
Microsoft decides IE 10 has had its fun: Termination set for Jan 2020 - benryon
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/29/microsoft_internet_explorer_10/
======
yakshaving_jgt
Good riddance, though there is a somewhat masochistic pleasure in finding
hacky solutions for old IE versions.

I once figured out that IE7 can be tricked into understanding the :before and
:after CSS pseudo-elements with this:

    
    
      .thing {
        *zoom: expression( this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1", this.insertBefore( document.createElement("i"), this.firstChild).className="ie-before" );
      }
    
      .thing .ie-before {
        *zoom: expression(this.runtimeStyle['zoom'] = '1', this.innerHTML = '|');
      }

~~~
sephoric
How did you even figure that out? That sounds like it would take having IE's
source code to figure out.

~~~
mmastrac
For those of us who cut our teeth on IE6, this was pretty much par for the
course.

Check out Dean Edwards IE7 JS script - this was key to making IE6 behave like
a modern browser:
[https://code.google.com/archive/p/ie7-js/](https://code.google.com/archive/p/ie7-js/)

Edit: better way to view: [https://github.com/Integralist/Dean-Edwards--
IE-7-and-8-and-...](https://github.com/Integralist/Dean-Edwards--
IE-7-and-8-and-9/blob/master/IE7.js)

~~~
arayh
Ah yes, the good ol' PNG transparency hack is included in there. The bitter-
sweet memories of web development in the 90s. Too bad the only working hack
for fixing PNG gamma was to remove the gamma chunk from the image file itself.

------
theodorejb
Official announcement: [https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-
Blog/B...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-
Blog/Bringing-Internet-Explorer-11-to-Windows-Server-2012-and-
Windows/ba-p/325297)

> We will also publish the IE11 upgrade through Windows Update and Windows
> Server Update Services (WSUS) for all versions of Windows Server 2012 and
> Windows Embedded 8 Standard later this year.

Nice! I wonder, will they eventually do this with their Chromium-based version
of Edge?

~~~
untog
I can't imagine they will ever push their Chromium reboot as a replacement for
IE, it would break brittle intranet sites everywhere. Hopefully as a separate
download, though.

~~~
saidajigumi
It should be noted that Microsoft has a history of _massive_ engineering
investments in backwards-compatibility, esp. around Windows. I don't know that
that's the case here, but there's certainly cultural and technical precedent.

------
IdontRememberIt
(I work for a company running a popular mainstream classified ad website in
Europe) After some investigation (because we wanted to crush Google Analytics
numbers), we found that +95% of our IE9 and IE10 trafic reported in GA is in
fact from bots and proxied clients.

~~~
dccoolgai
Just out of curiosity, can you describe broadly how you made that
determination (I assume it was something more complex than just looking at the
UA string?)

~~~
IdontRememberIt
We started our journey by trying to understand why ie9 had higher figures than
ie10.

As we also have an analytics on the server side, we extracted a raw log. We
used our existing tools that can filter "fake" or "foe" trafic by its
behavior. We then manualy analyzed representative filtered samples (still by
analyzing its behavior).

It took some time, but was worth it, because we found an opposite conclusion
than GA: most of the real traffic ($) from our ie9-10 samples is on ie10.

So now the dev. guideline is: forget ie9 and make it not too ugly/broken on
ie10. ;)

PS: We had to do a manual work of filtering because our tools do not filter
all the traffic that we know being fake or foe because we often have false
positive.

------
Jaruzel
IE as a browser _does_ suck, no argument there. However, I (and I'm sure many
other Windows devs too) find the .NET WebBrowser control very useful - it's a
easy drop-in control that's part of the .NET framework. It shares a lot with
with IE codebase, so if IE gets killed off, would that include the control? It
certainly would no longer be updated.

I've looked in depth at the embedded Chromium project, but there's simply TOO
much baggage with that making it total overkill when all you want to do is
render some HTML in a line-of-business application.

~~~
Avery3R
They're not going to kill off IE, it's the only browser on server/ltsb SKUs.
They've said that edge is a no go for those because of how frequently edge
gets updates compared to the os.

~~~
ndnxhs
Why does a server need a web browser

~~~
tenebrisalietum
Because the server is a license server in a company that has a hardware HASP
key that is managed by service that exposes its interface only through
localhost HTTP.

~~~
ndnxhs
Would take no time at all to set up nginx to allow you to connect from your
desktop. Likely much more secure than having an ancient browser on a server.

------
irrational
If anyone is wondering about IE11, MS says "Internet Explorer 11 will continue
receiving security updates and technical support for the lifecycle of the
version of Windows on which it is installed."

Extended support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, 2025. Extended support for
Windows Server 2016 ends on January 11, 2027.

Presumably one or those 2 dates could be considered the termination date for
IE11. My company has chosen the 2025 date as when we will stop support for
IE11 in our web pages/apps.

~~~
dak1
6 more years is a really long time on the web. You may want to base it instead
on usage metrics — IE, once usage drops below what % are you willing to stop
testing against a browser?

Win7 support is ending Jan 2020 also, at which point IE11 will only be
supported on Win10 (and it's not default there). So that may be a good date to
start considering ending IE11 support as well, especially with Chromium-Edge
coming out later this year.

~~~
aboutruby
If you are selling software to other companies. And out of thousands of
companies, one of them bringing a significant percentage of revenue is using
IEX, you may want to consider supporting IEX. It can also be useful for future
contracts. Usage doesn't mean everything.

~~~
tatersolid
Seconded.

Just try to run a B2B SaaS without supporting IE11. You will lose out on a ton
of large-but-slow-moving customers. Like banks, insurance companies, etc. who
all seem to have critical internal systems that only work on IE11 in
compatibility mode.

~~~
TimTheTinker
This is why our company is still supporting IE11, and will be for some time to
come.

Personally, I'm hoping the app my team builds will be able to finally drop
IE11 support once the new Chromium-based Edge app becomes available on Windows
7 and 8.

------
zackkatz
Just yesterday I hit an IE 11 issue that forced a JavaScript hack to resolve.

Goodbye, IE 10. Hopefully IE 11 will soon follow.

~~~
pilif
_> Goodbye, IE 10. Hopefully IE 11 will soon follow._

IE 11 is still part of Windows 10 and it's in fact the _only_ browser shipping
in the long-term support version of Windows 10

Expect IE11 to be around for the duration that Windows 10 is around which,
unfortunately, is going to be forever (as Windows 10 is said to be the last
version of Windows ever released) or at least for the foreseeable future

~~~
robohoe
> as Windows 10 is said to be the last version of Windows ever released

Is that because "continuous rolling updates" for Windows 10 or because
Microsoft will eventually replace the Windows kernel with some other kernel,
such as Linux (just a conspiracy theory of mine)?

~~~
ken
Microsoft, like most companies, don't use the internal implementation as part
of the name brand. It was called "Windows" long before it got the current
kernel. ("Edge" is switching engines, too, but not names.) I see no reason
they'd change the Windows name even if they decided to switch out the kernel.

------
Jedd
> Over the course of the northern hemisphere's spring ...

A delightful phrasing that more northern hemisphere journalists would do well
to adopt (slightly less constraining or cumbersome than actually specifying a
date range, but infinitely preferable to the parochial 'season of year').

------
piotrkubisa
It sounds like this is the best time to fetch virtual machines from modern.ie
[1] website. It is worth noting that IE is still used in many Point of Sales
or other embedded devices. // Though I guess in most of scenarios it is IE6
for obvious reasons.

[1] [https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/v...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/vms/)

------
ptyyy
I read this as IE11 and got prematurely excited. Good news though.

------
moocowtruck
please terminate ie11 in 2020 1/2

~~~
dspillett
MS dropping support won't stop corporates using it. Apart from a few
exceptions (running on Windows Server 2012 and some embedded versions, where
IE11 has until soon not been supported) IE10 (and below) hasn't been supported
since 2016. All they are doing here is pulling the plug on those few remaining
environments.

If your clients are still running IE10 on some ancient version of desktop
Windows now, they probably still will be on 2020. Heck, one of our clients (a
major UK bank) seems to be having trouble getting a few remaining members of
their staff off _IE8_.

And they can't even try dropping IE11 without breaking previous guarantees or
changing the path of Windows 10 at least slightly. They locked IE11's support
life-cycle to that of Windows 10, and they've stated that Win10 will not be
replaced, only updated/upgraded. _IE11 is officially here to stay,_ and even
if it wasn't it would be _unofficially_ here to stay if you have clients
anything like ours.

~~~
efficax
Indeed. I hack on a web app with over 100k daily users and we only just last
month decided to drop support for _IE8_ , and that only because some third
party libraries that will simplify things for us don't support it

~~~
dspillett
Our chief leverage for pushing back on IE8 support is that out-of-the-box
(which is pretty much how that have it configured) it doesn't support SSL
settings that pass up-to-date recommendations.

Each year we are pen-tested by a third party, each year that client complains
that the testers say the SSL setup is potentially insecure, every year we
point out that we'd be more than happy to follow the recommendations (in fact
we feel dirty not doing!) but it would lock out a number of their users if
they were not given an alternate browser or otherwise reconfigured.

Fingers crossed this year is the last time: everyone there should have Chrome
as an option, and everyone not depending on old apps (ActivX etc) should have
IE11 not IE8. The login screens have had "are you sure you want to use this
browser?" messages for IE8 users for a while, but some still use it, though
only a few.

This is legacy application. Thankfully for our new applications the contracts
state nothing older than IE11 will be supported, and that we only begrudgingly
support that so users of IE may experience display issues or other minor
usability problems from time-to-time.

------
mtmail
I saw the beginning of the third Browser War was proclaimed
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars#Third_Browser_War...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars#Third_Browser_War:_2018-Present)

------
pixelpp
RIP

