4 ms·

Not upgrading from IE8 is the same as using a laptop made 5 years ago now?

• tombert 11y ago
  My point is that no one has this outrage machine when web developers whine about Internet Explorer, even though plenty of people are stuck using it for financial reasons, just like people who are stuck with five-year-old computers, and as a developer, I actually do find it frustrating when I have to support older hardware. I'll admit the choice of the word "sad" might have been poor, but it's hardly worth getting offended over.
  • mikeash 11y ago
    Aren't there better alternatives to IE that don't cost money? That doesn't seem to be the same at all. Much of the reason older PCs are still useful is because the software is still mutable, often at no monetary cost.
    • tombert 11y ago
      Plenty of companies cannot upgrade away from IE because the cost would be too high. I worked at a company that only worked with IE7 at one point. Sure, I could have said "just use Firefox" or "just use Chrome...It's free!", but that wasn't really an option. Now, granted, I'm aware that a company is not the same as a person, but it was just a dumb example I used to kind of point out that getting offended because Apple "punched down" is kind of arbitrary.
      • mikeash 11y ago
        Why wasn't using Firefox or Chrome an option? They're free. Maybe corporate policy prohibited it, but that means it's basically a choice to keep using old and broken stuff. People find Apple's statement offensive because the people who use old PCs tend to be poor, so that statement was basically shitting on poor people for not having the means to buy new electronics. I don't see how your example compares.
        • tombert 11y ago
          Their web app broke when using anything but Internet Explorer 7, and they couldn't afford to upgrade it to modern web standards (they actually did get an estimate to do exactly that), so no, they didn't have a choice, really. I'm done with this topic; be as offended as you want.
          • mikeash 11y ago
            Are you under the impression that it's not possible to have two browsers installed simultaneously?
            • rakoo 11y ago
              Are you under the impression that all web pages and all web applications have been created with utmost respect for the standard and only the one standard (and not a specific browser in mind) and have been maintained for the last 10 years ? Because those applications, that only work with IE (and not a too recent one !) do exist, and are a PITA to work with. It's not like the application would have some glitches or some CSS properties that don't render correctly with Chrome or Firefox; it's a real "does not work".
              • mikeash 11y ago
                I struggle to understand the relevance of this comment. What have I said that indicates I think such web apps don't exist? Of course they do. My point is that they don't mean you can't run a better browser, for other web stuff.
                • h_r 11y ago
                  It's obvious you never worked for a large bureaucratic company having to support many intranet legacy web apps. Of course you can run another browser for the other stuff. This is about the financial costs of software resulting in "corporate standards" including some ancient browser. This is not at all unusual. And it's hardly a thing to flame the messenger on. It's just a reality some people deal with.
  • pfg 11y ago
    There's a huge difference between running outdated software with serious security problems and using older hardware that might be perfectly capable of running a modern OS and modern web browsers. I own both a 7 year old desktop PC and a 5 year old laptop that I use occasionally when I need to run some Windows-only program, and they're both perfectly capable of running Windows 10 and every other piece of software I've thrown at it.