We've come to wish you an unhappy birthday: Microsoft to yank services from Internet Explorer, kill off Legacy Edge by 2021
- Reference: 1597746486
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/18/microsoft_internet_explorer_support_deadline/
- Source link:
To be fair to the Windows giant, it has been making determined efforts to kill off the former leading browser for some time now, telling customers it was merely a [2]compatibility solution before [3]sticking the knife in a little deeper earlier this year.
Yesterday the company announced that it would be pulling support for the browser from Microsoft 365 apps and services (including the likes of Sharepoint) by this time next year. The lights will be turned off for some components even earlier – the Teams web app will stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 from 30 November 2020.
The announcement came as Internet Explorer was tucking into its 25th birthday cake. The original, a [4]breathed-over version of Spyglass , debuted on 16 August 1995 before being swiftly superseded in the same year by IE2. 1996's IE3 was a considerably more capable beast, and the browser built up market share before enduring a precipitous decline following Internet Explorer 6.
Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows was also a factor in delights such as the infamous [5]browser ballot before it was eventually relegated to the thing you use to download Chrome. Even in that it was eventually replaced by the unloved Edge.
The final release, the default for Windows 8.1, turned up in 2013 before being replaced by the doomed Edge browser in Windows 10.
Security updates for the legacy incarnation of Edge will come to an end after 9 March 2021.
Microsoft's latest effort, the Chromium-based Edge, will turn up in new Windows updates (from Windows 10 20H2) and features an IE11 compatibility mode aimed at enterprises that just can't let go of that one, weird app that requires the quirks of the elderly browser.
According to [6]stats wrangler NetMarketShare , IE11 is currently the fourth-placed desktop browser, behind Edge but ahead of Safari.
"We want to be clear," insisted Microsoft, "that IE 11 isn't going away."
What is going away, however, is support for the loathed browser from the company's Microsoft 365 line-up.
No flowers. ®
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[1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/microsoft-365-apps-say-farewell-to-internet-explorer-11-and/ba-p/1591666
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/08/internet_explorer/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/23/stop_using_internet_explorer/
[4] https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2010/02/19/microsoft_browser_screen/
[6] https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Custom%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browserVersion%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktopVersions%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222020-07%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-07%22%2C%22plotKeys%22%3A%5B%7B%22browserVersion%22%3A%22Internet%20Explorer%2011%22%7D%5D%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Title reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I28iqDx1b3A
Honestly Microsoft really don't do themselves any favours the way they do things.
There's a load of old, obsolete or genuinely poorly designed technologies that Microsoft should have given the Old Yeller treatment long ago - not just IE, but Silverlight, UWP, WPF, ActiveX, etc - yet they somehow stay shuffling around like zombies. I really don't understand it.
Microsoft's entire legacy is based on the precept that everything that used to work will continue working in some fashion.
You can still install apps from the Visual Basic 4 days and they'll "just work".
That's not even true of binaries on other operating systems - you can't necessarily run an old glibc5 binary on a newer Linux at all... let alone expect it to integrate with the system integrations in place nowadays.
The second Microsoft make an OS without backwards compatibility, people forgo it and it becomes niche. Windows CE, Wnidows Mobile, those Windows Starter devices that only do Metro apps, etc.
The problem behind it is not that Microsoft allow it... it's that NOBODY sees that you need to update software even if it's "working". People would rather run-as-admin, give full security, override UAC, use a broken browser, etc. than actually update their software to be using tech from the correct decade.
What's broken is the software development model - where it's a vast, vast, vast, vast effort to update a program that's tied into that tech to use newer tech that secure, and far outside the reach of even businesses that paid millions for the app in the first place. The only way to support an IE ActiveX binary is to run IE. The only way to run a Silverlight program is to install Silverlight. The only way to run a .NET Framework 3.5 program is to install .NET Framework 3.5 (even if your machine had newer versions).
i love advertising
I just don't understand why anyone, ever, would use a web browser from an advertising company.
From the vendor of your OS? yes. From an independent open source foundation? yes. From an ISV with features you are willing to pay for? yes.
FROM AN A-D-V-E-R-T-I-S-I-N-G COMPANY ?!?!?!?
NO.
This is the sort of behaviour that I expect of unfathomable business types, or fasionistas, not developers or sysadmins.
I guess I'm clearly now officially old and out of touch, a luddite even.
One of the great things about not using much Microsoft software is that when they go on their random campaigns to deliver useless platform x or kill off a badly implemented application y, then I don't have to worry about any of this and I can get on quite contently with my life..
This seems to be symptomatic of the culture through the whole of their company for all things they develop that results in such rubbish software that has to be constantly killed off.
I guess this explains why we have such an odd operating system with Windows 10 and all its well known poor design.(start menui, several control panel things, unstable things, things constantly breaking during updates etc).
Given what we can see on the outside, you have to wonder how bad it is on the inside.
The only positive I can bring from all of this is that its not my problem, but its nice to stand here eating popcorn and watching the show.
good riddance
good riddance