[HN Gopher] Retiring Internet Explorer
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Retiring Internet Explorer
Author : manigandham
Score : 138 points
Date : 2020-01-21 10:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (textslashplain.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (textslashplain.com)
| swagtricker wrote:
| Please just take it out back and shoot it.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > 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.
| stinky613 wrote:
| Reminds me of Sony-BMG installing rootkits to enforce DRM; and
| Dell and Lenovo pinning their own root certs.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/superfish-20-now-dell-...
| erickhill wrote:
| 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.
| iSnow wrote:
| IE5/Mac was the best browser of the time, hands down. The only
| galling bug was that it stubbornly cached CSS (at least locally
| read CSS), so you had to always close and re-start it.
| thomasz wrote:
| 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.
| bitwize wrote:
| I remember Adobe (then Macromedia) Flash only worked well on
| IE5 for Mac OS 9. Every other OS/browser combination exhibited
| problems, especially slower framerates and audio/video desync
| issues. (When Linux got its own flash player, it was the worst
| of the lot.) Back then, Flash was a tool by and for designers,
| and it was only tested well on the platform that all designers
| used -- Mac. Mac OS X was still too new, a lot of designers
| didn't trust it yet, and it would take time to update the
| already existing 90s code base anyway.
| taf2 wrote:
| 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.
| dedosk wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jedimastert wrote:
| I've done it before, although not recently.
| ironmagma wrote:
| I love doing this. There is something freeing about having a
| physical copy of the code. For one, it is less daunting because
| you have a tactile sense of how much there is left to read and
| digest. But also, you can be more free to take notes in the
| margin in a way that doesn't pollute and make the code even
| more arduous to read (as typing comments in the code would).
|
| It would be great to see Github implement a printer friendly
| view on codebases for this purpose.
| iSnow wrote:
| Did this once to make sense of an especially hairy class
| structure I inherited. Would actually do this again, 4K
| displays notwithstanding.
| caycep wrote:
| granted, the electronic medical record software that is the bane
| of my life (Allscripts Pro) requires Internet Explorer. WITH
| ACTIVE X!!!!
| derefr wrote:
| 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.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| No, don't do it. We need more diversity...and security holes
| __app_dev__ wrote:
| 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.
| _-___________-_ wrote:
| > 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.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "My bank in China requires Windows + IE + a custom ActiveX
| control to use their Internet banking. As a result, I don't use
| it."
|
| Why not have a VM just for internet banking? Surely that's
| easier than taking the chop out of the safe and waiting in line
| at the branch.
| derefr wrote:
| 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?
| currysausage wrote:
| How do they not get infected with worms and ransomware the
| second they browse the internet?
| Arbalest wrote:
| The paranoid part of me would suspect that they've already
| been taken over, and the criminals behind them are actively
| preventing infection from visible forms of attack so they can
| maintain access to a valuable resource.
| Animats wrote:
| Someone needs to tell Microsoft.
|
| The Microsoft License Advisor, which has the pricing info for
| Windows,
|
| 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"
| iSnow wrote:
| Same for Safari, Chrome, Brave. The NaN is an especially nice
| touch.
| [deleted]
| nerdkid93 wrote:
| 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.
| logifail wrote:
| 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...
| gummydog wrote:
| Many Enterprises run critical legacy apps that depend on IE and
| it's ability to emulate lower versions. Many large orgs would
| require $100's of millions to rewrite all of them. No one will
| fund exercise that until the proverbial gun is point at them.
| 2029 sounds about right.
| catach wrote:
| Minimizing their support surface makes a ton of sense for a
| long-term release, and of course if you just choose one browser
| for Enterprise you're gonna choose the one people built their
| internal apps on for the last few decades.
|
| I expect it's not not that MS believes no one needs IE, it's
| that they know they're stuck with it and would really rather
| not be.
| derefr wrote:
| Same reason they're still shipping Notepad, or the non-
| Powershell command interpreter: backwards compatibility with
| old enterprise software that hooks directly into those specific
| things (e.g. by targeting the mouse at specific pixels.)
|
| Basically, think of it like: LTSC ships without a browser. If
| you want a browser, go install one from the App Store. What it
| _does_ ship with is an ActiveX-enabled-Intranet client.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Well, as someone who installed various versios of windows over
| the last two decades,I can say that the only purpose of IE is a
| gateway to Chrome or Mozilla websites.Once they get downloaded
| it never gets opened again.
| pachico wrote:
| 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...
| enturn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?"
| Already__Taken wrote:
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/t...
|
| It's tough to get much deader before they just rip it out.
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(page generated 2020-01-22 23:00 UTC)