
The impending crisis that is Windows XP and IE 8 - troyhunt
http://www.troyhunt.com/2013/01/the-impending-crisis-that-is-windows-xp.html
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meaty
I hardly think this is a crisis.

Support it or piss off your userbase. That's your call.

In our case, becaues we're a corporate provider, 65% of our userbase is on IE8
still and will be for the forseeable future.

Do we have a problem? No.

Why? Because we're not fickle when it comes to technology. We're not obsessed
with the latest thing. We're not going to throw this policy away and it's not
a crisis.

Compatibility is something which people have stopped valuing, which is bad.

~~~
derleth
> we're not fickle when it comes to technology

> Compatibility is something which people have stopped valuing, which is bad.

OK, test your website in Netscape 4.

~~~
nivla
It is pretty interesting that most people don't take compatibility seriously.

There is the famous saying, "If it ain't broken don't fix it" and another
"Move forward", compatibility I feel is the link between the two, moving
forward while not breaking anything.

So yes it is very important.

Some cool examples:

[o]You can still design a fully functional website using the basic html markup
and it will still render finely on a Netscape 4.

[o]You can still make Doom play on the latest Windows.

[o]You can still get one of the oldest linux programs such as DC Calc or Roff
to work with the lastest Ubuntu.

~~~
derleth
> It is pretty interesting that most people don't take compatibility
> seriously.

If you don't test in NS4, you don't take it seriously, either.

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omh
I'm surprised there isn't more criticism of Microsoft in this article.

There's one big reason why IE9 isn't available on XP, and it's commercial
rather than technical. Microsoft know that businesses don't have many reasons
to upgrade from XP (at least not before 2014), and they're trying to force
them. I manage a few standardised XP desktops and it's going to take some work
before we can upgrade them to Windows 7. If IE9/IE10 was available for XP then
I'd have upgraded already.

~~~
ygra
Given that IE 9 builds on top of a lot of new things that have been introduced
with Windows 7, most notably rendering-wise (DirectWrite, Direct2D), I guess
it certainly is a technical reason. Replicating that on XP would either need
backporting those APIs which is not going to happen because XP is out of
mainstream support, or developing abstractions or fallbacks within IE which
would need more resources within the IE team.

Sure, you could use suitable abstractions from the start, but why bother for
an OS that's not supported anymore? Other browsers went that way, because they
often run on multiple OSes, but you probably wouldn't expect a Linux version
of IE anytime soon either.

~~~
jahewson
I don't see why DirectWrite or Direct2D could not be ported to XP - why would
it be any more difficult than a gamer updating DirectX?

~~~
speeder
It is not. There are all over internet tutorials on how to install DX 10 and
beyond on XP.

~~~
yuhong
That is not the MS native implementation which requires the new driver model.
MS ditched the old DirectX redists after 9.0c in 2004 and since then only
updated D3DX. Sure there is the Platform Update for Vista, but that is only
possible because Vista already have the new driver model and it uses a
completely different installer.

------
jahewson
A word of advice: don't go charging your customers a "tax" which doesn't
exist. That's how you get arrested for fraud. Call it a "fee" or "penalty" or
"charge" but not "tax".

------
ZeroGravitas
I was hoping for some discussion of how viable Chrome Frame was as a solution
in corporate environments.

My current feeling is that it's not worth the bother and you'd be better
installing full Chrome and hiding IE _unless_ you also need the compatibility
for internal apps.

~~~
taylodl
I work for a Fortune 200 company and I just recently led the effort for them
to adopt Chrome Frame. We were using a charting package that we could either
render in Flash or SVG and because of our BYOD strategy we chose SVG but the
performance in IE8 was abysmal.

Chrome Frame fit the bill nicely. You include a tag in your HTTP header to
request Chrome Frame. If it hasn't been installed then IE8 renders the page.
The nice thing is the site self-selects that it wants Chrome Frame so your
legacy sites continue to get IE8. Even better, your users are still launching
IE so you don't have the support hassle of this site requires this browser
while this other site requires this other browser.

Meanwhile this gives us an opportunity to modernize our legacy web
applications. Chrome Frame has been a great solution for us.

~~~
easyfrag
Question: does Chrome Frame support Windows Integrated Authentication?

~~~
meaty
IT supports NTLM but not credential transfer from the current user session
i.e. you have to enter your username and password each time.

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davej
Straight off the top of my head, some things that don't work in IE8:

* Semantic HTML5 tags (<nav>, <article> etc.)

* Media Queries

* Flex Layout

* CSS Transforms (2D and 3D)

* CSS Transitions

* SVG

* Geolocation

* Canvas

* HTML5 Video

* HTML5 Audio

* Rounded corners

* Multiple backgrounds in CSS

* Web Sockets

* Web Workers

\--- These are are from memory, I haven't taken the time to look these up so
correct me if I have anything wrong.

~~~
meaty
And for nigh on 10 years we didn't need ANY of them...

I'm not suggesting that the features are not nice, but to be honest, we can do
without if we need to support it.

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denysonique
Windows XP boots faster and is snappier than Windows 7.

It's lightweight-ness makes it the best choice for a VM guest as well as its
small post install size.

Windows XP post installation base size is 1.5GB, Windows 7's is 15GB -- this
makes XP more suitable for image deployed environments.

------
webwanderings
You know, that Microsoft website doesn't look so bad on IE5. Information
appeared to be the king, nicely situated with clean interface.

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chris_wot
So use Firefox then. You don't _have_ to run IE on Windows XP.

~~~
troyhunt
In most managed corporate environments, you _do_ have to run IE. The freedom
of installing your own software at will doesn't exist.

~~~
thinkling
Does anything stop people from running Portable Firefox [1], the version built
to run without installation, e.g. off USB drives and such?

[1] <http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable>

(edited to add forgotten link)

~~~
marklit
USB ports being disabled on corp PCs for one.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Plus the penalty for running unauthorised software being dismissal.

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jpswade
With "Google Chrome Frame" this is hardly a problem any more.

~~~
Yaggo
Google Chrome Frame needs to be installed, often not possible for the end-
user. Besides, who wants to _install_ something to view a web page?

~~~
nestlequ1k
But it solves "the big problem". In a nearly perfect way.

As soon as I install Chrome frame, I can now use all my old legacy custom web
apps that were built by my trusty 2005 ASP3 dev team (half of whom
unfortunately have died of lung cancer or liver disease since then). And all
new web apps pretty much invariably use the meta tag for Chrome Frame, I can
continue using whatever site I want.

The IT team just has to spend the 2 hours, 2 days, or 2 months to figure out
how to roll out the update. No matter how much time they spend, it will be
worth it in the long run. Now we don't have to upgrade from XP for another 10
years.

~~~
nodata
_Now we don't have to upgrade from XP for another 10 years._

and what about os-level security updates?

~~~
nestlequ1k
Well, you know.. besides that.

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webwanderings
"Paradoxically, the current version of Chrome runs just fine in XP."

Well, actually it doesn't. As per the lead developer of the Chrome (when last
time I was defending XP):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4860203>

~~~
greenyoda
That article is talking about how Chrome is less secure when run under XP, due
to XP lacking security features found in later versions of Windows. But Chrome
still runs well on XP, and probably has no worse security on XP than IE8 does.

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guilloche
I did not see any reason to move to win8. We can use chrome/firefox for modern
sites. Existing software on XP is more than enough to do anything. More
bloated office 13? Thanks, there is no way that I will use it.

If I want an easy life, Linux is here, it is much faster, much easier to use
with tiled windows managers like dwm (much less clicks & mouse movements).
More tools to use, much easier to update with package manager like pacman.
Windows seem like trash for me to drag human kind down a lot.

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bdfh42
Good write-up of a lot of key issues facing corporates and thus by implication
all ISVs.

Minor quibble - the Compaq iPaq had supplanted the Palm offerings as the
"cutting edge" with colour, great sound quality and a lot of (admittedly
battery emptying) performance. I was writing code for both platforms in that
year.

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aj700
The "problem" is that when almost none of the web works in IE6/7/8/9 is that
people won't upgrade because they have no idea how to. They'll buy a new PC,
which is fair enough if they were running XP, but then they'll be shocked to
realise there is no start menu.

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csense
How many of those about-to-be-EOL'ed customers will upgrade to newer
Windows/IE, and how many will jump ship for other browsers or OS's?

What's the best way the FOSS community can take advantage of this situation to
gain market share?

~~~
stan_rogers
Having _perfect_ compatibility and interoperability with Word, Excel, Access
(both file and keyboard/mouse compatibility) and the ability to run VBA would
be a _minimum_ requirement for a lot of them.

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lerouxb
What's the status on the Windows 95 and IE 5.5 crisis? ;)

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codeulike
What doesn't run on IE8 at the moment? Trello is one prominent app that
steadfastly refuses.

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Toshio
Why do all these posts by mvps feel ... clueless, mindless and fanboyish? I
can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's the ridiculous tone of defending
the undefendable that all these posts have in common.

~~~
troyhunt
Which bit was that Toshio? I can't see any MS defending, the post essentially
said "This is what's happening, here's what to expect, these are some of the
considerations". Whether what MS has done around OS and browser integration is
wrong or right is not the issue, what we're all going to do about it is.

