
Microsoft doesn’t want you to use Internet Explorer anymore - meris
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/8/18216767/microsoft-internet-explorer-warning-compatibility-solution
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zip1234
The funny? thing is that IE has become better than Chrome for a lot of stuff
because Chrome keeps dropping support for things that it used to support. The
frequency of updates means that your stuff could just stop working one day
when it worked perfectly fine the previous day. It requires constant attention
to make sure things won't break. The most recent one to get us was the
File.lastModifiedDate

~~~
untog
To be fair, File.lastModifiedDate was never a standard. In my experience, as
long as you stick to the stuff that's actually an accepted standard your code
will last a long time.

FWIW, removed on Firefox too:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1458883](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1458883)

and lastModified works in both (and IE):

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/File/lastMo...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/File/lastModified)

~~~
zip1234
I agree but if the latest document is a draft? That is how lastModifiedDate
ended up in those browsers in the first place. Obviously, going back would
have noticed that it was removed from the spec and updated accordingly. The
point is that IE has maintained backwards compatibility and Chrome has not.

~~~
untog
That's why you don't implement anything that's a draft. Obviously easier said
than done, but if you want your code to be around for a long time it's the
only sensible path.

~~~
zip1234
I agree in principal, but the standards can move very slow. Look at WebRTC. It
is only a 'candidate recommendation'.

~~~
K2L8M11N2
That's the tradeoff you have to accept if you want stable code.

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pilif
If that's the case, then they should probably start by offering something
better for all currently supported OSes and versions.

Windows 7 is still supported and only runs IE11, no Edge

Windows 10 LTSB is still supported and only runs IE11, no Edge

If you need to support any of those OSes, there's no way around supporting
IE11.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Windows 7 currently has less than a year of support (January 14th, 2020 is
D-Day), and given the free upgrade having been available, and the improved
security and performance, there is no legitimate reason to be on Windows 7
today.

LTSB is not intended for computers which browse the web. It's very
specifically only intended for things like embedded platforms like computers
operating medical devices. Aka, things that require the Windows kernel to run,
and insane platform stability, and literally like nothing else. Business users
who need a desktop should be running Enterprise, which does allow you to
disable all the things most Windows installs don't, but is far more capable
than LTSB.

~~~
speeder
In one of my companies, of the windows machines, half are Win7, half are
Win10...

Often we wish we could buy Win7 to delete the Win10 on the Win10 machines.

Win10 somehow, is less reliable, often doing weird things, updating without
permission, sending strange data out, have security update that kill half of
our online bank apps, our another update that make the keyboard stop working,
or nag about Cortana at same time Cortana is not available in our country,
show ads, etc...

The only reason the Win10 machines are still Win10 is because Win10 was part
of the deal when buying said machines...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
If Windows is updating without permission in one of your companies, there's an
issue with whoever manages IT for that company. Even _without_ an Enterprise
license, it's trivial for a domain environment to control update behavior.
Group policy handles the majority of these concerns easily.

Even if you could install Windows 7, you would be very mistaken in doing so,
as it would put your company at significantly greater risk. Even while
security updates are still available, the differences in the platform already
lead to scenarios where large malware infections tend to be almost entirely on
machines which weren't running Windows 10.

~~~
patentatt
I agree. I always read these horror stories about windows, specifically win10,
and I have just had a completely different experience. On personal machines,
work machines, servers, large deployments, domain controlled and not ... I’ve
just never had these problems.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
To be clear: I've encountered _plenty_ of issues on Windows 10. But most have
been addressed, the rest can be managed if you know what you're doing, and
running out of date operating systems is not a safe or viable way to operate,
especially as a business.

If someone really just _doesn 't like_ Windows 10, my advice is to switch to
Linux. Continuing to run obsolete operating systems just isn't okay. :)

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chasingthewind
My first job doing intranet web development in 2000 was in a company with
mandatory use of IE for all employees and all developed apps. We all grew to
despise it very quickly especially as the alternatives increased in number and
quality. Microsoft is only 19 years behind on this conclusion :)

~~~
pjmlp
Now all get to worry only about Chrome instead.

~~~
fxfan
It's astounding how people like to paint MS as the bad guy and not monopolies.
Every monopoly behaves like this. I'm not favoring MS- I'm asking people to
stop letting monopolies become. No .. But google gives me free stuff

~~~
imtringued
I can understand accepting a monopoly as a necessary evil but then often what
I see in reality is that people are cheering for the monopoly and they even
want the competitors to go out of business.

~~~
fxfan
Exactly- everyone just wants to be seen as siding with the winner. I specially
see it on "hacker" news actually.

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xvilka
Finally. The only sad thing they didn't support Firefox. Having a fair
competition to Chrome/Chromium would be the most obvious choice (and push
Rustification project forward to a new heights).

~~~
duxup
It would have been interesting to hear what / if any discussion there was
about picking Chromium.

~~~
snuxoll
Embedding Chromium is easy, embedding Gecko is....not. I'm guessing that's
about where it started and ended, TBH.

~~~
mook
It's sad; I remember that one of the things that was supposed to come out of
Servo was a stable embedding interface. Of course, that's cancelled now…

I can't help but wonder from time to time what would be using Gecko now if
they were reasonable to embed.

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mikece
If that's the case then Microsoft needs to lean hard on all small and midsize
business using a version of Sharepoint or Solomon or Great Plains to upgrade
their internal apps to no longer require IE. Where I work our timesheets app
on Solomon _requires_ Internet Explorer -- which is a bucket of fun for all of
our MacBook Pro using sales team.

Microsoft may want us to move on from IE but they've created the apps that
REQUIRE us to keep using IE.

~~~
cptskippy
Hell that's true of enterprise applications as well. What amazes me is large
SASS companies like ADP whose eTime timesheet app required the JRE to function
until they upgraded it a couple years ago to use Flash instead.

They still only officially support Internet Exploder, and when we switched to
Chrome as our office standard they forced an addon that opens certain
incompatible sites like ADP.com in IE if you try to visit them in Chrome.

~~~
mikece
A worse offender might be government apps. The radar loop on the National
Weather Service _STILL_ requires Adobe Flash. Example:
[https://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?product=NCR&rid=EAX&loop...](https://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?product=NCR&rid=EAX&loop=yes)

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yardie
Jokes on us. I have a building management system that uses IE thoroughly.
These things are on 10-15 year lifecycles. And the only way to get major
updates is to buy a new system. These things are in the $millions and we
aren't anywhere near the next purchase cycle. The only thing I can do is
harden it by lobbing it onto it's own VLAN.

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neurobashing
We're about to spend a number of dumptrucks full of money for a modern WCMS
combined with a totally new design effort, and I guarantee you at some point
someone will see a customer coming in from W7/IE11 and demand we design for 5
years ago.

So if you're that one guy, _can you not_, thanks!

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sixothree
Internet Explorer is the only option for Windows Server.

~~~
isostatic
The only browser on a server should be curl. Or wget.

Running a 'webbrowser' other than lynx/links/w3m implies a GUI, which makes no
sense as you wouldn't have a GUI on a server.

~~~
wayneftw
Absolutist thinking is not good for you and I think that it often clashes with
reality.

The only browser on your server should be the one you need to run there. How
about a server to automate some Windows GUI thing or to run mobile OS
emulators like BrowserStack does? You're gonna need a GUI there because going
"headless" is not always an option depending on how interesting your work is.

I've also used server editions of Linux and Windows as my workstation
throughout my career because they have features that I needed or just the
convenience of having the same exact setup as production.

~~~
YourCupOTea
And Remote Desktop Services.

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vezycash
Migrating enterprise off IE will have a cascading effect on their cloud
effort.

Most cloud revenue is from Windows only shops who use active directory,
SharePoint...

When Microsoft harassed users off internet explorer, people didn't jump to
Edge as they hoped. They ran to Chrome.

I predict the same happening for enterprise. If companies have to dev new
software when leaving IE, it might cost less to just jump to Linux.

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HenryBemis
Someone tell Microsoft "Mission accomplished!!!".

I knew they would ocme to their senses eventually so I stopped using IE about
10-12 years ago!!

~~~
lenticular
This will only accelerate Chrome's rise to being a browser monopoly though.
Google has been doing a ton of anti-competitive stuff to put the hurt on
Firefox and IE. It's really a very bad thing for the internet.

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awestley
You reap what you sow Microsoft...

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ubermonkey
That makes two of us.

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Dylan16807
"compatibility solution, not a browser"

It's more of a browser than any shell around chromium will ever be.

~~~
dkersten
Is chromium not a browser? Surely a shell around it, which includes it, is
also a browser.

~~~
Dylan16807
> Surely a shell around it, which includes it, is also a browser.

An eggshell isn't an egg.

There's a browser _there_ , but it's copied wholesale. And it's the worst
thing to copy if you care about the future of web standards.

~~~
chapium
Why not? Chromium is open source and uses webkit which has wide adoption. An
eggshell wrapped around a yolk certainly is very egg-like.

~~~
Dylan16807
An egg is made out of shell and white and yolk.

That does not make the shell itself an egg.

Microsoft is promising to make a shell, and to not make anything else.

~~~
chapium
The problem I have with this description is you could describe any software
that has a renderer thats separate from the UI like this. Perhaps in Java if
we had an egg, we could,

import egg.yolk; import egg.whites; import egg.shell;

Egg fakeEgg = new Egg(brown);

~~~
Dylan16807
Which ones do you develop?

The whole thing is a browser. But Microsoft isn't developing a browser. The
rendering engine, javascript engine, network handling, almost all the
important input handling, all the things that make it a web browser, they're
coming from someone else. And that source has a default shell too.

Remember that the baseline is questioning whether IE counts as a legitimate
browser. If you're even slightly unsure about IE, then "shell around chromium"
has to be far far on the no side of the line.

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gerbilly
Ha, I'm waiting this whole windows thing out.

I've never used windows ever, from ver 1 through the horrible 95 and NT, till
v8 and onwards with it's spyware built in.

Glad to hear IE is also going away.

Enjoy your backslashes guys!

~~~
moonshinefe
I actually have to hand it to you if that's true. You waited it out for like
25+ years, that's some impressive dedication. The "I told you so" attitude
doesn't come off as pleasant though.

~~~
gerbilly
Well I can't even say "I told you so" yet.

This is just Microsoft discouraging the use of IE, Windows will still be
around for a long time.

In many ways I've been lucky that I've been able to keep it to UNIX and Mac
OS.

