No IE7 For 2k, Now In Extended Service

Yankovic writes "Looks like MS will not support IE7 on Windows 2000. 'It should be no surprise that we do not plan on releasing IE7 for Windows 2000... [S]ome of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XPSP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.' While security fixes will still be available until 2010, I guess that means the only browsers with tabs for W2k will be Opera and Firefox." All the details about an MS product's fall into senility available at the lifecycle page.

Comments

One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[geomon]

My choice is to upgrade from Win2K to WinXP for IE?

Hah! I'll keep Win2K and Firefox, thanks.

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[Karl Cocknozzle]

My choice is to upgrade from Win2K to WinXP for IE?

Hah! I'll keep Win2K and Firefox, thanks.

Yeah, I'll second that emotion... Although my primary machine is a PowerMac G5, my secondary runs Win2k for games, and stuff that "only happens on Windows" (which ain't too much anymore.)

If I'm completely crazy, somebody slap me, but wasn't Microsoft convicted of anti-trust violations relating to their monopoly on the browser? Wasn't a serious issue of their case the "need" to integrate Internet Explorer with the OS? Now it is MORE integrated--to the point that they CAN'T possibly make a Windows 2000 version?

If this isn't more blatant abuse of their monopoly on the desktop, what exactly would it take for DoJ to take action? (Besides a new president?) Would Gates have to go on tv wearing a cape and a "PHantom of the Opera" mask and say "Muhuhahahaha! Fools! My dominance of your desktop is complete!" before the saps at DoJ think something is wrotten in Redmond?

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> whats my upgrade path from Mac OS X 10.4?

Slackware 10.1

Thanks for asking ;-]

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[Patoski]

The point is that 2k starts its EOL cycle in June and goes into extended support (security updates only). Why would they spend all this time back porting stuff from XPSP2 to an EOL product. Guess what, 98 isn't getting IE7 either, is that an anti-trust violation or simply because 98 is in EOL status?

Maybe because ~60% of their corporate userbase is still Win2k? Or how about the fact that they haven't released an enhancement to Win2k in over two years? C'mon folks, Win2k is only 12 months older than XP. The question real question is why wouldn't MS give Win2k users some love considering that the browser wars are starting to heat up again?

So let's sum up the past two years of "Mainline Support" from MS for Win2k users: no Service Pack 5, none of IE6 security enhancements in XP will make it to Win2k and no IE7 for Win2k users.

MS is really giving Windows 2000 users the middle finger. MS is partly responsible for the security mess that is Windows 2000 and they should do *something* to help fix the situation. It isn't my fault as a user that MS hasn't released an operating sysytem for going on four years now. Why would I now pay for an OS that is over 3.5 years old?

It is really starting to feel that, at least part of the reason MS is going on an on about security is just another ploy to try to get customers to upgrade to the next greatest version of their product more quickly.

If this story is accurate, then this is a huge misstep by MS. MS is really opening the door for Firefox to further accelerate its adoption.

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[bluk]

That's not exactly fair. I don't like MSFT any more than any other company, but you can't force companies to support products forever. There are several applications that only work on certain OSes (even Mac programs sometimes require 10.3 and some Unix software requires at least a certain KDE or Gnome version). Some require certain libraries/DLLs or something like Cocoa Bindings (and in the future CoreData) that just aren't available on earlier OSes.

Personally, if you need to sacrifice compatibility, I would rather have it than hold back any possible forward progress. Several problems exist today solely because of design problems made years earlier.

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[IntlHarvester]

Agreed -- That gets the real issue. Not IE7, but the fact W2K is going into "extended support" 1-2 years before Longhorn ships. If anything, it should be the other way around -- companies should have at least a solid year to evaulate Longhorn before being moved off 2K.

Most corporations running W2K were early adopters for Microsoft, companies who either moved quickly onto 2K or upgraded from NT4. WinXP was sold as a consumer upgrade that provided almost no additional features for the corp user, so they passed. Now they (we) are being punished for the fact that Longhorn is years behind schedule. W2K might be old, but it's users are very entrenched customers.

Note, normally I wouldnt stand for people bitching about a 5-6 year old OS, but in this case Microsoft has not delievered an upgrade and should extend the support window until they do.

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[Seumas]

I stuck with 2000 for the longest time and spat on XP. I don't care for 2000, but since I had to have a couple windows boxes around, I demanded that they be 2000. But after having to account for extended LBA (for drives larger than 127gb) and other issues, I decided to give XP Pro a try. You know what? I actually am pleased with it. I'll still take my Debian or Gentoo, thanks - but for Windows, XP ain't all that bad.

Just change your settings to get rid of all the XP GUI crap and change back to classical everything on the interface and you can't even tell you're using XP - except that more things work with less trouble than on 2000. And the crashes have been no more frequent than they were on 2000.

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[cwensley]

Wait one minute.. WinXP *IS* the upgrade for 2k. Do you see OSX users getting new functionality for older versions? No. They must buy the _next version_ of the os to get new features. I expect this is the case for about 99.9% of the software out there.

Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K

[drsmithy]

A company that intentionally breaks compatibility (i.e. MS) deserves a lot more complaints about supporting their older products than most companies.

Except they don't. Microsoft has one of the best track records in the business for backwards compatibility. Heck, 90% of their platform problems come from their overriding desire to provide legacy support.

Terrible Sunday News

[fembots]

Does that mean I'm stuck with Firefox, and cannot utilize Microsoft's intelligent autoupdate which automatically downloads security patches once every 3 days?

This raises an interesting question - Why/How can Firefox, which runs happily on W2K and others, offer better security, while IE cannot do the same on an OS developed by MS itself?

I'm sure Firefox will be laughed at if it said it could not develop a browser for Windows because some of the security work in Firefox relies on operating system functionality in Linux that is non-trivial to port to Windows.

Re:Terrible Sunday News

[Ride-My-Rocket]

Why/How can Firefox, which runs happily on W2K and others, offer better security, while IE cannot do the same on an OS developed by MS itself?

According to Microsoft, IE is integrated into the operating system itself -- it is no longer a standalone application. Ostensibly they did this to allow greater desktop-to-Internet integration, but given the inherent insecurity of ActiveX, the tendency for the forces of evil to use it maliciously, and the inability of users to lock it down, it's not exactly a hot selling point these days.

Firefox, on the other hand, stands to benefit immensely from all this. It offers a free, lightweight, standalone browser whose programming environment makes it easy for developers to extend its functionality without coopting its security (so far). It does this without any hooks into the operating system, and offers a variety of ways to combat malware, popups and generally obnoxious behavior (Flash movies, rampant advertising, etc).

Microsoft might claim that they won't be releasing any further security patches or functional upgrades to Windows 2000 or IE6. But as of September 2004, ~49% of Windows users still use Windows 2000 or lower (98, 95, NT, etc). Trying to scare users into upgrading their OS, so they can take advantage of a marginally improved, questionably more secure Windows, doesn't seem to be working anymore. And I'm by no means a Linux zealot -- I'm an ASP/SQL programmer, have been using Windows since v3.1, and am a huge fan of Microsoft's development tools / languages.

Besides landing my most recent job, discovering Firefox was the best tech-related thing that's come along in recent memory. It's inspired me to start learning more about client-side development again, after seeing what's possible with AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML), standards-compliant CSS and XHTML. Once Dean Edwards' CSS-based IE7 stylesheet matures a bit more, developers will be able to instantly upgrade the set of standards-compliant available to IE 5/6 users. At that point, who will need IE 7? The days of developing wonderful new HTML and CSS tags that are only supported by one browser are in decline...... Firefox's market share has risen to just under 10% in the past year, while Microsoft's market share has dropped to under 90% for the first time since Netscape was still relevant. IE7 won't become ubiquitous for a long, long time, especially if Microsoft doesn't plan on making it available to users of its older operating systems. Why would developers of any web applications besides IE-only Intranets/Extranets create products that utilized features only available to a very small set of the installed user base?

So whatever, Microsoft. Dig your own grave, if you insist upon doing so. I'll continue to use your server-side tools, provided something better and easier-to-use doesn't come along, but at this point, you've lost me as a client-side developer of IE. Not that you should care, of course..... but if you can lose a devoted developer like me, I have to wonder how many others you've push away. It appears it's not all about "Developers, Developers, Developers!", as Steve Ballmer & Co. would have us believe.

I... can't tell

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a good thing or a bad thing for the Win2K users?

Re:I... can't tell

[mindaktiviti]

It's a good thing. Why? Well, if it needs the use of the service pack, that only seems to indicate that the browser is more and more tied in with with the OS (if that's even possible).

Like someone mentioned on slashdot before (paraphrased):

"I'd rather browse the net with a browser, not an operating system."

When

[Turn-X Alphonse]

When games I want to play stop working in Windows 98 then I'll buy a new OS. Untill then going "oh no, you need the new IE you must upgrade" isn'tgoing to get my money.

Re:When

[Anonymous Coward]

Games like "How many Botnets can my computer participate in at one time?"

bad move on Microsoft's part

[kalpol]

Many people are sticking with Win2K because of the draconian licensing and validation process required with WinXP. They will begin to lose a significant portion of the browser market as people realize how easy it is to get Firefox and the benefits it offers over Explorer.

The M$ resopnse...

[hubang]

"Besides, if we supported our products with our products, nobody would have reason to buy our new products."

Dramatized for your enjoyment.

The cost of Internet Explorer

[yotto]

So, Internet Explorer is no longer free, to get a secure Microsoft Browser (Yeah, I'm making a few assumptions here, but let's just live in the hypothetical word for a moment) I have to buy a new version of the OS? Or I can get a secure version of Netscape (That they call Firefox these days) for free. I wonder what I'll choose.

Re:The cost of Internet Explorer

[Man in Spandex]

I wonder what I'll choose.

hmm... lynx on cygwin ;)

Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox

[mpcooke3]

Most normal users never upgrades their OS and a lot of geeks prefer 2k to XP.

I suppose they have to release something new in Longhorn, they could make the window borders even bigger and more ugly and cripple the performance a bit more but with all the things they've dropped from longhorn they need some killer feature like copying firefox tabs to justify forcing another pointless upgrade on the corporate world.

Re:What is this obsession with tabs?

[Meshach]

There are lots of ways to have tabs in earlier versions of IE without upgrading the operating system

SlimBrowser is on that integrates into IE seamlessly and gives you tabs, pop up blacking, and all the other "obvious to everyone but ms" features

Of course the better alternative is still available

Re:Wait a minute...

[gad_zuki!]

>And I still don't trust SP2 and all the crap it dumps on your box.

"Crap" like pop-up blocking for IE6, a better wireless manager, NX support, firewall on by default, etc? It blows my mind that all these windows users hate the system they use and complain when they get a bunch of needed features. Of course, there are issues with the update, but thats true of any modern OS.

If you're using windows XP you should have migrated to SP2 long ago if you cared about security and stability. Then again this is slashdot, enjoy your ill-informed karma whore points.

Re:What is this obsession with tabs?

[linguae]

This isn't about tabs. A new version of Internet Explorer hasn't came out since 2001, which is a very long time in computing years. Unless Windows 2000 users use an alternative browser, they would be stuck with Internet Explorer 6 as the latest IE browser.

This isn't a good idea on Microsoft's part, because there are still many users using Windows 2000 (in fact, Windows 2000 is still supported; and I believe that Windows 2000 is the best version of Windows that was ever released), and if Microsoft abandons all of its Windows 2000 users in the broswer market, where are all of these people going to move to? They're not going to spend $$$ upgrading to XP over a broswer; they would more than likely switch to Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape/KMeleon/Opera/etc.

During the original broswer war, IE was on almost every major platform. It was available on Windows as far back as Windows 3.1, Mac OS 7.5 and higher, and even Solaris; the only sizable community that didn't get IE was the Linux/BSD group (that community used Netscape 4.x until Mozilla or Konqueror became usable; I don't know which came first since I was a Windows user back then). It seemed to me that Microsoft wanted to control the broswer market, so instead of only offering IE to its latest Windows offerings, it offered it to a wide array of operating system (even though Netscape had a wider array; it included Linux).

Now in the second Broswer Wars, Microsoft is completely ignoring its older Windows versions, the Macintosh, and *nix. Yet Firefox is available on a wide array of platforms. For example, even though Mozilla doesn't have official support for Firefox on *BSD, using *BSD ports (which applies the appropriate patches to the source), it compiles nicely and runs well. If I were Microsoft, I would be a little scared. Just about every platform can use Firefox, and if it isn't available on that platform (such as Mac OS Classic), somebody can port it. If Linux or Mac OS X takes off, then Microsoft would lose its stranglehold in the browser market. If Microsoft wants to win this broswer war, it should port IE 7 to just about every operating system imaginable. Old Windows versions, Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, Solaris; you name it, Microsoft should port it to that platform. If Microsoft really wants 95% marketshare, it should stop ignoring old Windows versions and other operating systems and start porting.

It is about forcing people to buy XP

[beforewisdom]

Previous slashdot articles have reported that businesses are intentionally not spending more money and not buying XP. Win 2000 works fine for them.

During the American antitrust case against MS several experts testified that IE could be separated from the OS in a matter of weeks.

Refusing to make a version of IE7 a part of win 2000 is as much a business decision as a technical one.

They want businesses who are not buying XP to get off win 2000 and buy XP.

I am not bashing MS, but it seems from what I have seen that XP is incredibly vulnerable to attack. In addition to managers not wanting to fork out the money for XP, their network people, many of whom are microsoft weanies, do not want to put their networks in harms way by using XP for their servers.

At some point the managers and network will capitulate. MS will stop supporting 2000 completely.

The question is how long the managers and network people will drag their feet, how much resentment towards MS this will generate, and what the effect of that resentment will be.

Re:It is about forcing people to buy XP

[beforewisdom]

I use and have used windows 2000 40 ( and then some ) hours a week for the past 4 years.

Your phrase "Granted, there have been issues" is what my original post is about.

I make friends with the network staff at every job I go to. I have heard a lot of noise from them about XP and how they are going to hold onto 2000 as long as they can. In my private life I have had a number of friends( and even more anecdotal accounts from friends of friends ) of XP getting sacked by all manor of opportunistic programs in a very short span of time after being put into operation.

You could blame it on the internet being a more insecure place then it used to be, but if that was true all of the 2000 boxes I use and all of the 2000 boxes my friends in networking take care of should be getting sacked just as bad as the XP boxes.

It isn't happening.

Integrated with OS?

[iamlucky13]

[S]ome of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XPSP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.

There had been speculation that IE 7 would be real, independent web browser, safely seperated from the OS. I guess this blows that theory out of the water?

Re:Sounds like

[dbIII]

And yet USB for NT 4.0 exists

Where can it be found?

Re:Sounds like

[cpereda_yahoo.com]

http://www.google.com/search?lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 &q=USB%20for%20NT%204.0

Re:Lazy FUDer

[Anonymous Coward]

The IE rendering engine with most of the features people get all gushy about in the Mozilla/Firefox browsers.

Funnily enough, one of the things most people love about Mozilla/Firefox is that they don't use the IE rendering engine - they use one that can cope with ancient 1990s technology like XHTML and transparent PNGs and CSS layout instead.

And, not to rain on your parade, a glance at the MyIE page shows that the wonderful features you're expecting me to be impressed by are... tabbed browsing and mouse gestures. Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned those are basic minimal features required for a browser to qualify as usable. I couldn't find anything there about a MyIE equivalent of Greasemonkey. Or Flashblock. Or EditCSS.

Seriously, you should give Firefox a try (or another try, as appropriate). It's got all the features people get gushy about in MyIE, and many more, and - as an added bonus - it doesn't use the IE rendering engine. :p

anti-trust violations

[edxwelch]

Slightly off-topic... but do you realise that the Doj - Microsoft settlement is due to expire next year?

Source: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f9400/9462.htm

"V.Termination

1. Unless this Court grants an extension, this Final Judgment will expire on the fifth anniversary of the date it is entered by the Court."

Wrong type of "compatibility"

[xswl0931]

Microsoft has a history of being backwards compatible (even to supporting buggy behavior in newer releases), but you're really talking about forward compatible rather than backwards compatible. Apps written for Win2k will work on Longhorn/XP, but apps written for Longhorn/XP may not work on win2k. At what point is a company allowed to stop adding new features to old products? Newer versions of cars add satellite radio, GPS, and MP3 capability, but I don't see any car companies provided these features on older models.

Software and Driver Installation?

[Volvogga]

Sorry about coming into this way late, but I have a preminition that scares me.

When installing a new HP printer I got (HP 5700 series), I ran into some problems when I tried to install the drivers/software for the thing in Win98. HP required that I have IE6 to install the thing (bullshit, I know). Well, I installed IE6 and it went fine, but what if I didn't have access to IE6 in 98?

Will I be prevented from installing software and drivers for products in the future because MS is deciding to buttf*ck me for not going to their "latest and greatest" system?

MS and legacy support

[WebCowboy]

Microsoft has one of the best track records in the business for backwards compatibility. ...except they don't. My employer guarantees 100% compatibility with 20 years of future products as a condition of sale. We have fully supported software that communicates with hardware that was made in the 1970s. IBM has that sort of track record of long-time compatibility and support for its mainframes too. That kind of track record for Microsoft would mean being obliged to offer support for stuff like BASIC on the TRS80.

That being said, MS DOES put a great deal of effort into backwards compatibility--to the point of including a DOS emulator in NT4/2K/XP (WoWExec) that is so seamless most people would never think that the aforementioned OSes are no more compatible with DOS than Linux is (it just happens to have really good emulation). There is a blog by a microsoftie called something like "the old new thing" that explains the lengths MS goes to to maintain compatibility with popular legacy apps.

There are two problems with the efforts MS has put into legacy support: Firstly, it has done a lot to make their codebase cryptic, nearly unmanageable and sub-optimal. This is a problem the likes of IBM and my employer have to contend with as well, except that DOS and NT were not engineered with then intention of being the core of a product for decades. As a result, you get a massive blocks of code, .ini files and registry settings specific to legacy apps. You might never run the DOS version of Simcity from 12 years ago on your new system, but there is code in the current windows that was placed there specifically to make that one app run. All of that legacy support is quite a hodgepodge at times.

The second problem with MS Legacy support is that it tends to be rather selective. In the past, when there was a very popular 3rd party app that sold a lot of copies of Windows (certain desktop publishing packages come to mind) legacy support was done without question. when MS Office sales are slumping...well it looks like time to add a few more features that 0.001% of users asked for and use them as an exuse to break file format compatibilities. The thing about IE7 beig "too advanced" for anything older than XPsp2 is another one of those cop-outs. A little company and a non-profit foundation managed to make more secure browsers with innovative features that runs on multiple platforms and MS can't use their billions to engineer something that works with multiple versions of a SINGLE PLATFORM? Bullshit. They are trying to accelerate the elimination of Win2k because it is limiting their revenue potential.

I understand that legacy support is expensive and that MS is beter than a lot of SW companies like Red Hat (not that that is totally Red Hat's fault--they just don't have the resources). The difference is that Free software often continues to work on anything it'll compile on, and if you do have to upgrade you don't often have to pay through the nose for a highly disruptive upgrade. The IE7 compatibility issue is artificial--MS could EASILY make it run on win2K with its resources and say "there is no official support--use at your own risk". They just made design decisions to deliberately create critical dependencies on XPsp2. Even more than concerns about support costs, MS wants to boost stagnant OS sales.

Problem is, that makes IE7 an expensive browser for someone like me, whose only MS OS is win2K. Firefox is free in all senses of the word, so IE7 makes for a pretty weak justification for an OS upgrade when Firefox is much more convenient to get and I don't need to re-install my OS.