Internet Explorer 11 limps to the end of Windows 10 road
- Reference: 1655209931
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/14/bye_bye_ie/
- Source link:
[1]Support is ending today for the Internet Explorer 11 desktop application on the Window 10 semi-annual servicing channel.
From tomorrow – June 15, 2022 – customers still clinging to the past will have to do so without the (seemingly) neverending patches for Microsoft's browser.
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Kind of. The [3]relatively popular Windows 8.1, which drops out of extended support at the beginning of 2023, is among the operating systems still clinging on to Internet Explorer 11, as is Windows 7 ESU (Extended Security Updates), and the long term servicing editions of Windows 10.
Still there
The departure of Internet Explorer 11 from the semi-annual servicing channel is a big deal, however.
That said, Internet Explorer is so deeply integrated into the guts of Windows that it will never truly die, even if Microsoft would like users who simply can't do without that one weird website to run it in its latest Edge browser while using "Internet Explorer mode" (which the company promises not to kill without issuing a year's notice first.)
[4]
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Patches for the bits that lurk within the core operating system will continue to roll out, just without a specific callout to the IE browser.
Internet Explorer first arrived in 1995 as part of the Windows 95 Plus! pack and has been updated over the years (although pretty much everything other than fixes came to a halt when Microsoft tried to wipe the slate clean with [6]Edge in 2015.)
We've come to wish you an unhappy birthday: Microsoft to yank services from Internet Explorer, kill off Legacy Edge by 2021 [7]READ MORE
Despite enraging purists with its habit of introducing proprietary extensions and lawmakers thanks to bundling ( [8]browser ballot , anyone?), Internet Explorer enjoyed a dominant position in the early years of the 21th century before its marketshare dropped dramatically.
Impactful? For the 1 percent, maybe...
Internet Explorer was only used by around 1 per cent of desktops over the last year, according to [9]Statcounter .
Asset management outfit Lansweeper published figures today that cited a figure of 47 percent of Windows 10 devices potentially affected by the end-of-life (from an audit of over 9 million) and requiring an update to Edge. While the browser statistics indicate that actual users have moved over to an alternative, it appears administrators still have a bit of work to do.
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Still, even though Microsoft has removed support for Internet Explorer from its own services over the years, the end of life for desktop version on the semi-annual channel of Windows 10 remains a milestone. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/internet-explorer-11-on-windows-10
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yqiwn4NPCtajCK1W0ZNdLgAAAIo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/worldwide
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yqiwn4NPCtajCK1W0ZNdLgAAAIo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yqiwn4NPCtajCK1W0ZNdLgAAAIo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2015/05/06/microsoft_edge_extensibility/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/18/microsoft_internet_explorer_support_deadline/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2009/10/07/microsoft_browser_commission/
[9] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide#monthly-202104-202205
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yqiwn4NPCtajCK1W0ZNdLgAAAIo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Its Microsoft, they recommend Office 365 with a corp version of Windows so you can make use of https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/edge-ie-mode
And yet Edge-in-IE-mode doesn't work for many "enterprise apps".
However corporate IT will rise from its slumber in its silo, click the mouse to let the "kill IE" update through, and go back to sleep. Meaning that not even their own employees will be able to belatedly migrate their own enterprise software so it works with a non-IE browser. *
Genius!
* For non-IE browser, read hard-coded for Edge or Chrome, because standards are too taxing.
It's a shame, actually.
I know IE was never popular, but IE11 has one massive plus point in it's favour: the fact that as far as Screen Readers & other Assistive Technology is concerned, It Just Works(TM). No problems with funky icons that don't have AltText descriptions, no funky "hamburger menu" gubbins that have nothing to read to the visually impaired, nothing that really drops a bag of spanners in the gears & causes the whole machine to come to a metal shredding, lubrication igniting, parts fuzing, catastrophic halt.
Unlike Chrome & Edge which have many such issues & nobody seems to GAFF about fixing them to (restore? add in the first place?) functionality. The attitude seems to be "It works fine for us, so sucks to be you, huh?" to which I'd like to break off a ClueBy4 upside their skulls in Karmic bitchslap. *Deep calming breath*
Yes there are other browsers, but they've all got their little quirks & foibles that drop the occaisional hurdle in the path of the blind person trying to figure out WTF is happening & HTF to Get Shit Done(TM). Is that unlabeled icon something I need, or is it the "reformat your hard drive without confirmation" button that I'll regret? Is that silent bit of screen the place where the controls are hiding that prevent me from ticking the "Don't sell all my PII to everyone & their dog" box? We can't see it, our SR's can't read it to us, & we're prevented from GSD because someone sighted didn't think it was important enough to describe for the less-than-perfectly-sighted.
This is not a request for alternate browsers, it is a lament that other browsers can't seem to do what that crusty, ancient, out dated, out moded, unsupported monstrosity can do but the newer, modern, bright & shiny, supported ones can not. What's that say about those new ones that can't fully do what the old one can? I'll give you a hint & "security" isn't one of them.
Turn scripts off, refuse JS at all, block cookies, reject a site's ability to store any data about your visit at all (no DOM, etc), and stop accepting that ensuring security means losing privacy. If my bank can render without those bits & do so with the padlock icon (which has AltText TYVM), then all the modern sites that can NOT need to go back to the drawing board & have _competant_ WebDevs in charge of site creation. =-/
My photocopiers can only be programmed from Internet Explorer. Cant see me replacing them any time soon, far too expensive and far too reliable.
Gotta love that this was downvoted.
Perhaps the downvoter can buy the OP some new expensive Edge-compatible photocopiers?
Because they are ending support, they are also releasing the source (Microsoft <3 open-source) to help keep those internal legacy business applications alive.
Edit: Oh, my bad. Turns out they aren't. Just killing it and recommending Chrome's rendering engine as a replacement.