you have with making the new stuff work.
Speaking as an old fart, it's not change that annoys me. It's change that breaks existing functionality.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Thursday June 16 2022, @03:38PM
The fine summary and perhaps the article itself (dunno, it is blocked by javascript) are missing the most important link on the whole topic:
These are the facts as agreed upon at the court in preparation for hearing the case. None of the 412 separate points there are in dispute by any of the parties involved. They were once common knowledge among IT staff and even IT managers. Nowadays, revisionism and spin has caused most to disbelieve established facts. Yet there they are, all 412 items.
For what it's worth, M$ assault on Java, an assault which is still ongoing, started then, too, among other behaviors. The list of findings is long, there's something for everyone.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2022, @06:42PM (1 child)
What does Microsoft Internet Explorer going away actually mean? Microsoft Edge is still around, and as far as I could tell from the end-user experience, they were the same thing. What is the actual difference between the two and why should I care?
I'm guessing it is something like they have different rendering engines, and it matters because this is just one more step to the Chrome-monoculture future?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday June 17 2022, @04:48AM
Sounds like a monochrome future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @10:18PM
Meme coverage here: Internet Explorer gravestone goes viral in South Korea [reuters.com]
"It's dead, Jim." "Pining for the fjords." "Gone to meet its diabolical coder in hell."