4 ms·

Wow. The best reason to upgrade is to remove the version lock on the default browser. Not sure what all that says about Microsoft and the current state of techn

Wow. The best reason to upgrade is to remove the version lock on the default browser. Not sure what all that says about Microsoft and the current state of technology, but it is weird and sad.

zanny 13y ago
I don't get this, though. The default browser before IE10 was awful, so you shouldn't use it anyway. It isn't my fault you have incompetent higher ups that seem to trust MS with their lives but won't even consider Google or Mozilla.
- dspillett 13y ago
  You've obviously never developed for a major corporate customer. If I tell some of our large clients "I'm not supporting IE8 and below because it is crap and you shouldn't be using it (or you could install something better alongside if you really need old IE for legacy code)" they will respond with "fine, we find someone who will support our current standard environment then, have a nice day". We as devs and server/service admins don't get the luxury of dictating what browsers our customers use, and insulting our own higher-ups will do nothing to change that as it is out of their control too. As much as everyone at my employer would love to drop support for IE8 and lower, it would save a pile of QA time and front-end developer frustration, we don't want to lose lucrative contracts with large investment banks in order to have that luxury and that would happen at this point in time if we dug our heals in on the matter. Welcome to the real world. I'm sorry to say, but it isn't always nice.
- eDavis698 13y ago
  I do corperate IT work. Firefox & Chrome cannot be managed while IE is integrated with Active Directory. Honestly it is a pain when the end user gets tricked into installing Chrome and now none of their work websites function due to needing a real Microsoft Active X runtime. Your computer won't boot/Windows corrupted? Sorry you just lost all your history & bookmarks if you used IE I could have transfered them to your new computer for you (IE stores them in a folder, Firefox you can but it is a pain, Chrome you are hosed.)
  - halviti 13y ago
    *corporate IE is not integrated with Active Directory. IE settings can be controlled through group policies, and there are policies that can be applied to IE that MS bundles with Windows Server. Firefox and Chrome can be controlled in a similar manner through group policy by downloading the administrative templates from the respective organizations. On chrome you are not "hosed". All of the bookmarks are stored in a single file aptly named "bookmarks", just move the file to the new computer. Done. Firefox also stores your bookmarks in a single file. Just replace the file on the new computer and you're done. Surely copying a single file can't be more of a pain than copying many individual files. Nobody uses ActiveX on the web anymore, due to it's IE-only nature. Sure, websites still exist, but they have become rarer over the past half-decade. With your example: if you have a user that can't figure out how to click on a different browser icon on their desktop, this is nothing more than a user training issue.. or if you are that adamant that Chrome is a serious problem for you, just use group policy to prevent your users from installing it. I manage several thousand users, most use chrome, some use firefox, and internet explorer is also there for people that aren't familiar with other browsers, or need to access special (poorly designed) websites. All browsers are managed with group policy and bookmarks are managed with ease. User complaints are at zero because so far everyone has been able to tell the difference between the icons.
dspillett 13y ago
It isn't so much a reason to upgrade as a benefit for devs and server admins to be thankful users are upgrading. It means we can start considering SNI for significant deployments. SNI has worked since IE7 if used on Vista or later. The best reason to upgrade is that as of April next year XP is no longer going to get security updates unless when a problem is found you pay MS to release a fix for it. Our major clients (two of the largest investment banks in the country) have recently moved to IE8 on XP and will soon be moving to IE8 on Win7. They will be keeping IE8 as they have a lot of legacy code that they don't want to spend time/money testing (and fixing as needed) against browsers (including IE9+) that don't share all "classic IE"'s bugs upon which some code may be accidentally dependent. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17671383/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17671383/ for an example where newer IE has trouble with code that worked in older versions - there are examples that don't involve ActiveX too so even if ActiveX isn't an issue (it is for some of our client's legacy "intranet" apps) you could hit problems like this. The only reason they finally moved off IE6 is that is soon drops out of any support window even for security updates (this is the main reason they will soon be moving off XP too, the other biggie here being new hardware increasingly not having drivers available that work with XP). Win7 and IE8 leave their final extended support window in 2020 IIRC so we'll be stuck supporting IE8 for some time, but we can at least consider using SNI once we know they've dropped XP on their standard machine builds. Of course anything that targets mobile people might still not be able to consider SNI even once XP is long enough buried, as some mobile browsers won't play ball. There are still a lot of Android 2.x devices out there and the stock browsers on those won't like it for a start.

Wow. The best reason to upgrade is to remove the version lock on the default browser. Not sure what all that says about Microsoft and the current state of technology, but it is weird and sad.

zanny 13y ago

I don't get this, though. The default browser before IE10 was awful, so you shouldn't use it anyway. It isn't my fault you have incompetent higher ups that seem to trust MS with their lives but won't even consider Google or Mozilla.

dspillett 13y ago
You've obviously never developed for a major corporate customer. If I tell some of our large clients "I'm not supporting IE8 and below because it is crap and you shouldn't be using it (or you could install something better alongside if you really need old IE for legacy code)" they will respond with "fine, we find someone who will support our current standard environment then, have a nice day". We as devs and server/service admins don't get the luxury of dictating what browsers our customers use, and insulting our own higher-ups will do nothing to change that as it is out of their control too. As much as everyone at my employer would love to drop support for IE8 and lower, it would save a pile of QA time and front-end developer frustration, we don't want to lose lucrative contracts with large investment banks in order to have that luxury and that would happen at this point in time if we dug our heals in on the matter. Welcome to the real world. I'm sorry to say, but it isn't always nice.
eDavis698 13y ago
I do corperate IT work. Firefox & Chrome cannot be managed while IE is integrated with Active Directory. Honestly it is a pain when the end user gets tricked into installing Chrome and now none of their work websites function due to needing a real Microsoft Active X runtime. Your computer won't boot/Windows corrupted? Sorry you just lost all your history & bookmarks if you used IE I could have transfered them to your new computer for you (IE stores them in a folder, Firefox you can but it is a pain, Chrome you are hosed.)
- halviti 13y ago
  *corporate IE is not integrated with Active Directory. IE settings can be controlled through group policies, and there are policies that can be applied to IE that MS bundles with Windows Server. Firefox and Chrome can be controlled in a similar manner through group policy by downloading the administrative templates from the respective organizations. On chrome you are not "hosed". All of the bookmarks are stored in a single file aptly named "bookmarks", just move the file to the new computer. Done. Firefox also stores your bookmarks in a single file. Just replace the file on the new computer and you're done. Surely copying a single file can't be more of a pain than copying many individual files. Nobody uses ActiveX on the web anymore, due to it's IE-only nature. Sure, websites still exist, but they have become rarer over the past half-decade. With your example: if you have a user that can't figure out how to click on a different browser icon on their desktop, this is nothing more than a user training issue.. or if you are that adamant that Chrome is a serious problem for you, just use group policy to prevent your users from installing it. I manage several thousand users, most use chrome, some use firefox, and internet explorer is also there for people that aren't familiar with other browsers, or need to access special (poorly designed) websites. All browsers are managed with group policy and bookmarks are managed with ease. User complaints are at zero because so far everyone has been able to tell the difference between the icons.

dspillett 13y ago

It isn't so much a reason to upgrade as a benefit for devs and server admins to be thankful users are upgrading. It means we can start considering SNI for significant deployments. SNI has worked since IE7 if used on Vista or later. The best reason to upgrade is that as of April next year XP is no longer going to get security updates unless when a problem is found you pay MS to release a fix for it. Our major clients (two of the largest investment banks in the country) have recently moved to IE8 on XP and will soon be moving to IE8 on Win7. They will be keeping IE8 as they have a lot of legacy code that they don't want to spend time/money testing (and fixing as needed) against browsers (including IE9+) that don't share all "classic IE"'s bugs upon which some code may be accidentally dependent. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17671383/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17671383/ for an example where newer IE has trouble with code that worked in older versions - there are examples that don't involve ActiveX too so even if ActiveX isn't an issue (it is for some of our client's legacy "intranet" apps) you could hit problems like this. The only reason they finally moved off IE6 is that is soon drops out of any support window even for security updates (this is the main reason they will soon be moving off XP too, the other biggie here being new hardware increasingly not having drivers available that work with XP). Win7 and IE8 leave their final extended support window in 2020 IIRC so we'll be stuck supporting IE8 for some time, but we can at least consider using SNI once we know they've dropped XP on their standard machine builds. Of course anything that targets mobile people might still not be able to consider SNI even once XP is long enough buried, as some mobile browsers won't play ball. There are still a lot of Android 2.x devices out there and the stock browsers on those won't like it for a start.