
Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-automatically-update-internet-explorer-for-everyone-20111215/
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mmcconnell1618
The article points out that MS will still provide blocking tools for
companies. Corporations are the major source of IE6 browsers and I'm not sure
this will have any impact on them. The best we can hope for is that high
consumer adoption rates will force many more sites to drop IE6 support which
might spur companies to finally test and upgrade.

~~~
dpark
The is a common claim, but has anyone actually researched this? Is there any
evidence that this is still true? It's my understanding that most of the IE6
market share is in Asia, where many people are running pirated versions of XP.

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waitwhat
Pirated versions of XP are perfectly capable of running IE7/8.

The problem is that a few years ago Microsoft pushed Windows Genuine Advantage
updates automatically via Windows Update (they might even have done this
twice), with the result that all those pirated versions of XP turned off
Windows Update forever and never installing anything from microsoft.com.

Oops.

~~~
ramblerman
I partake in my fair share of Microsoft bashing but am I understanding your
point here.

You're criticizing MS for not pushing updates to pirated versions of their
software?

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phillmv
They forced an externality on to the rest of us.

The marginal cost of sending updates to pirated machines is probably
negligible, and pirates adapted to WGA within a couple weeks.

So – they managed to convert a few Western users who didn't know they were
running a pirated copy. I would place a good bet that the total volume of
pirated licenses remained the same, though.

More recent experiments have shown that piracy is really more about customer
service than straight up cost [0]. As a result, we have large hordes of
unpatched machines that are easy to convert into zombies and running outdated
software the rest of us have to support.

[0] [http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-
economic...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-
valves-gabe-newell)

~~~
webjprgm
> running outdated software the rest of us have to support.

Why would you support outdated software only used by pirates? Just don't
support it to force the pirates to update.

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ashraful
I am from a developing country (Bangladesh) and use a pirated version of
Windows (because you cannot buy the genuine one at stores). If I wasn't a web
developer I would probably be using Windows XP and IE6 (easier to crack).

I regularly pay for stuff on the internet (domains, hosting, invoicing apps,
ios apps, etc. etc.) as long as Paypal is supported (we cannot use credit
cards to make international payments).

You need to support as many people as possible with your webapp, you never
know who your customer is.

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bgarbiak
It's a great change not because of IE6 (which, most likely, won't be affected
at all) but because of future versions of Internet Explorer. These are now
supposed to be released annually, which could be a curse for developers if
there was no automatic upgrade mechanism (see:
[http://paulirish.com/2011/browser-market-pollution-iex-is-
th...](http://paulirish.com/2011/browser-market-pollution-iex-is-the-new-
ie6/)). Today's decision of Microsoft means it will be a blessing. Basically,
all of client side web-technologies will iterate a lot faster and in 2-3 years
the vast majority of users will sport the newest version of a browser by
default.

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dazbradbury
Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but this has just made my christmas and
new year. If this has a genuine impact, and means people are running IE8 in
the worst case, then I will be a very a happy dev.

Patiently waits to see browser usage trends once this rolls out...

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apaprocki
One thing I've noticed is another niche that doesn't quite fit into the
"corporation blocking updates" bucket. VMs. I've used a few services at work
that run on auto-started VM images and IE8 is installed on those images. It
isn't that someone is blocking updates necessarily, it is just that it takes a
human to actually go and update the main VM image and update the browser on
it. This seems to make it persist longer than it should because VMs are either
updated on some long time horizon or there is not a push to proactively change
it if the current situation "just works".

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akie
I see your point, but wouldn't that concern vanish the moment IE updates
silently, in the background, without the user even noticing? If that would be
the case, they would start out with an outdated IE, but be automatically
updated to the most recent version as soon as they connect to the internet.

~~~
apaprocki
Well usually the VM images are completely locked down because they are
throwaway. Every time one starts up, it starts up from the master and the
master has the original IE8. So even if the VM did allow updates, it would
silently create a new problem.. a potentially massive amount of waste as all
the random VM images are always downloading/updating IE whenever they start
up.

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ma2rten
Finally! I have been waiting for this news for a very long time. I wish
Microsoft would also push something like Chrome Tab to those users who opt out
of the update, so a website can set some special http header/meta tag and then
the website gets rendered with lasted version of the rendering engine.

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mintplant
That sounds bee-yoo-tee-ful.

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RyanMcGreal
Good news, but XP users still won't be able to upgrade past IE8.

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antinitro
I honestly can't see the reasoning behind this.

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RyanMcGreal
They want people to buy a newer version of Windows.

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jjcm
Or more accurately, it's not financially viable for a company to support a 10
year old OS.

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RyanMcGreal
And yet Firefox and Chrome have no problem releasing modern browsers that work
on XP.

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andrewheins
I applaud Microsoft for finally taking the step, but I wonder how much this
will actually change the stats around browser market share. My understanding
was that most IE6 users, even in the developing world, were admin-imposed.

Either way, it's good to finally see them moving forward.

~~~
reustle
Right, I had to support software at one point that required IE6, when IE8 had
been released for some time. Maybe this will push those companies that
continue to sell IE6~ only software to notice their time has run out.

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SideburnsOfDoom
My experience at present is that only a very small number of corporates are
still on IE6. IE7 is the new lowest denominator.

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dr_
Unfortunately our hospital EMR software, which I access from my office, does
not work on IE9. I had to downgrade to IE8 to get it working.

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arctangent
Out of professional curiosity, I'd like to ask: do you work in the UK?

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dr_
No, the US

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TheCoreh
This is great news: It means IE8 won't be the next IE6. Of course there are a
lot of users still restricted to Windows XP, but their market share is
dropping fairly quickly. Of course there will always be large corporate
environments where updates are much slower, but I would say these are under
10%, perhaps?

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melling
IE8 is the max for XP so until XP goes away it will be the new IE6, which is
at 1% in the US. So, yes IE8 will have another decade.

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wildmXranat
Is IE8 really that bad with regards to standards ? That's an honest question.

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nextparadigms
In 5 years it will be compared to the other browsers, just like the others are
much further ahead of IE6 now. IE6 used to be a good browser, too, when it
launched.

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rplnt
The problem isn't good/bad. Problem is that IE6 is nonstandard.

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wwweston
I'm not sure there was a browser that did standards better at the time of
IE6's initial release. Maybe Opera.

And in my opinion, the bigger problem with IE6 was that it was buggy -- both
where it purportedly followed standards and where it had its own way of doing
things, behavior often didn't match spec or had unexpected side effects. It
took devs years of trying to figure out where all the bodies were buried
before everybody understood how it worked.

~~~
yuhong
Yea, many people forget that IE6 actually improved standard compliance over IE
5.5.

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nirvdrum
There's another side to it too that isn't popular, but IE was in and of itself
a standard. When you own 90% of the market, whatever you do is a de facto
standard. And I was pretty okay with that up until they decided to stop doing
anything innovative with the browser.

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robbrown451
What I don't understand is why doesn't Microsoft provide an upgrade that
actually allows IE6 (and possibly other versions) to run as they did, on a
site specific basis. This way corporations that need some IE6 only app can run
them forever, but their employees can still use the rest of the web unhampered
by this. Having it possible to run multiple "virtual browsers" within a single
browser would also thrill web developers who want to test their sites on all
the browsers without having to have multiple machines.

Yes it would be a bit bloated, but the default install would probably be the
one that just ran the latest version.

~~~
Legion
I would just like to see a standalone version of IE6, everything wrapped up in
one binary, so that the silly, completely unnecessary one-or-the-other choice
wouldn't exist.

~~~
robbrown451
True, that would help too, but it makes it challenging in a setting where
people need to be able to email url's (possibly to the internal application)
and the like. If it was specific to a domain or page, it would be a bit more
seamless.

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melling
It also means all IE9 users will get IE10. So by this time next year, 80-85%
of users will be on a very modern html5 browser.

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JoeAltmaier
I'm not a fan, and I don't understand the gushing. As developers, I suppose
folks are glad to reduce their support matrix?

But as users, creators of highly customized workstations and rabid fans of
particular development environments, doesn't it bother anybody but me, that
the browser choice has been hijacked?

Sure, its just stupid Windows users, they don't care. Is that it?

Every IE UI is different, and they seem to be spiralling down is usability.
I'm particular about optimizing my own time and changing UI to suit
Microsoft's agenda is definitely going to piss me off.

~~~
tomjen3
If you run Windows, you accept what you get. The same if you run Mac.

If you want to customize it you run Linux, simple as that.

There are prices and trade-of for all platforms. I run on them all I accept
that Windows is a walled garden. I should not expect my things to stay as they
are.

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AndyKelley
What? I'm calling you out. Sure, you can customize your OS if you run Linux.
You can also customize your OS if you run Windows or Mac, and it's not more
difficult. More to the point, you can install an alternate browser or even an
alternate version of IE if you so choose.

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hendrik-xdest
And here I thought that all non-updated IE versions were installed in
environments where Sysadmins blocked the updates (and will in the future). It
would be interesting to see a number of how many installations this change
could really target. Like, how many IE 6 to 8 are actually in the wild. Can't
be that much, imho.

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gldalmaso
>> _Sysadmins blocked the updates_

There's something about this that really bothers me, maybe someone can better
clarify.

Why are admins enforcing a policy that leaves the company target to just about
every possible security hole that has been fixed in the past 20 years?

Is there a valid reason for this that I'm unaware of?

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hendrik-xdest
There are quite a lot of companies that have applications that rely on IE6. I,
personally, know of a few financial institutions that can't update. This might
not be necessarily related to their systems not being able to work with a
newer version, though. Some office drones are just incapable of doing there
job if the color of a button changes. I kid you not.

Other companies have a long(!) cycle when evaluating new software releases. I
have heard of an insurance provider that rolled out IE7 just this year.

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zeeed
Microsoft once more does a fully automated update? What could POSSIBLY go
wrong?!

On the same note, it literally pisses me off how companies decide to intervene
with my software installation. Allowing an "opt-out" is worth as much as
Google allowing me to opt out of mapping my access point by renaming it.

We are observing a notable shift where personal(!) computers and devices are
being turned into consumer devices that we have no control over. Not to speak
about the privacy related side effects.

Please, please, please let there soon be a pro-version of Linux on the desktop
before the support cycle of Snow Leopard runs out.

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BonoboBoner
"You’ll simply be bumped to the most current version available for your
version of Windows (IE9 on Vista and Windows 7, IE8 on Windows XP)."

I was so hoping for IE9 on XP as part of this process...

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dhkl
Perhaps one of the reason why people are still capable of getting an
acceptable Internet experience from IE 6 and 7 is because Flash 10 (and 11 for
IE 7) supports them.

Thank goodness that there is a strong traction behind HTML5 stack, and the
industry as a whole is less reliant on Flash to deliver good UX.

Without Flash, the capability of these older browsers will be reduced, and I'm
sure they will get abandoned at an even higher rate.

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eli
No, people using ie6 are getting a crap experience. Seriously, fire up a vm
and click around for a while.

The only people still using it are unable to upgrade for some reason besides
laziness and inertia.

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nbclark
Honestly, it is about time that they did this. I worked ont he IE team for a
few years, and could never understand (aside from the enterprise argument) why
users were not being auto-upgraded. "Hey here's a great new security model to
replace the insecure previous version...but no rush on upgrading..."

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hkarthik
The more I see Microsoft bend over backwards for big corps to retard the web,
the more I think that maybe big corps should just stay off the web.

Perhaps staying on proprietary, native platforms that don't change as often is
their best course in the future.

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miles_matthias
This is slightly making me think about adding a specific version of IE to my
Crap Browser Notifier:

<https://github.com/milesmatthias/Crap-Browser-Notifier>

Maybe IE10 and up. Maybe.

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ward
Seems like a bit of a stretch to require jQuery for a snippet like that.

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hkarthik
Finally. They should have done this a really long time ago.

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jrwn
So is this separate from the normal updates and installs regardless of your
update preferences or is it part of the normal updates?

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noblethrasher
Interestingly (or perhaps ironically), this probably means that the IE chrome
won't get updated lest it alarm the users.

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dmbaggett
Great! Now they just need to switch their entire browser codebase over to
Webkit and sanity will be restored to the web.

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ConstantineXVI
Wrong. An all-Webkit web would be just as bad as an all-IE web. IE and Mozilla
serve to keep WebKit honest. Plus, there's no sense in condemning them based
on IE6 when IE9 has come so far.

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dmbaggett
In what way, since IE5.5 and XHR, has IE driven innovation in browsers?
Serious question.

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Silhouette
For one thing, they were the first major browser to properly separate the run-
time for pages in different tabs. They were months ahead of Chrome, and
Firefox and Opera still haven't caught up several years later.

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obtu
Great that they abandoned the “intranet apps still depend on IE6” talking
point. XP still won't move past IE8, however.

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shapeshed
still seeing 20% IE6 usage in my Corporate clients in the UK. I have spoken
with IT administrators and they give the reason of internal tools needing IE6
to run. Some kind of backwards compatibility might help but until hardware is
upgraded and there is an OS upgrade from XP IE6 will be around for a while
IMHO.

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Brajeshwar
This is one hell of a bloody awesome news. I say the best ever for everyone on
the Internet.

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Hikari
great news but a little bit too late in my opinion.

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kgc
Web designers around the world rejoice.

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superyeah
hallelujah!!!

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ajo11
Santa is real!

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WayneDB
I wonder if it will keep replacing the shortcuts that I've removed.

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muchonada
<= Happy

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olaf
Welcome to the 21st century.

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tomjen3
No they don't.

You can still opt out.

Of course if you do that, we may end up pushing Chrome Frame on you, through
an exploit (I would, if it wasn't illegal).

Fuck MS for forcing us to deal with their crap.

