
Retiring Internet Explorer - manigandham
https://textslashplain.com/2020/01/19/retiring-internet-explorer/
======
Ajedi32
> A fascinating set of circumstances led to Internet Explorer’s dominance in
> Asian markets. First, early browsers had poor support for Unicode and East
> Asian character sets, forcing website developers to build their own text
> rendering atop native code plugins (ActiveX). South Korea mandated use of a
> locally-developed cipher (SEED) for banking transactions, and this cipher
> was not implemented by browser developers… ActiveX again to the rescue.
> Finally, since all users were using IE, and were accustomed to installing
> ActiveX controls, malware started running rampant, so banks and other
> financial institutions started bundling “security solutions” (aka rootkits)
> into their ActiveX controls. Every user’s browser was a battlefield with
> warring native code trying to get the upper hand.

Wow. That's... a rather unconventional security architecture.

~~~
kbumsik
I'm Korean so I glad to see someone speaks out this.

Actually it was rather inevitable, partially because of the U.S. gov that
time. The Korean gov wanted to grow e-commerce/e-banking in 1999 but the
American gov did not allow to export cipher higher than 40 bits. As a result
the Korean gov had to develop its own 128 bits cipher (SEED).

It was even before AES/SSL/TLS were introduced so the whole crypto stack was
implemented using ActiveX.

I would say it was quite pioneer in 1999 but since then the gov don't even
dare to replace the crypto policies. Now we are stuck at this in 2020.

~~~
bane
What I think is kind of interesting is that South Korea arguably had/has the
technical know-how to have built it's own domestic browser with SEED and good
Hangul/Hanja language support built into it and ended up with a very siloed
alternative web. As an example, I'm thinking of the ubiquity of the Hangul
Word Processor over Microsoft Word (which apparently has been around for over
30 years!) which gained near ubiquity in its domestic market.

However, I think the present situation is possibly the better one as a siloed,
South Korea only web, separate and distinct from the rest of the Web, would
end up being a much harder one to eventually migrate to the regular global web
ecosystem vs. the current problem of just getting banks to stop using SEED and
moving users to modern browsers.

~~~
lifthrasiir
> As an example, I'm thinking of the ubiquity of the Hangul Word Processor
> over Microsoft Word (which apparently has been around for over 30 years!)
> which gained near ubiquity in its domestic market.

There are two major factors in the ubiquity of HWP:

1\. Its use of the de facto standard format in the SK government (the de jure
standard is the ODF since 2007, but its use is virtually nonexistent). This
stems from the fact that it was the most viable word processor supporting
Hangul the script back in 1990s.

2\. Its excellent support of table-based layout. HWP is a decent word
processor in comparison to MS Word, and in some cases it is even superior.
Koreans used to produce lots of documents based on tables [1] and HWP's UX was
specially tailored to them. MS Word lagged behind for a long time, probably
because this use case is not common in English worlds.

[1] You can search for "이력서" (résumé) to see what I mean. Even a plain
document tends to be styled in this way.

------
Animats
Someone needs to tell Microsoft.

The Microsoft License Advisor, which has the pricing info for Windows,

[https://mla.microsoft.com/](https://mla.microsoft.com/)

on Firefox pops up a box which reads

"Internet Explorer Notification NaN and newer versions. Download latest
version of Internet Explorer"

~~~
junar
NaN seems to be the result of a typo in the JS. They tried to concatenate two
strings, but added an extra / character, which causes the strings to be
coerced to NaN.

    
    
      '<table><tr><td width="40" height="40"><img src="images/35x35_information_icon.gif" /></td>'  / 
    
                 + '<td width="415" height="40"> Microsoft License Advisor is optimized for Internet Explorer 7'

------
logifail
If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as
part of Windows 10?

Specifically, why is it still shipping IE _as the only browser_ as part of
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC, including LTSC 2019? Yes, that is the version of
Windows 10 with an "extended support end date of 9 January 2029"*

* [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifec...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet)

~~~
wvenable
> If Microsoft really believes no-one needs IE, why is it still shipping it as
> part of Windows 10?

We have multi-million dollar software that relies on IE to run -- that's why.
What good is an OS that can't run our software?

Since Windows 10 we've setup an icon to just launch this application in IE and
set the default browser for end-users to Chrome.

Eventually that software will be replaced and we can end our use of IE but
today is not that day.

~~~
criddell
IE doesn't have to ship with Windows 10, does it? Is there any reason it
couldn't be a separate install?

I don't use it so I'd rather not have it on my machine.

~~~
cesarb
From what I recall, iexplore.exe is actually only a small wrapper around
mshtml.dll. A lot of software depend on mshtml.dll and related DLLs. So you
might think you're not using IE, but other non-browser software you use might
be using IE under the covers. If Microsoft doesn't install IE by default,
these programs would not work correctly (which is why Wine also implements
these DLLs).

~~~
sjwright
Correct, iexplore.exe is itself a small wrapper. But that doesn't stop
Microsoft from _not shipping_ that small wrapper. Software that embeds
mshtml.dll does not require the existence of the exe file.

(Or alternatively, Microsoft could put some hack into Windows so that attempts
to run iexplore.exe are passed to Edge unless the administrator has twiddled
with some arbitrary registry key or group policy.)

~~~
wvenable
> But that doesn't stop Microsoft from not shipping that small wrapper.

They could but that goes back to reply about it existing software still
requiring IE.

IE will be around for as long as very critical apps still require it. In some
form, it might be around forever.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
IE should just be a compatibility mode in edge so you only have one program
and a button to say "this page is broken, load in legacy mode". That way
everyone else in the world can stop being forced to support IE users.

~~~
AstralStorm
This won't work where ActiveX is required. They would have to write a plug-in
wrapper...

~~~
sjwright
The legacy mode would surely run MSHTML.dll for the entire page.

------
_-___________-_
> Burndown List >> Banking, especially in Asia

My bank in China requires Windows + IE + a custom ActiveX control to use their
Internet banking. As a result, I don't use it. One of my accounts can be used
via their mobile app (if you read Chinese or have another phone to use camera
translation). My business account cannot be, and I am therefore required to
visit a branch along with my official chop (seal / stamp) whenever I want to
make a transaction.

In every bank branch I've been to, the computers are using ancient versions of
Windows and IE. That actually applies to the PSB (a branch of the police) too.
I think it might be a while before they get off IE.

~~~
derefr
I'm surprised Microsoft doesn't just revoke people's licenses to use EOLed
Windows, such that they're breaking the law by staying on that version. That'd
get crufty corps and orgs moving, no?

~~~
filoleg
It would get them moving, but not necessarily in the direction MSFT would
like. If they are forced to change OS, they might think twice about moving to
yet another OS made by a company that just did the forcing in such a ruthless
way.

Mind you, I would totally agree with such a decision, if MSFT decided to
enforce it, but I dont think it will necessarily play out in a way that is
advantageous to MSFT, hence why they haven’t done so yet.

~~~
derefr
Keep in mind, Microsoft _already_ aren’t making any money from them. They
aren’t quite “Microsoft customers” in any real sense, if they’re running WinXP
and Office2007.

~~~
filoleg
Those running WinXP/Office2007 are, in fact, pretty legit customers (assuming
they run official registered versions of Windows and require security
patches/support). MSFT even has a special payment plan for entities that
refuse to update, so they charge them a hefty sum for custom security patches
and support, with costs going up significantly every subsequent year.

------
nerdkid93
The death of IE cannot happen soon enough. Our organization only supports IE11
now, but even that is still a terrible handbrake on our dev process. So many
tickets get reopened because of issues found only in IE, and it limits both
the features we add to our application and the general polish/look/feel we can
achieve.

------
erickhill
The last great version of IE that I personally used was IE 5.1 for Mac OS 9.
It was - at the time - my preferred browser on the platform and really shone
brightly.

As a web designer, IE - since 6 - has been the bane of my existence. It's not
nearly as bad as it used to be, but it's there.

~~~
thomasz
IE6 was a very good browser when it came out in 2001. People forget how the
landscape looked at that time: Netscape 6 was utter garbage, Firefox was still
years away and Opera was a tiny, largely unknown niche browser that did cost
money and was plagued by incompatible websites which were optimized for IE.

It's just that MS ceased investing more than the absolute minimum into their
browser after releasing IE 6 - it took until 2009 until a MS browser passed
the Acid2 compatibility test.

------
needle0
The Japanese electronic tax filing system's browser support policy is to
support browsers that come preinstalled with the OS, period, actual
marketshare be damned. This makes them support IE, Edge and Safari, but not
Chrome nor Firefox. (While some newer parts of the system do support them,
most of the critical parts still do not. Additionally, since the system still
only supports the EdgeHTML Edge, the Chromium Edge automatic rollout is
delayed to April specifically for Japan, to avoid confusion during the
February-March tax filing season.)

The only way to make them stop supporting IE is to have the OS itself stop
bundling it - which, like it was mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, is
probably never going to happen.

------
mwcampbell
> IE9 was a fantastic, best-of-its-time browser, and I’ll forever be proud of
> it. But as IE9 wound down and the Windows 8 adventure began, it was already
> clear that its lead would not last against the Chrome juggernaut.

This is tangential, but I wonder how Chrome got so far ahead, not in market
share but in features and quality, even with IE's 10+ year head start. Did
Google just throw more programmers at the problem, or was there more to it? I
suspect this has already been discussed to death, so pointers to previous
discussions would be good.

~~~
mynameishere
Don't you remember the weird explanatory comic that came out with Chrome?

[https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html](https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html)

~~~
jp_sc
Illustrated by none other than Scott McCloud, how to forget it?

------
dedosk
> I printed out the source code for the network stack and sat > down with a
> red pen.

Does anyone still do this to get to know new code base?

~~~
cesarb
I have done this once before too, with a particularly hairy multi-page
function from a legacy system. Spreading all the pages over a large meeting
room desk allows you to view the whole code at once, instead of being
constrained by the physical size of a computer monitor. And there's something
hard to describe about being able to physically manipulate the code
(rearranging the sheets of paper, scribbling over the code with a pencil,
etc). I hope VR one day allows for that kind of experience without wasting
lots of paper.

~~~
lloeki
Probably you would be interested in
[https://dynamicland.org/](https://dynamicland.org/) or Bret Victor fame.

------
enturn
I understand Microsoft needs to continue supporting IE for old websites but my
boss a couple days ago used the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy as a reason why we,
as website developers, need to support IE11 also. I would like articles saying
people shouldn't use IE to also explicity answer the question, "Should website
developers support IE?"

~~~
p1necone
To me the answer to that question is another question - "what market share
does IE11 still have amongst our target users, how fast is it decreasing, and
what's the development effort required to support it?"

------
pilif
_> No. Internet Explorer will remain a supported product until its support
lifecycle runs out._

which is pretty much going to be "never". IE's support lifecycle says that a
version of IE is supported for as long as the version of windows it shipped
with is supported.

Windows 10 shipped with IE11 and Windows 10 is going to be the last version of
Windows ever released, remaining in constant support.

Companies on the other hand still force users to use IE11 and they will
continue to do so while IE11 is supported (which is forever).

We will have to continue to support a browser that came out in the beginning
of the last decade for at least another 10 to 15 years.

------
orionblastar
I wrote JScript and VBScript for IE 5.X and 6.0 more than 20 years ago. We
used ActiveX objects to do things on the client side of intranet applications
for a law firm.I wrote a docket calendar that used the date picker control for
example. We could only use IE not Netscape and nothing else. Which meant it
was not a cross compilable with Linux, OS/2, MacOS etc and people who used
those computers where SOL. I tried to talk about JavaScript and Java to make
it cross over to the other systems, but I was told it was a Microsoft Shop and
we only use MS technologies.

------
__app_dev__
I had to support a really old site that another developer wrote on IE just
over a year ago. Luckily I am no longer at that company. Basically 99% of
development and sites worked with modern browsers but one needed site required
IE6 compat mode. It would have taken months to rewrite and the company didn't
want to spend resources on it. At my current job we also have a lot of IBM
software that seems to work best in IE although only a few people still use it
at work. Doesn't seem like IE will be retiring anytime soon.

The article (and site) from this post is very good.

------
taf2
We fully stopped supporting IE11. Refactoring code to use ES6 and reducing
code size by 20% is proving a big win for the vast majority of customers. If
any customers are still on IE11 - they can run Edge, which now that that is
Edgium we have even more code size reduction we can implement to improve load
time and user experience.

~~~
dbbk
You can even do differential bundles if you want to go to the effort of
setting it up. So IE11 users get one legacy build of your JS client, and
modern browsers (with module support) get the simpler modern code.

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
We would love to, but I'm sure you, like me, has a SaaS Vendor that still
needs IE for a portion of their website that they just can't seem to re-write.

------
forgotmypw
I know I'm in the minority on this, but I love the feel of IE, it feels like
the most OS-integrated browser I've ever used. Of course, Trident was based
off the same layout engine as MS Office, so that makes sense.

I still make my sites work in IE, down to IE4, and probably 1-3 too, I just
haven't had a chance to test them yet.

I think that in the retro-computing world, IE will be one of the longest
browsers still in use.

~~~
unilynx
I don't know about IE1 and 3, but for IE2 (the one that shipped with NT4) you
need at least, from what I remember:

\- no name-based virtual hosting (it does HTTP 1.0 but doesn't send Host
headers)

\- avoid redundant whitespace (it's not collapsed)

\- wrap <style> and <script> contents in <!-- and // \-->, otherwise they will
be visible

I've had to keep an application's webinterface IE2 compatible ("usable") for
longer than I wanted to as the initial configuration (opening up ports and IP
addreses) was generally done on the NT4 server in IE itself.

(Once initial setup was done, further configuration could be done remotely
with a more 'modern' browser, so fortunately only a few pages needed to be
usable by IEs that old)

~~~
forgotmypw
Thanks for the info on the whitespace. I think I have a post-processing
solution for that, which may work.

I will work to find an NT4 original ISO and get IE2 that way.

I've been doing the commenting thing, and found out that Mosaic treats >, not
--> as the end of comment token, so I had to remove all > characters from my
JS. :D

------
annoyingnoob
IE is still the best way to copy files in/out of SharePoint. Not to be rude, I
have no idea why I would want to try Edge on Chromium or Edge for any reason.
Chromium needs more competition than Firefox.

------
29athrowaway
Computer repair technicians made extra money fixing computers ruined by
excessive toolbars, malicious extensions and similar stuff.

Today all the malicious garbage moved to e-mail.

------
lmiller1990
I work in healthcare, our main app runs in an embedded IE10 and this will
likely _never_ change. I fully expect to need to support IE for the next 10
years.

------
caycep
granted, the electronic medical record software that is the bane of my life
(Allscripts Pro) requires Internet Explorer. WITH ACTIVE X!!!!

~~~
derefr
The second sentence is not much of a surprise; why would something require IE
if _not_ for its ActiveX support?

Certainly, some things might render brokenly in other browsers, but ActiveX is
the only real "IE-only feature" a site might depend on.

~~~
unilynx
VBScript and HTA files (HTML Applications) come to mind. HTAs were actually an
interesting direction, once used them to ship a simple application (a very
visual FTP upload). It was unsandboxed HTML and JS that could access all the
ActiveX APIs. A bit like Electron now.

Can't image there not being a few niches out there that heavily rely (or
relied) on HTAs

~~~
badsectoracula
I have a small niche... a calculator that opens fast :-P

[http://runtimeterror.com/tools/calc/calc.hta.txt](http://runtimeterror.com/tools/calc/calc.hta.txt)

(yes, running an HTA "calc" is faster than the UWP Windows 10 calculator...
and uses less RAM :-/).

~~~
Jaruzel
That's nice. I once wrote a clone of Active Directory Users & Computers
(dsa.msc) as a HTA, as I was working on a contract where I was expected to
design stuff for the AD, but they wouldn't let me install the AD tools...

If all you have is Notepad, and you know how to write HTAs, the world is your
oyster (or something).

------
swagtricker
Please just take it out back and shoot it.

------
pachico
This article is the only reason that night make me try Edge... If I ever use
Windows again (which will never happen)... And I was very drunk...

