21 ms·

Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) to be retired on June 15, 2022

763 points by smukherjee19 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mmastrac 5y ago
That's a real end of an era. Internet Explorer's legacy engine is going to be relegated to old grayhair horror stories. Not unhappy it's going away, but it feels like a big chapter is closing.
- coldpie 5y ago
  Rest in peace, <!--[if lte IE 6]>
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  relegated to old grayhair horror stories. The real shame of IE's passing is that we'll forget the lessons we learned and therefore repeat that particular disaster. It's already happening. I'd be happy to relegate the nightmare of IE to old war stories... except the same thing is happening today! Different method, nearly the same end result. We nearly lost the damn open web to the horror of IE6 and the peak "embrace, extend, extinguish" version of Microsoft. Now, of course, we're happily creating another browser monoculture and handing the web over to Google. This time, we're doing it with a smile instead of a grimace. Unlike IE6's reign of incompetent terror, Chrome is actually a competent browser. Techies are embracing the takeover instead of fighting it. It's guaranteed to succeed.
  - reificator 5y ago
    > Unlike IE6's reign of incompetent terror, Chrome is actually a competent browser. Techies are embracing the takeover instead of fighting it. It's guaranteed to succeed. IE6 was also a good browser. It didn't stay a good browser over the 5-10-15 year lifespan it had (depending on who you ask) but at the time of release it was easily the best.
    - rstupek 5y ago
      Unquestionably the best at the time.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      Arguably the best user experience in some ways- relative to other browsers at the time it "felt fast". Partly because it used native widgets instead of XUL like Mozilla, and also probably because various parts of it probably were loaded when Windows booted up. But it was pretty bad in other ways: security, stability, etc.
  - petre 5y ago
    You forgot about Safari, although it's not as atrociuos as IE was.
  - gogopuppygogo 5y ago
    Chromium is open source… Seems like a better approach in every way than the old mosaic/trident closed source mess.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago
      There are obvious benefits to Chromium being open-source, but you're kidding yourself if you think that gives you an ounce of control over the direction of web standards and the web as a whole. Sure, you can look at (most of) Chrome's source code, and fork it all day long if you want. But it will amount to little when it comes to actual control of the web. You simply won't have the marketshare to steer the direction of the web standards themselves. The end result will be the same as we suffered with IE's dominance: de facto control of the web by a single entity. But at least the ride to hell will be nicer.
      - chociej 5y ago
        The more I see distasteful things happening around Chromium, the more exclusively I use Firefox these days. And frankly I have had vanishingly few problems using FF alone.
- Angius 5y ago
  Now it passes the torch of shitty feature support to Safari
xnx 5y ago
The most important feature any browser ever included was auto-update. If IE had included this, things would be quite different.
- joecool1029 5y ago
  It sorta did through Windows/Microsoft update. They just didn't focus on releasing major editions often or at all for Windows, but it got security patches and minor point releases all the time.
  - cesarb 5y ago
    Actually, IIRC the very first versions of Windows Update were an ActiveX control. You had to use IE to run it, so from a certain point of view, that was IE updating itself.
    - chungy 5y ago
      The very first version was a native application for Windows 95 and 98 (First Edition). It was retired in short order in favor of the ActiveX page.
      - cesarb 5y ago
        Interesting. Do you know of anywhere that has screenshots of that native application, for curiosity's sake? When I first used Windows Update in Windows 9x, it was already a (very slow) ActiveX applet.
        banana_giraffe 5y ago
        I was curious, because that's very much not my memory of how things were. After fighting with QEMU and getting Windows 98 4.10.1998 up and running, the wupdmgr.exe stub that it ships with just detects if the machine is connected to the Internet, if it is, it opens MSIE and sends you to a page that doesn't exist anymore. If you're not connected, it loads a local webpage in MSIE telling you about how great Windows Update is. Funnily enough, that page also includes instructions to get rid of the Windows Update launcher should you not want to see it anymore.
ilkkao 5y ago
Nice, IE mode in Edge works now even in Windows home edition. This is new information for me. My old security camera supports only IE11.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Does IE mode support Java Applets? Considering: https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/398 https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/398
ivanche 5y ago
It's time for a saveie11.com :)
- gregmac 5y ago
  Interesting contrast to the general sentiment about another major IE milestone: http://www.ie6death.com/ http://www.ie6death.com/
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  ie11zombo?
stevencorona 5y ago
I work on a SaaS app in the healthcare space where IE11 is the preferred browser, and was getting worried watching all of our favorite tools begin to completely drop IE11 support (Tailwinds, Bootstrap) - effectively punishing us for the sins our customers IT orgs. This brings me hope. But only a little. I’m sure they’ll find a way to keep running it.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  >in the healthcare space where IE11 is the preferred browser Do you know why that is? I noticed that there are prominent links to a Korean and Japanese version, presumably because Internet Explorer is still used to a large extend in those two countries. Korea had some crypto stuff that only worked in IE, but that was years ago. Why haven't those markets moved on more modern browsers?
  - otterpro 5y ago
    I worked at a hospital about 10 years ago, and at that time only IE was available on our PC. PC workstation was locked down for security reason and users were not allowed to install 3rd party software without approval (including chrome, etc). Also Chrome's browser extensions were security concerns (esp for medical records, HIPPA regulations, etc) It was also a time when IE was used in enterprise for mostly legacy web app that was written long ago. We were also using command line apps (TUI-based) at that time, mostly for nurse and doctors, but we were migrating to the fancy web apps. As for Korea, IE was mostly for ActiveX, but now most Korean website supports modern browsers ie Chrome.
    - ampdepolymerase 5y ago
      Do modern healthcare TUIs support UTF-8?
    - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
      > users were not allowed to install 3rd party software without approval (including chrome, etc) This should be, and always should be, the case. Chrome is such a bad actor in allowing userspace install, we mark it as malware to prohibit unauthorized installation. Chrome Enterprise policies don't seem to be able to disable this, marking it as malware is the only way out... That said, we offer two modern browsers to everyone in our environment, Edge and Firefox.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
My current employer will be devastated. The user interface of our currently in development program requires IE + Java applets.
- amanzi 5y ago
  To be fair, this has been on the cards for the last couple of years - should be no surprise to anyone. Also, if there's a genuine need to keep IE around for longer, then you have some options, e.g. deploy Win 10 LTSC for specific legacy use-cases, or publish IE11 via Citrix.
- mmastrac 5y ago
  This sounds like the stuff I worked on 15 years ago in the oil and gas sector (in fairness, IE + applets _were_ the best choice at the time).
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    That's around when my project was started.
    - pram 5y ago
      The horror.
  - bydo 5y ago
    It's still very common in a lot of niche industries. Though apparently it's also still supported, since they just embed the entire Trident engine in Edge. So really this is just yet another way for Microsoft to try to force Edge on users?
  - cies 5y ago
    > IE + applets _were_ the best choice at the time Depends on the constraints. Qt was around and mature for many years in 2006. Ruby on Rails had it's first release mid 2004. Django mid-2005. Again it depends on the constrains, what you can "the best choice in 2006" is limping now. Meanwhile an app built in 2006 on Qt/RoR/Django would be on a platform that is currently still being considered for green field devt. Without knowing all constraints I'd be willing to say that IE+applets was not the best choice in 2006, neither was: GWT, WebSphere or any of the MS GUI toolkits around in that year. I'm still on the fence wrt Vaadin. It was not around in 2006, but soon after. Never used it, but it seems to still be actively maintained to this day.
jefftk 5y ago
By moving to Microsoft Edge, you get everything described above plus you’ll be able to extend the life of your legacy websites and apps well beyond the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application retirement date using IE mode. Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge will be supported through at least 2029. While IE11 as an independent program is going away, the rendering engine is still around for 8+y. Here's hoping that this deprecation removes the expectation that things support IE11, however!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ilkkao 5y ago
  I think it will. Just tested the IE mode, you need to manually enable it for every time. I think it's annoying enough.
  - Kneecaps07 5y ago
    In an AD environment, you can push out a centralized list that is easy to update. We've found that IE Mode unfortunately works very well. I wish it didn't work so well because it allows us to keep these IE sites around indefinitely.
    - joshmanders 5y ago
      While it keeps existing IE11 compatible sites around indefinitely, it stops everyone else from having to support IE11 because that's the default and only browser IT allows on the machine.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - SilverRed 5y ago
        This is the main point. Now no one will have to support IE because any IE user has easier access to a more capable browser.
userbinator 5y ago
I hope someone finds a way to use its interface with a better rendering engine, which I think is the best part of IE - no infantile HUGE buttons, patronising error messages, or other dumbed-down things, just a serious UI with good ideas like per-zone trust security settings and user stylesheets built-in. It also doesn't have gobs of phone-home "telemetry". (Firefox is a close second but is clearly starting to become user-hostile too... and now you may realise much of why they want to kill IE and dumb down Firefox: herding users is easier when they're turned into obedient and docile consumers, instead of masters over how they decide to consume your content.)
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  I am genuinely curious, what do you think is the end game of this apparent conspiracy by browser creators to reduce the intelligence of users through simplified user interfaces? They will convince them to buy more things... somehow? And that benefits the browser creators... somehow?
  - superjan 5y ago
    It is undeniably happening. One benefit is you ship the same UI for all screens. For several billion people, the power user features mostly serve to shoot themselves in the foot, and then they blame the browser manufacturer. On their phone the software either works, or it does not without explanation, in which case you need an expert, and for most people this is perceived as an improvement. Desktop software development is pushed in the same direction. Fewer people complain, and its a lot simpler than doing fine grained settings and informative error messages.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    It's not "browser creators"; it's one huge company which is literally the gateway to the Internet for the majority of the population, effectively controls the web standards now, knows far more than the population thinks it knows about them, and profits off an industry whose primary goal is to convince users to buy and consume increasingly more through misinformation and misdirection.
- 5y ago
tims33 5y ago
It is nice to see the long internet nightmare known as Internet Explorer come to a conclusion. What is the next thing we should wish to see die on the internet?
- coldpie 5y ago
  Browsers funded by ad companies.
- sedatk 5y ago
  Its failures aside, some of the things that Internet Explorer have brought to our life: - DOM - CSS (first browser to support CSS, to be more specific) - Events - IFRAMEs - AJAX - favicon.ico
- petepete 5y ago
  AMP and cookie pop-ups are top of my list.
theropost 5y ago
As someone actually working in operations, and keeping our current suite of software/apps/etc compatable with these upgrades, I say - Microsoft, your documentation is very poor and lacking, and I have to invent fixes to your lack of effort... probably by design. It is annoying when we can quickly proof up software, and specialized utilities when consulting with business. It is wayyyy to much work to port from IE to Edge though.. yeesh, waste of my productive time.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Sad trombone. You could have avoided all that if you had written the software to the standards and not to IE. Then you didn’t use the many years you got to transition. It’s way too much work to port your app? Well guess it isn’t that important after all. Because whether you want it or not, IE is a dead end and it’s going away.
  - theropost 5y ago
    Yup, that is the case - Gov. is slow to react with such poor funding. We tend to wait until our hand is forced, and support tons of legacy apps - if this was my own PC/network I would have been way ahead of this train wreck.
shaicoleman 5y ago
FYI, You can send an email to Microsoft requesting the your website will automatically reopen in Edge when someone visits it with IE https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform/ie-to-microsoft-edge-redirection#request-an-update-to-the-ie-compatibility-list https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform...
- wrikl 5y ago
  TIL - this is cool! Do you know if there's a way to see that XML list they mention anywhere publically? I can't find a link to it on that page. I guess it should be possible to spin up IE11 in a VM on macOS and inspect the network, but would be nice to take a look and see which sites are on there.
  - xsc 5y ago
    https://edge.microsoft.com/neededge/v1 https://edge.microsoft.com/neededge/v1
    - wrikl 5y ago
      Perfect, thank you.
- paledot 5y ago
  > The IE compatibility List only adds a website when the following actions occur. > * Shows an IE user a message suggesting the user should use a different browser for compatibility reasons. Looks like you can have your site automatically added to the list by telling your users to use Firefox instead of IE.
jl6 5y ago
Do we expect legacy TLS versions to remain supported under Edge’s compatibility mode? I note MS deferred the end-of-support in IE11 for TLS 1.0/1.1 last year and haven’t announced a new end date.
jb775 5y ago
Can we just retire the entire Windows operating system already? I recently started working on a new project that's running on Windows Server 2019 and the experience so far has been absolutely terrible. One Windows related headache after another.
locallost 5y ago
There was a time when I was really good in fixing bugs in IE6. This made me go to school because I realized no matter what happens, IE will eventually die and my skills will be useless. So, final goodbye, although I haven't thought about you much in the last years.
acheron 5y ago
And yet when I see a site that asks you to use Chrome I know that the true spirit of IE lives on.
- parenthesis 5y ago
  The other day I had a website accuse me of using an outdated version of Safari (I was using Firefox version 88).
  - luke2m 5y ago
    The other day I had Google Drive tell me not to use IE (I was using Epiphany)
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  "Please apply using Chrome, as applications are only supported using Chrome on desktop." -- lever.co job posting sigh...
baud147258 5y ago
well, maybe my previous team would have finished their migration of IE by then
robinjfisher 5y ago
I am just waiting to hear back from a customer on a support ticket request where functionality in my app is not working as expected. They sent me a screenshot of what should be a form in a modal but the modal has failed to load so it has loaded just the form in a new page looking pretty unstyled. The JS for the modal uses fetch() so possibly why it broke. I'm 95% sure that the browser in the screenshot is IE10. I pointed them to this announcement if only to make them aware of the security risks in running IE10 but it beggars belief that anyone would choose to run IE10, individual or enterprise.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  Not accusing you of this, but the primary reason people run outdated software is a really problematic insistence, mostly by front-end people, on using the new-and-shiny instead of the tried-and-true. Breaking changes galore - so people stick with the past as much as possible. Example: Office 365 OWA doesn't work well on modern browsers other than the latest version of Edge on Windows. But it does work fine on browsers that are older or pretend to be older! I'm technical enough to spoof my user agent, but Mom & Pop are just going to say "I don't like the new one, it broke stuff" and that will be that.
  - charrondev 5y ago
    Pretty sure the primary reason people stayed stuck in IE for so long was that Microsoft shipped it by default until very, very recently (even in home editions of windows). You can add on top of that the rebranding they went through. If they had just done what they did now, and shipped the old rendering engine inside the new one as some kind “legacy mode” that sites could request then everyone else could have moved forward years ago and not had to deal with a stagnant browser.
  - chociej 5y ago
    I dislike Outlook 365 because of a number of UX design decisions, but I can't say it works poorly on Firefox for me.
    - 5y ago
droptablemain 5y ago
I was assigned a Trello task the other day to go ahead and put up a warning to IE users (until August). It was one of the most satisfying tasks I've ever received. I can't wait to go through the app with a machete and whack away all the sloppy IE compatibility code.
- gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  We relaunched a 12 year old SaaS app last month and dropped IE support. It was the most wonderful feeling to remove support for that dumpster fire out of the repos.
- ma2rten 5y ago
  That reminds me of a story where in 2009 some rouge youtube employees put up a warning that IE6 would be deprecated: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6 https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
  - willhslade 5y ago
    Rogue
    - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
      Could've been an employee painted a dull red.
mrlonglong 5y ago
Can't they just take it behind the shed and put it out of its misery already.
nikanj 5y ago
Edge can't be automated via COM the same way IE could. I wonder what MS is offering as an upgrade path
- dheera 5y ago
  FireFox?
  - nikanj 5y ago
    Do you have any links to documentation for automating FF?
    - cpeterso 5y ago
      Some options for automating website tests in Firefox: WebDriver: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/WebDriver https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/WebDriver Marionette: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/testing/marionette/Intro.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/testing/marionette/I... Puppeteer: https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/04/puppeteer-3-firefox-support https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/04/puppeteer-3-firefox-suppo... I haven't used these tools, so I don't know which is "best" or why so many different tools are needed. :)
      - nikanj 5y ago
        I don’t want to run tests, I want to drive the browser for the customer. I guess it’s time to learn chrome extensions
        cpeterso 5y ago
        Mozilla uses Marionette to automate its own browser UI testing (not just clicking on web pages).
        chociej 5y ago
        For better or worse (better, I'd argue), I don't think browsers want you to drive the browser for the customer. My takeaway from most modern browser security developments is that if you can't do it with the standard APIs, you aren't supposed to be doing it.
andrewclunn 5y ago
From a business standpoint, getting businesses who are dependent on IE 11 to adopt Edge is a great idea. This will certainly help Microsoft's browser share. On the other hand, A LOT of IE users do so because they are running version of Windows that themselves are no longer supported. I'm going to be very wary of what my grocery store's POS system is running on in about a year.
skrebbel 5y ago
I smell a lot of nostalgia in this thread, and rightfully so! IE has been a terrible browser, but it was our terrible browser. But fear not! Outlook still uses the HTML parsing engine from MS Word (!) to display your HTML emails, and it's not going anywhere.
- easton 5y ago
  When Outlook becomes a PWA (currently in test, I think it's probably two-three years from stable), it'll be rendering mail with all the functionality of Blink. Which depending on your point of view, means a sigh of relief or time to buy more RAM. https://www.windowscentral.com/project-monarch-outlook-web-universal-email-client-microsoft https://www.windowscentral.com/project-monarch-outlook-web-u...
  - sebazzz 5y ago
    More RAM or worse performance? I doubt it, given the COM addons my employer stuffs in my Outlook client. Zipmail among others.
    - easton 5y ago
      If you want to switch to this, PWA install is available for Outlook Web App right now (just sign into outlook.office.com and click on the plus button that appears in the address bar in Edge or Chrome). If you don't have any crazy mail needs it works fine.
      - chihuahua 5y ago
        Thanks for the tip - I just tried this out in the free outlook.com client, and it works there too.
  - djxfade 5y ago
    But Gmail is already a web app, and only supports a tiny subset of modern HTML and CSS. The limitation is of course arbitrary, it could in theory support any modern standards. But HTML mail is so quirky and full of hacks, that they probably have to do it that way to preserve compatibility. Apple's Mail app is one of the few modern mail clients that can render modern HTML/CSS
ramses0 5y ago
Does this include IE11.dll? (used by some internal MS tools as a renderer, eg: Office Add-ins) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/concepts/browsers-used-by-office-web-add-ins https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/concepts...
wdb 5y ago
Maybe it will finally force people to upgrade away from IE11 in the Finance/Wealth industry.
keithnz 5y ago
if you want automatic redirection to Edge for your website, you can request it via https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform/ie-to-microsoft-edge-redirection https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform...
technion 5y ago
Just to be clear here: retired for windows 10. People talking about certain spaces (eg healthcare) where Citrix on windows server is the norm are going to support ie11 for the lifespan of windows 2019. So don't pop the cork just yet..
dspillett 5y ago
> Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired ... on ... Woo. And, indeed, hoo. > for certain versions of Windows 10 Ah. And there begineth the weasle words. I'm guessing there will be significant organisations in finance/wealth management (our general area) and other industries that will still demand IE11 support for some time after that date. I think first a combination of our move towards "more smaller clients, not being beholden to a few large ones", the reducing budgets if those big clients, and the fact the others are more up-to-date, will mean we'll be able to say "Support IE11 or will go elsewhere? OK then, see you around." long before IE11 really exits the industry. Whether the company will have the balls to go through with that, is something I'll find out in future, but I'm allowing myself a little hope.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Reality is much simpler - as mentioned directly below that section "Note: This retirement does not affect in-market Windows 10 LTSC or Server Internet Explorer 11 desktop applications." and those version already have precommitted support lifecycles that extend well past this date. Nobody needs to ask/push for an extension, that's what those versions exist for and support is already committed to nearly 2030.
- TranquilMarmot 5y ago
  I work somewhere that focuses on software for the public sector, so we sell to a lot of state, city, and federal customers. We're currently taking the stance that we're going to end IE11 support in October, but I'm betting that a handful of our customers will be very very upset about it and we'll reverse course and support it indefinitely.
- danjac 5y ago
  > significant organisations in finance/wealth management (our general area) I can have some sympathy to support IE for some cash-strapped local government department struggling to keep their old systems running with duck tape and prayers. "Finance/wealth management" is exactly where that sympathy stops.
SLWW 5y ago
F in the chat for IE 11 we will miss you the last (worthy) MS browser; it is gonna die
ksec 5y ago
Despite the decline of Mozilla and Firefox in recent years, it managed to outlive Internet Explorer! And I still remember the print ad with the launch of Firefox 1.0. M$ still have a lot to do to redeem themselves.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  According to https://gs.statcounter.com/ https://gs.statcounter.com/ FF is more popular than Edge. Many years ago I used to complain to webdesigners how they simply ignored FF. It is a victory and not an empty one. Firefox is the most independent among last remaining browsers. It is a good browser and an important alternative now that most other major browsers all use the same engine.
  - chociej 5y ago
    Stunning to me that so few people use Firefox. It works nearly flawlessly for everything I do, no worse than any other browser including Chromium. And it's clear they actually care a little about privacy and democratic standardization.
lriel 5y ago
I'm currently enjoying nostalgia as I'm currently using IE for a full on ActiveX app which has no use the loose obtuse constructs of the HTML. Much live a headcrab, the ActiveX takes over the the full device context and reaches deep into the OS. I CAN pulp my own WM messages thank you very much Mr browser ... Brakes my alt tab from time to time, can't grab focus from a miss Z'd dialog. Yes... Nostalgia Nostalgia Nostalgia
HeckFeck 5y ago
Start a petition to release the source code. Let's do a Linux port.
- scruffyherder 5y ago
  right behind OS/2!
Klonoar 5y ago
Cool. Now ship WebView2 with the OS in a reliable way that people can use.
marcodiego 5y ago
From time to time I like to lake a look at the last efforts ms did to try to save ie: https://www.youtube.com/user/internetexplorer/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/internetexplorer/videos as for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyl4ABlXzuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyl4ABlXzuM
- IntelMiner 5y ago
  "Comments are disabled" I almost wonder if at the time they were enabled, before people found the video
reputet 5y ago
I thought it retired 20 years ago, didn't it?
bsheps 5y ago
Will internet explorer mode in Edge have the same support as ie11 running compatibility view or just base ie11?
luke2m 5y ago
> for certain versions of Windows 10 Not all?
foxfired 5y ago
One of my former employer will be devastated (a fortune 10). There was absolutely no other way for employees to use the company's websites without IE. (payroll, hr, internal services, etc) Even mac users had to use IE. I never figured out how they were running IE on the mac, but there it was running in all its glory.
- FateOfNations 5y ago
  Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective), they will be fine... Enterprises are able to configure Edge to load certain websites using the legacy IE rendering engine (until 2029). Shouldn't break anything at this point, while allowing the rest of the internet to abandon IE.
echoradio 5y ago
As a web dev, I must say Microsoft just gave me the best birthday present ever.
yyyk 5y ago
The one thing I regret about this is that IE11 was stable. By 'stable' I don't mean 'not crashing', but rather stable as in 'fixed feature set'. These days, sites and apps that support FireFox/Chrome tend to test only on latest versions. Which come out frequently and can and do break things. Supporting IE11 means it works in IE11. Supporting FF/Chrome means it mostly works in the latest tested version. If devs were more aware of Firefox ESR version and tested against it, we could have more stability again.
klausnrooster 5y ago
Some minutes searching the IEMode and WebView2 links and not a single match for ".HTA".
AwkwardPanda 5y ago
Served me well!
AngeloAnolin 5y ago
Hate it or hate it, Internet Explorer paved the way for a lot of developers to provide web content and applications as it was the de-facto browser used by a lot of end consumers. It also paved the way for technology to focus on security, standards and most of all, a better and standardized approach for browser technology.
aussieguy1234 5y ago
Who remembers the IE tax? https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/australian-retailer-charges-customers-ie-7-tax/ https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/australian-retailer...
Angius 5y ago
Great news! Do Safari next!
Asmod4n 5y ago
Just opened the latest stable release of chromium edge, there is no IE compatibility mode. No flag, no command line switch. Nothing. Why was it removed?
potemkinhr 5y ago
IE is used in some unexpected places, one of the weirder ones for example a ingame display frame for the ingame wiki of older Total War series games. They'll need to update the game and replace it in some way else ingame help will be unavailable when they remove it via an update.
- unilynx 5y ago
  Are they actually using IE or just the webview? As far as I understand, that one is staying around for a couple of more years
  - potemkinhr 5y ago
    It's probably just WebView but from the UI and elements it was obvious that it's IE-based. What's also interesting is that for the manual's videos Flash was required which now obviously doesn't work as it was removed via cumulative updates on W10 https://steamcommunity.com/app/34330/discussions/0/864947668143585653/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/34330/discussions/0/864947668...
minikites 5y ago
We've replaced one monopoly browser (IE) with another monopoly browser (Chrome), except this time it's worse because Microsoft's business model is selling software and Google's business model is tracking and selling user information for advertisements. Because of this, I don't have a rosy outlook for the future of the web.
marcelfw 5y ago
Never used it and now never have to! Happy me!
kemonocode 5y ago
It makes me wonder if a decade or so down the road, we'll be bemoaning Chrome/Chromium as the new IE. Well, you could argue we're already doing that, considering its influence and how even Microsoft yielded and made Edge Chromium-based.
ElectricMind 5y ago
"This Little Maneuver's Gonna Cost Us 51 Years" :D
layer8 5y ago
> Microsoft Edge has Internet Explorer mode I wish they would provide the opposite, Edge/Chromium engine in an IE skin/UI.
VictorDucs 5y ago
Folks, all previous materials and files available on https://www.my-internet-explorer.com/ https://www.my-internet-explorer.com/
- BillyDA 5y ago
  Thanks for Sharing

763 points by smukherjee19 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

That's a real end of an era. Internet Explorer's legacy engine is going to be relegated to old grayhair horror stories. Not unhappy it's going away, but it feels like a big chapter is closing.

coldpie 5y ago
Rest in peace, <!--[if lte IE 6]>
JohnBooty 5y ago
relegated to old grayhair horror stories. The real shame of IE's passing is that we'll forget the lessons we learned and therefore repeat that particular disaster. It's already happening. I'd be happy to relegate the nightmare of IE to old war stories... except the same thing is happening today! Different method, nearly the same end result. We nearly lost the damn open web to the horror of IE6 and the peak "embrace, extend, extinguish" version of Microsoft. Now, of course, we're happily creating another browser monoculture and handing the web over to Google. This time, we're doing it with a smile instead of a grimace. Unlike IE6's reign of incompetent terror, Chrome is actually a competent browser. Techies are embracing the takeover instead of fighting it. It's guaranteed to succeed.
- reificator 5y ago
  > Unlike IE6's reign of incompetent terror, Chrome is actually a competent browser. Techies are embracing the takeover instead of fighting it. It's guaranteed to succeed. IE6 was also a good browser. It didn't stay a good browser over the 5-10-15 year lifespan it had (depending on who you ask) but at the time of release it was easily the best.
  - rstupek 5y ago
    Unquestionably the best at the time.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    Arguably the best user experience in some ways- relative to other browsers at the time it "felt fast". Partly because it used native widgets instead of XUL like Mozilla, and also probably because various parts of it probably were loaded when Windows booted up. But it was pretty bad in other ways: security, stability, etc.
- petre 5y ago
  You forgot about Safari, although it's not as atrociuos as IE was.
- gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  Chromium is open source… Seems like a better approach in every way than the old mosaic/trident closed source mess.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    There are obvious benefits to Chromium being open-source, but you're kidding yourself if you think that gives you an ounce of control over the direction of web standards and the web as a whole. Sure, you can look at (most of) Chrome's source code, and fork it all day long if you want. But it will amount to little when it comes to actual control of the web. You simply won't have the marketshare to steer the direction of the web standards themselves. The end result will be the same as we suffered with IE's dominance: de facto control of the web by a single entity. But at least the ride to hell will be nicer.
    - chociej 5y ago
      The more I see distasteful things happening around Chromium, the more exclusively I use Firefox these days. And frankly I have had vanishingly few problems using FF alone.
Angius 5y ago
Now it passes the torch of shitty feature support to Safari

xnx 5y ago

The most important feature any browser ever included was auto-update. If IE had included this, things would be quite different.

joecool1029 5y ago
It sorta did through Windows/Microsoft update. They just didn't focus on releasing major editions often or at all for Windows, but it got security patches and minor point releases all the time.
- cesarb 5y ago
  Actually, IIRC the very first versions of Windows Update were an ActiveX control. You had to use IE to run it, so from a certain point of view, that was IE updating itself.
  - chungy 5y ago
    The very first version was a native application for Windows 95 and 98 (First Edition). It was retired in short order in favor of the ActiveX page.
    - cesarb 5y ago
      Interesting. Do you know of anywhere that has screenshots of that native application, for curiosity's sake? When I first used Windows Update in Windows 9x, it was already a (very slow) ActiveX applet.
      - banana_giraffe 5y ago
        I was curious, because that's very much not my memory of how things were. After fighting with QEMU and getting Windows 98 4.10.1998 up and running, the wupdmgr.exe stub that it ships with just detects if the machine is connected to the Internet, if it is, it opens MSIE and sends you to a page that doesn't exist anymore. If you're not connected, it loads a local webpage in MSIE telling you about how great Windows Update is. Funnily enough, that page also includes instructions to get rid of the Windows Update launcher should you not want to see it anymore.

ilkkao 5y ago

Nice, IE mode in Edge works now even in Windows home edition. This is new information for me. My old security camera supports only IE11.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Does IE mode support Java Applets? Considering: https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/398 https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/398

ivanche 5y ago

It's time for a saveie11.com :)

gregmac 5y ago
Interesting contrast to the general sentiment about another major IE milestone: http://www.ie6death.com/ http://www.ie6death.com/
selimthegrim 5y ago
ie11zombo?

stevencorona 5y ago

I work on a SaaS app in the healthcare space where IE11 is the preferred browser, and was getting worried watching all of our favorite tools begin to completely drop IE11 support (Tailwinds, Bootstrap) - effectively punishing us for the sins our customers IT orgs. This brings me hope. But only a little. I’m sure they’ll find a way to keep running it.

mrweasel 5y ago
>in the healthcare space where IE11 is the preferred browser Do you know why that is? I noticed that there are prominent links to a Korean and Japanese version, presumably because Internet Explorer is still used to a large extend in those two countries. Korea had some crypto stuff that only worked in IE, but that was years ago. Why haven't those markets moved on more modern browsers?
- otterpro 5y ago
  I worked at a hospital about 10 years ago, and at that time only IE was available on our PC. PC workstation was locked down for security reason and users were not allowed to install 3rd party software without approval (including chrome, etc). Also Chrome's browser extensions were security concerns (esp for medical records, HIPPA regulations, etc) It was also a time when IE was used in enterprise for mostly legacy web app that was written long ago. We were also using command line apps (TUI-based) at that time, mostly for nurse and doctors, but we were migrating to the fancy web apps. As for Korea, IE was mostly for ActiveX, but now most Korean website supports modern browsers ie Chrome.
  - ampdepolymerase 5y ago
    Do modern healthcare TUIs support UTF-8?
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    > users were not allowed to install 3rd party software without approval (including chrome, etc) This should be, and always should be, the case. Chrome is such a bad actor in allowing userspace install, we mark it as malware to prohibit unauthorized installation. Chrome Enterprise policies don't seem to be able to disable this, marking it as malware is the only way out... That said, we offer two modern browsers to everyone in our environment, Edge and Firefox.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

My current employer will be devastated. The user interface of our currently in development program requires IE + Java applets.

amanzi 5y ago
To be fair, this has been on the cards for the last couple of years - should be no surprise to anyone. Also, if there's a genuine need to keep IE around for longer, then you have some options, e.g. deploy Win 10 LTSC for specific legacy use-cases, or publish IE11 via Citrix.
mmastrac 5y ago
This sounds like the stuff I worked on 15 years ago in the oil and gas sector (in fairness, IE + applets _were_ the best choice at the time).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  That's around when my project was started.
  - pram 5y ago
    The horror.
- bydo 5y ago
  It's still very common in a lot of niche industries. Though apparently it's also still supported, since they just embed the entire Trident engine in Edge. So really this is just yet another way for Microsoft to try to force Edge on users?
- cies 5y ago
  > IE + applets _were_ the best choice at the time Depends on the constraints. Qt was around and mature for many years in 2006. Ruby on Rails had it's first release mid 2004. Django mid-2005. Again it depends on the constrains, what you can "the best choice in 2006" is limping now. Meanwhile an app built in 2006 on Qt/RoR/Django would be on a platform that is currently still being considered for green field devt. Without knowing all constraints I'd be willing to say that IE+applets was not the best choice in 2006, neither was: GWT, WebSphere or any of the MS GUI toolkits around in that year. I'm still on the fence wrt Vaadin. It was not around in 2006, but soon after. Never used it, but it seems to still be actively maintained to this day.

jefftk 5y ago

By moving to Microsoft Edge, you get everything described above plus you’ll be able to extend the life of your legacy websites and apps well beyond the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application retirement date using IE mode. Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge will be supported through at least 2029. While IE11 as an independent program is going away, the rendering engine is still around for 8+y. Here's hoping that this deprecation removes the expectation that things support IE11, however!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ilkkao 5y ago
I think it will. Just tested the IE mode, you need to manually enable it for every time. I think it's annoying enough.
- Kneecaps07 5y ago
  In an AD environment, you can push out a centralized list that is easy to update. We've found that IE Mode unfortunately works very well. I wish it didn't work so well because it allows us to keep these IE sites around indefinitely.
  - joshmanders 5y ago
    While it keeps existing IE11 compatible sites around indefinitely, it stops everyone else from having to support IE11 because that's the default and only browser IT allows on the machine.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      This is the main point. Now no one will have to support IE because any IE user has easier access to a more capable browser.

userbinator 5y ago

I hope someone finds a way to use its interface with a better rendering engine, which I think is the best part of IE - no infantile HUGE buttons, patronising error messages, or other dumbed-down things, just a serious UI with good ideas like per-zone trust security settings and user stylesheets built-in. It also doesn't have gobs of phone-home "telemetry". (Firefox is a close second but is clearly starting to become user-hostile too... and now you may realise much of why they want to kill IE and dumb down Firefox: herding users is easier when they're turned into obedient and docile consumers, instead of masters over how they decide to consume your content.)

qbasic_forever 5y ago
I am genuinely curious, what do you think is the end game of this apparent conspiracy by browser creators to reduce the intelligence of users through simplified user interfaces? They will convince them to buy more things... somehow? And that benefits the browser creators... somehow?
- superjan 5y ago
  It is undeniably happening. One benefit is you ship the same UI for all screens. For several billion people, the power user features mostly serve to shoot themselves in the foot, and then they blame the browser manufacturer. On their phone the software either works, or it does not without explanation, in which case you need an expert, and for most people this is perceived as an improvement. Desktop software development is pushed in the same direction. Fewer people complain, and its a lot simpler than doing fine grained settings and informative error messages.
- userbinator 5y ago
  It's not "browser creators"; it's one huge company which is literally the gateway to the Internet for the majority of the population, effectively controls the web standards now, knows far more than the population thinks it knows about them, and profits off an industry whose primary goal is to convince users to buy and consume increasingly more through misinformation and misdirection.
5y ago

tims33 5y ago

It is nice to see the long internet nightmare known as Internet Explorer come to a conclusion. What is the next thing we should wish to see die on the internet?

coldpie 5y ago
Browsers funded by ad companies.
sedatk 5y ago
Its failures aside, some of the things that Internet Explorer have brought to our life: - DOM - CSS (first browser to support CSS, to be more specific) - Events - IFRAMEs - AJAX - favicon.ico
petepete 5y ago
AMP and cookie pop-ups are top of my list.

theropost 5y ago

As someone actually working in operations, and keeping our current suite of software/apps/etc compatable with these upgrades, I say - Microsoft, your documentation is very poor and lacking, and I have to invent fixes to your lack of effort... probably by design. It is annoying when we can quickly proof up software, and specialized utilities when consulting with business. It is wayyyy to much work to port from IE to Edge though.. yeesh, waste of my productive time.

tinus_hn 5y ago
Sad trombone. You could have avoided all that if you had written the software to the standards and not to IE. Then you didn’t use the many years you got to transition. It’s way too much work to port your app? Well guess it isn’t that important after all. Because whether you want it or not, IE is a dead end and it’s going away.
- theropost 5y ago
  Yup, that is the case - Gov. is slow to react with such poor funding. We tend to wait until our hand is forced, and support tons of legacy apps - if this was my own PC/network I would have been way ahead of this train wreck.

shaicoleman 5y ago

FYI, You can send an email to Microsoft requesting the your website will automatically reopen in Edge when someone visits it with IE https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform/ie-to-microsoft-edge-redirection#request-an-update-to-the-ie-compatibility-list https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform...

wrikl 5y ago
TIL - this is cool! Do you know if there's a way to see that XML list they mention anywhere publically? I can't find a link to it on that page. I guess it should be possible to spin up IE11 in a VM on macOS and inspect the network, but would be nice to take a look and see which sites are on there.
- xsc 5y ago
  https://edge.microsoft.com/neededge/v1 https://edge.microsoft.com/neededge/v1
  - wrikl 5y ago
    Perfect, thank you.
paledot 5y ago
> The IE compatibility List only adds a website when the following actions occur. > * Shows an IE user a message suggesting the user should use a different browser for compatibility reasons. Looks like you can have your site automatically added to the list by telling your users to use Firefox instead of IE.

jl6 5y ago

Do we expect legacy TLS versions to remain supported under Edge’s compatibility mode? I note MS deferred the end-of-support in IE11 for TLS 1.0/1.1 last year and haven’t announced a new end date.

jb775 5y ago

Can we just retire the entire Windows operating system already? I recently started working on a new project that's running on Windows Server 2019 and the experience so far has been absolutely terrible. One Windows related headache after another.

locallost 5y ago

There was a time when I was really good in fixing bugs in IE6. This made me go to school because I realized no matter what happens, IE will eventually die and my skills will be useless. So, final goodbye, although I haven't thought about you much in the last years.

acheron 5y ago

And yet when I see a site that asks you to use Chrome I know that the true spirit of IE lives on.

parenthesis 5y ago
The other day I had a website accuse me of using an outdated version of Safari (I was using Firefox version 88).
- luke2m 5y ago
  The other day I had Google Drive tell me not to use IE (I was using Epiphany)
skeeter2020 5y ago
"Please apply using Chrome, as applications are only supported using Chrome on desktop." -- lever.co job posting sigh...

baud147258 5y ago

well, maybe my previous team would have finished their migration of IE by then

robinjfisher 5y ago

I am just waiting to hear back from a customer on a support ticket request where functionality in my app is not working as expected. They sent me a screenshot of what should be a form in a modal but the modal has failed to load so it has loaded just the form in a new page looking pretty unstyled. The JS for the modal uses fetch() so possibly why it broke. I'm 95% sure that the browser in the screenshot is IE10. I pointed them to this announcement if only to make them aware of the security risks in running IE10 but it beggars belief that anyone would choose to run IE10, individual or enterprise.

torstenvl 5y ago
Not accusing you of this, but the primary reason people run outdated software is a really problematic insistence, mostly by front-end people, on using the new-and-shiny instead of the tried-and-true. Breaking changes galore - so people stick with the past as much as possible. Example: Office 365 OWA doesn't work well on modern browsers other than the latest version of Edge on Windows. But it does work fine on browsers that are older or pretend to be older! I'm technical enough to spoof my user agent, but Mom & Pop are just going to say "I don't like the new one, it broke stuff" and that will be that.
- charrondev 5y ago
  Pretty sure the primary reason people stayed stuck in IE for so long was that Microsoft shipped it by default until very, very recently (even in home editions of windows). You can add on top of that the rebranding they went through. If they had just done what they did now, and shipped the old rendering engine inside the new one as some kind “legacy mode” that sites could request then everyone else could have moved forward years ago and not had to deal with a stagnant browser.
- chociej 5y ago
  I dislike Outlook 365 because of a number of UX design decisions, but I can't say it works poorly on Firefox for me.
  - 5y ago

droptablemain 5y ago

I was assigned a Trello task the other day to go ahead and put up a warning to IE users (until August). It was one of the most satisfying tasks I've ever received. I can't wait to go through the app with a machete and whack away all the sloppy IE compatibility code.

gogopuppygogo 5y ago
We relaunched a 12 year old SaaS app last month and dropped IE support. It was the most wonderful feeling to remove support for that dumpster fire out of the repos.
ma2rten 5y ago
That reminds me of a story where in 2009 some rouge youtube employees put up a warning that IE6 would be deprecated: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6 https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6
- willhslade 5y ago
  Rogue
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    Could've been an employee painted a dull red.

mrlonglong 5y ago

Can't they just take it behind the shed and put it out of its misery already.

nikanj 5y ago

Edge can't be automated via COM the same way IE could. I wonder what MS is offering as an upgrade path

dheera 5y ago
FireFox?
- nikanj 5y ago
  Do you have any links to documentation for automating FF?
  - cpeterso 5y ago
    Some options for automating website tests in Firefox: WebDriver: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/WebDriver https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/WebDriver Marionette: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/testing/marionette/Intro.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/testing/marionette/I... Puppeteer: https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/04/puppeteer-3-firefox-support https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/04/puppeteer-3-firefox-suppo... I haven't used these tools, so I don't know which is "best" or why so many different tools are needed. :)
    - nikanj 5y ago
      I don’t want to run tests, I want to drive the browser for the customer. I guess it’s time to learn chrome extensions
      - cpeterso 5y ago
        Mozilla uses Marionette to automate its own browser UI testing (not just clicking on web pages).
      - chociej 5y ago
        For better or worse (better, I'd argue), I don't think browsers want you to drive the browser for the customer. My takeaway from most modern browser security developments is that if you can't do it with the standard APIs, you aren't supposed to be doing it.

andrewclunn 5y ago

From a business standpoint, getting businesses who are dependent on IE 11 to adopt Edge is a great idea. This will certainly help Microsoft's browser share. On the other hand, A LOT of IE users do so because they are running version of Windows that themselves are no longer supported. I'm going to be very wary of what my grocery store's POS system is running on in about a year.

skrebbel 5y ago

I smell a lot of nostalgia in this thread, and rightfully so! IE has been a terrible browser, but it was our terrible browser. But fear not! Outlook still uses the HTML parsing engine from MS Word (!) to display your HTML emails, and it's not going anywhere.

easton 5y ago
When Outlook becomes a PWA (currently in test, I think it's probably two-three years from stable), it'll be rendering mail with all the functionality of Blink. Which depending on your point of view, means a sigh of relief or time to buy more RAM. https://www.windowscentral.com/project-monarch-outlook-web-universal-email-client-microsoft https://www.windowscentral.com/project-monarch-outlook-web-u...
- sebazzz 5y ago
  More RAM or worse performance? I doubt it, given the COM addons my employer stuffs in my Outlook client. Zipmail among others.
  - easton 5y ago
    If you want to switch to this, PWA install is available for Outlook Web App right now (just sign into outlook.office.com and click on the plus button that appears in the address bar in Edge or Chrome). If you don't have any crazy mail needs it works fine.
    - chihuahua 5y ago
      Thanks for the tip - I just tried this out in the free outlook.com client, and it works there too.
- djxfade 5y ago
  But Gmail is already a web app, and only supports a tiny subset of modern HTML and CSS. The limitation is of course arbitrary, it could in theory support any modern standards. But HTML mail is so quirky and full of hacks, that they probably have to do it that way to preserve compatibility. Apple's Mail app is one of the few modern mail clients that can render modern HTML/CSS

ramses0 5y ago

Does this include IE11.dll? (used by some internal MS tools as a renderer, eg: Office Add-ins) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/concepts/browsers-used-by-office-web-add-ins https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/concepts...

wdb 5y ago

Maybe it will finally force people to upgrade away from IE11 in the Finance/Wealth industry.

keithnz 5y ago

if you want automatic redirection to Edge for your website, you can request it via https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform/ie-to-microsoft-edge-redirection https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform...

technion 5y ago

Just to be clear here: retired for windows 10. People talking about certain spaces (eg healthcare) where Citrix on windows server is the norm are going to support ie11 for the lifespan of windows 2019. So don't pop the cork just yet..

dspillett 5y ago

> Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired ... on ... Woo. And, indeed, hoo. > for certain versions of Windows 10 Ah. And there begineth the weasle words. I'm guessing there will be significant organisations in finance/wealth management (our general area) and other industries that will still demand IE11 support for some time after that date. I think first a combination of our move towards "more smaller clients, not being beholden to a few large ones", the reducing budgets if those big clients, and the fact the others are more up-to-date, will mean we'll be able to say "Support IE11 or will go elsewhere? OK then, see you around." long before IE11 really exits the industry. Whether the company will have the balls to go through with that, is something I'll find out in future, but I'm allowing myself a little hope.

zamadatix 5y ago
Reality is much simpler - as mentioned directly below that section "Note: This retirement does not affect in-market Windows 10 LTSC or Server Internet Explorer 11 desktop applications." and those version already have precommitted support lifecycles that extend well past this date. Nobody needs to ask/push for an extension, that's what those versions exist for and support is already committed to nearly 2030.
TranquilMarmot 5y ago
I work somewhere that focuses on software for the public sector, so we sell to a lot of state, city, and federal customers. We're currently taking the stance that we're going to end IE11 support in October, but I'm betting that a handful of our customers will be very very upset about it and we'll reverse course and support it indefinitely.
danjac 5y ago
> significant organisations in finance/wealth management (our general area) I can have some sympathy to support IE for some cash-strapped local government department struggling to keep their old systems running with duck tape and prayers. "Finance/wealth management" is exactly where that sympathy stops.

SLWW 5y ago

F in the chat for IE 11 we will miss you the last (worthy) MS browser; it is gonna die

ksec 5y ago

Despite the decline of Mozilla and Firefox in recent years, it managed to outlive Internet Explorer! And I still remember the print ad with the launch of Firefox 1.0. M$ still have a lot to do to redeem themselves.

marcodiego 5y ago
According to https://gs.statcounter.com/ https://gs.statcounter.com/ FF is more popular than Edge. Many years ago I used to complain to webdesigners how they simply ignored FF. It is a victory and not an empty one. Firefox is the most independent among last remaining browsers. It is a good browser and an important alternative now that most other major browsers all use the same engine.
- chociej 5y ago
  Stunning to me that so few people use Firefox. It works nearly flawlessly for everything I do, no worse than any other browser including Chromium. And it's clear they actually care a little about privacy and democratic standardization.

lriel 5y ago

I'm currently enjoying nostalgia as I'm currently using IE for a full on ActiveX app which has no use the loose obtuse constructs of the HTML. Much live a headcrab, the ActiveX takes over the the full device context and reaches deep into the OS. I CAN pulp my own WM messages thank you very much Mr browser ... Brakes my alt tab from time to time, can't grab focus from a miss Z'd dialog. Yes... Nostalgia Nostalgia Nostalgia

HeckFeck 5y ago

Start a petition to release the source code. Let's do a Linux port.

scruffyherder 5y ago
right behind OS/2!

Klonoar 5y ago

Cool. Now ship WebView2 with the OS in a reliable way that people can use.

marcodiego 5y ago

From time to time I like to lake a look at the last efforts ms did to try to save ie: https://www.youtube.com/user/internetexplorer/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/internetexplorer/videos as for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyl4ABlXzuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyl4ABlXzuM

IntelMiner 5y ago
"Comments are disabled" I almost wonder if at the time they were enabled, before people found the video

reputet 5y ago

I thought it retired 20 years ago, didn't it?

bsheps 5y ago

Will internet explorer mode in Edge have the same support as ie11 running compatibility view or just base ie11?

luke2m 5y ago

> for certain versions of Windows 10 Not all?

foxfired 5y ago

One of my former employer will be devastated (a fortune 10). There was absolutely no other way for employees to use the company's websites without IE. (payroll, hr, internal services, etc) Even mac users had to use IE. I never figured out how they were running IE on the mac, but there it was running in all its glory.

FateOfNations 5y ago
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective), they will be fine... Enterprises are able to configure Edge to load certain websites using the legacy IE rendering engine (until 2029). Shouldn't break anything at this point, while allowing the rest of the internet to abandon IE.

echoradio 5y ago

As a web dev, I must say Microsoft just gave me the best birthday present ever.

yyyk 5y ago

The one thing I regret about this is that IE11 was stable. By 'stable' I don't mean 'not crashing', but rather stable as in 'fixed feature set'. These days, sites and apps that support FireFox/Chrome tend to test only on latest versions. Which come out frequently and can and do break things. Supporting IE11 means it works in IE11. Supporting FF/Chrome means it mostly works in the latest tested version. If devs were more aware of Firefox ESR version and tested against it, we could have more stability again.

klausnrooster 5y ago

Some minutes searching the IEMode and WebView2 links and not a single match for ".HTA".

AwkwardPanda 5y ago

Served me well!

AngeloAnolin 5y ago

Hate it or hate it, Internet Explorer paved the way for a lot of developers to provide web content and applications as it was the de-facto browser used by a lot of end consumers. It also paved the way for technology to focus on security, standards and most of all, a better and standardized approach for browser technology.

aussieguy1234 5y ago

Who remembers the IE tax? https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/australian-retailer-charges-customers-ie-7-tax/ https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/australian-retailer...

Angius 5y ago

Great news! Do Safari next!

Asmod4n 5y ago

Just opened the latest stable release of chromium edge, there is no IE compatibility mode. No flag, no command line switch. Nothing. Why was it removed?

potemkinhr 5y ago

IE is used in some unexpected places, one of the weirder ones for example a ingame display frame for the ingame wiki of older Total War series games. They'll need to update the game and replace it in some way else ingame help will be unavailable when they remove it via an update.

unilynx 5y ago
Are they actually using IE or just the webview? As far as I understand, that one is staying around for a couple of more years
- potemkinhr 5y ago
  It's probably just WebView but from the UI and elements it was obvious that it's IE-based. What's also interesting is that for the manual's videos Flash was required which now obviously doesn't work as it was removed via cumulative updates on W10 https://steamcommunity.com/app/34330/discussions/0/864947668143585653/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/34330/discussions/0/864947668...

minikites 5y ago

We've replaced one monopoly browser (IE) with another monopoly browser (Chrome), except this time it's worse because Microsoft's business model is selling software and Google's business model is tracking and selling user information for advertisements. Because of this, I don't have a rosy outlook for the future of the web.

marcelfw 5y ago

Never used it and now never have to! Happy me!

kemonocode 5y ago

It makes me wonder if a decade or so down the road, we'll be bemoaning Chrome/Chromium as the new IE. Well, you could argue we're already doing that, considering its influence and how even Microsoft yielded and made Edge Chromium-based.

ElectricMind 5y ago

"This Little Maneuver's Gonna Cost Us 51 Years" :D

layer8 5y ago

> Microsoft Edge has Internet Explorer mode I wish they would provide the opposite, Edge/Chromium engine in an IE skin/UI.

VictorDucs 5y ago

Folks, all previous materials and files available on https://www.my-internet-explorer.com/ https://www.my-internet-explorer.com/

BillyDA 5y ago
Thanks for Sharing