73 ms·

please terminate ie11 in 2020 1/2

dspillett 8y ago
MS dropping support won't stop corporates using it. Apart from a few exceptions (running on Windows Server 2012 and some embedded versions, where IE11 has until soon not been supported) IE10 (and below) hasn't been supported since 2016. All they are doing here is pulling the plug on those few remaining environments. If your clients are still running IE10 on some ancient version of desktop Windows now, they probably still will be on 2020. Heck, one of our clients (a major UK bank) seems to be having trouble getting a few remaining members of their staff off IE8. And they can't even try dropping IE11 without breaking previous guarantees or changing the path of Windows 10 at least slightly. They locked IE11's support life-cycle to that of Windows 10, and they've stated that Win10 will not be replaced, only updated/upgraded. IE11 is officially here to stay, and even if it wasn't it would be unofficially here to stay if you have clients anything like ours.
- tashoecraft 8y ago
  Luckily our contracts state we only support maintained, supported browsers (not sure the exact language). So once Microsoft ends support for IE11 it'll be gone the same day. The majority of our users (users and clients are different people) are on a modern browser, but when the client goes to test they are normally on ie11 which gives so many headaches.
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  > having trouble getting a few remaining members of their staff off IE All it takes is an old business-critical web app that uses ActiveX controls (or a specific version of Java) to lock thousands of Corporate users into old IE version. I believe App-V can be leveraged to provide older apps into new OSs, but I'm not sure if IE is supported on that. Failing that, there's always the option of an old Citrix farm, and seamless app provision...
- efficax 8y ago
  Indeed. I hack on a web app with over 100k daily users and we only just last month decided to drop support for IE8, and that only because some third party libraries that will simplify things for us don't support it
  - dspillett 8y ago
    Our chief leverage for pushing back on IE8 support is that out-of-the-box (which is pretty much how that have it configured) it doesn't support SSL settings that pass up-to-date recommendations. Each year we are pen-tested by a third party, each year that client complains that the testers say the SSL setup is potentially insecure, every year we point out that we'd be more than happy to follow the recommendations (in fact we feel dirty not doing!) but it would lock out a number of their users if they were not given an alternate browser or otherwise reconfigured. Fingers crossed this year is the last time: everyone there should have Chrome as an option, and everyone not depending on old apps (ActivX etc) should have IE11 not IE8. The login screens have had "are you sure you want to use this browser?" messages for IE8 users for a while, but some still use it, though only a few. This is legacy application. Thankfully for our new applications the contracts state nothing older than IE11 will be supported, and that we only begrudgingly support that so users of IE may experience display issues or other minor usability problems from time-to-time.
- isostatic 8y ago
  > Heck, one of our clients (a major UK bank) seems to be having trouble getting a few remaining members of their staff off IE8. I just checked one of our major internal systems, still a fair number on MSIE7 -- 1 in 66 hits, representing 1 in 34 machines.
- CWuestefeld 8y ago
  And even terminating the browser itself doesn't solve the problem. There's still the accursed compatibility mode. We still have to support IE7 and IE8 because of this (it looks ugly, but is still functional).
  - dspillett 8y ago
    > the accursed compatibility mode Ah yes, the fun of an almost-impossible-to-reliably-detect setting that affects your display and sometimes worse.
    - emergie 8y ago
      > almost-impossible-to-reliably-detect have you ever tried document.documentMode?
      - dspillett 8y ago
        I thought that was only in IE11, but apparently it has been around since IE8. It is only available client-side though, and while you can feed it back to the server if relevant there (i.e. server-side rendering which most of the legacy code I'm responsible for does) you'd have to keep doing so in case the mode changes between requests. Also you are forced to add in extra conditionals to your page whether you are working client- or server- side: you can respond to this property to deal with display differences via CSS selectors.
Forge36 8y ago
I wish. Unfortunately Microsoft never created a full alternative for embedded applications was never created my company's date to stop using IE11 by 2021.
irrational 8y ago
IE11 support is currently slated to end in 2025.

MS dropping support won't stop corporates using it. Apart from a few exceptions (running on Windows Server 2012 and some embedded versions, where IE11 has until soon not been supported) IE10 (and below) hasn't been supported since 2016. All they are doing here is pulling the plug on those few remaining environments. If your clients are still running IE10 on some ancient version of desktop Windows now, they probably still will be on 2020. Heck, one of our clients (a major UK bank) seems to be having trouble getting a few remaining members of their staff off IE8. And they can't even try dropping IE11 without breaking previous guarantees or changing the path of Windows 10 at least slightly. They locked IE11's support life-cycle to that of Windows 10, and they've stated that Win10 will not be replaced, only updated/upgraded. IE11 is officially here to stay, and even if it wasn't it would be unofficially here to stay if you have clients anything like ours.

tashoecraft 8y ago
Luckily our contracts state we only support maintained, supported browsers (not sure the exact language). So once Microsoft ends support for IE11 it'll be gone the same day. The majority of our users (users and clients are different people) are on a modern browser, but when the client goes to test they are normally on ie11 which gives so many headaches.
Jaruzel 8y ago
> having trouble getting a few remaining members of their staff off IE All it takes is an old business-critical web app that uses ActiveX controls (or a specific version of Java) to lock thousands of Corporate users into old IE version. I believe App-V can be leveraged to provide older apps into new OSs, but I'm not sure if IE is supported on that. Failing that, there's always the option of an old Citrix farm, and seamless app provision...
efficax 8y ago
Indeed. I hack on a web app with over 100k daily users and we only just last month decided to drop support for IE8, and that only because some third party libraries that will simplify things for us don't support it
- dspillett 8y ago
  Our chief leverage for pushing back on IE8 support is that out-of-the-box (which is pretty much how that have it configured) it doesn't support SSL settings that pass up-to-date recommendations. Each year we are pen-tested by a third party, each year that client complains that the testers say the SSL setup is potentially insecure, every year we point out that we'd be more than happy to follow the recommendations (in fact we feel dirty not doing!) but it would lock out a number of their users if they were not given an alternate browser or otherwise reconfigured. Fingers crossed this year is the last time: everyone there should have Chrome as an option, and everyone not depending on old apps (ActivX etc) should have IE11 not IE8. The login screens have had "are you sure you want to use this browser?" messages for IE8 users for a while, but some still use it, though only a few. This is legacy application. Thankfully for our new applications the contracts state nothing older than IE11 will be supported, and that we only begrudgingly support that so users of IE may experience display issues or other minor usability problems from time-to-time.
isostatic 8y ago
> Heck, one of our clients (a major UK bank) seems to be having trouble getting a few remaining members of their staff off IE8. I just checked one of our major internal systems, still a fair number on MSIE7 -- 1 in 66 hits, representing 1 in 34 machines.
CWuestefeld 8y ago
And even terminating the browser itself doesn't solve the problem. There's still the accursed compatibility mode. We still have to support IE7 and IE8 because of this (it looks ugly, but is still functional).
- dspillett 8y ago
  > the accursed compatibility mode Ah yes, the fun of an almost-impossible-to-reliably-detect setting that affects your display and sometimes worse.
  - emergie 8y ago
    > almost-impossible-to-reliably-detect have you ever tried document.documentMode?
    - dspillett 8y ago
      I thought that was only in IE11, but apparently it has been around since IE8. It is only available client-side though, and while you can feed it back to the server if relevant there (i.e. server-side rendering which most of the legacy code I'm responsible for does) you'd have to keep doing so in case the mode changes between requests. Also you are forced to add in extra conditionals to your page whether you are working client- or server- side: you can respond to this property to deal with display differences via CSS selectors.

Forge36 8y ago

I wish. Unfortunately Microsoft never created a full alternative for embedded applications was never created my company's date to stop using IE11 by 2021.

irrational 8y ago

IE11 support is currently slated to end in 2025.