Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Upgrading Windows Users To Latest Version of MSIE
helix2301 writes "Microsoft will be upgrading all Windows XP, Vista and 7 users to the latest IE silently. They are doing this because they have found a large number of non-patched systems. Microsoft pointed out that Chrome and Firefox do this regularly. They will start with Australia and Brazil in January, then go world-wide after they have assured there are no issues."
Do they start with Australia and Brazil because they do not care about the users there?
I can't believe it's taken this long.
Somebody tell netcraft!
Haha, I guess a big thanks goes out to Australia and Brazil for being the beta testers. Thanks!
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I think Microsoft is going to find plenty of issues trying to roll this out in the US.
I know there might be negative ramifications, but I'm glad to see this day arrive. The sooner old IEs die, the better.
Fuck IE6. Fuck it hard. Companies that have been dragging their feet on this for years need a hard kick in the ass, and this is how to do it.
If something breaks because of this, you only have yourself to blame. Anyone still running this shit intentionally knew they were on a path to pain.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Because they are not running Windows updates. at all. And therefore this is not going to have an effect.
Well, I guess we know what Microsoft thinks of Australia and Brazil...
I don't use windows in my personal life anymore, but I really wish they'd release patches on a nightly basis like Ubuntu or Red Hat instead of waiting to make sure systems are compromised.
We tried. We really did. Then our users started to complain that their browsing history was gone. Apparently, some of them had never heard of this strange thing called "bookmarks."
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Goodbye IE7/8 support!
What about all the companies that use older versions of IE because of compatibility with their own proprietary web applications?
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
So far, I'm found a few XP and Windows7 PC that automatically install and schedule a reboot regardless of your Automatic Update settings. For some reason, MS decided to override this policy with some super-secret update policy I've never seen before. This would be the first time I've noticed it. These machines are always update to date each month and some are on a domain while others in workgroup mode. Anyways, the updates that got push out this week will prompt a user every 15 minutes to reboot. It's like a dead man's switch. If you ignore the option to postpone the reboot, it does it on it's own.
I smell a lawsuit coming for loss of user data that hand't had a chance to be saved while open on the desktop.
Life is not for the lazy.
And what browser do you use? Firefox? Chrome? both of those already do this. This is actually a good idea. I know that at both my office and my parents house that if a screen comes up asking them to update, it's *close* "I'll update later"... this will go on until I manually run the updates because they don't want updates taking time away from facebook or shopping online. Automatically updating like this will silently fix issues, which is a good thing for the bulk of the population that still uses IE.
Do we want to call MS Big Brother over this, when they're following the example of Firefox?
IE has been getting a lot better, and the more sane release schedule was becoming more and more of a selling point over Firefox. Funny how the browser field has shifted. It used to be Firefox for the smart people, Opera for the independent smart people, and IE/Safari for the people that didn't really know how computers operated.
Now, IE and Safari have improved, Firefox is squandering it's lead, and Chrome is on par with Firefox, and Opera is still the Ron Paul of browsers. There's no obviously bad browser anymore, but we also don't have an obviously superior browser.
While I'm ok with this as an end user and I actively use chrome at home so I'm used to this, I can't help but wonder if this is going to either be a godsend or nightmare for the enterprise IT crowd. However, the shop I work in is fairly good about letting go of things such as the infamous IE6 and we've had very little issues with the latest.
From the article:
Respecting Customer Choice and Control
While the benefits of upgrading are numerous, we recognize that some organizations and individuals may want to opt-out and set their own upgrade pace. One of the things we’re committed to as we move to auto updates is striking the right balance for consumers and enterprises – getting consumers the most up-to-date version of their browser while allowing enterprises to update their browsers on their schedule. The Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 Automatic Update Blocker toolkits prevent automatic upgrades of IE for Windows customers who do not want them. Of course, we firmly believe that IE9 is the most compelling browser for business customers, and we want them to make the decision to upgrade at their convenience.
Similarly, customers who have declined previous installations of IE8 or IE9 through Windows Update will not be automatically updated. Customers have the ability to uninstall updates and continue to receive support for the version of IE that came with their copy of Windows. And similar to organizations, consumers can block the update all together and upgrade on their own. Finally, future versions of IE will provide an option in the product for consumers to opt out of automatic upgrading.
"...after they have assured there are no issues..." Besides the faulty English, this little line sends shivers all over my spine.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
after they have assured there are no issues
IE 6 is a very, very different browser from IE 9. We've had plenty of clients who can't move off IE 6 (or are in the middle of a large project to do so) because it's the only one that will run their Intranet site correctly. I've seen MS make this type of mistake before - they don't see many public-facing sites using a technology, so they feel safe getting rid of it. Well, yes, very few public-facing sites are going to use crazy IE specific stuff, and most are (by now) going to be making reasonable efforts to work between browsers.
Intranet sites are a whole other kettle of fish; corporate programmers often target a single browser - and for many of them, that was IE for a long time. They got away with that from IE 4 to IE 6 because MS just added stuff. With IE 7 and, particularly, Vista, they started fixing insecure and non-standard behaviors - and that's part of why so many companies are still on XP and IE 6.
If MS does this, there will be a lot of pissed off people and gnashing of teeth. I'm not saying it's the wrong choice but "once they've assured there's no issues" sounds pretty silly.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I haven't touched Internet Explorer since the last time I had to install Firefox on a new system. So... how exactly does this affect me? I don't even want to install the piece of crap.
There's no obviously bad browser anymore, but we also don't have an obviously superior browser.
Alternatively, if you're me you think that all browsers are bad, but approximately equally. ;-)
Really? When did this happen?
Slagborr
so this won't happen again.
There's no obviously bad browser anymore, but we also don't have an obviously superior browser.
As a developer, I strongly disagree there. IE has the same problems it has always had: everything works in Chrome, Firefox, Opera, & Safari but oh, surprise surprise, it doesn't work in IE. Always have to code something special, even with widely supported Javascript frameworks, there are needed tweaks nearly every time, just for IE.
One thing that makes a difference between FF and IE pushing upgrades, if I have IE6 installed on my machine, it's because there's some horribly written intranet site that will only work in IE6. I'm not saying that every IE6 user can use that excuse, but there exist some number of us for whom it is true. Do they have a way to force a downgrade or install versions side by side?
Remember kids, MSIE is _NOT_ a "web browser". It is a part of the Windows operating system. Microsoft has said so in court. Therefore, when you want to go on-line, be sure and use a "web browser" such as Chrome(Win/Mac/Linux/etc), Firefox(Win/Mac/Linux/etc), Safari(Mac/Win/iOS), or even Opera(Win/Mac/Linux/iOS).
When people ask you why you hate IE (and of course Microsoft by extension), be sure to have this fact handy and correct them about referring to IE as being a "web browser". After all, if it really was you could:
keep more than one version installed at a time
install different versions for different user account
and of course... easily uninstall it.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Unfortunately, Microsoft chose not to support IE9 on Windows XP, so we're going to be stuck with IE8 for quite some time yet.
Mind you, this is still cause for some celebration, as IE8 represents major improvement over its predecessors. But it's not the fundamental fix to the Web that an update to IE9 would be. When Microsoft swallows its pride and ports it (or puts XP support into IE10), that will be cause for dancing in the streets.
THANK YOU! The number of people using IE 6 and 7 is about to dramatically decline, which is roughly proportional to the number of headaches I will be getting on a daily basis.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I lol'd because I became a Ron Paul supporter about the same time as I became an Opera user. Of course now I just use Firefox tricked out to look like Opera because I'm hooked on ABP, so maybe I've lost a little bit of that independent streak. Then again...I'm still a Ron Paul supporter.
My obviously superior browser is Lynx. No ads, no flash, no pictures and integrates with my screen reader nicely.
I've been wondering how Firefox or Chrome can accomplish such an upgrade. The Firefox binaries are in a /usr directory which ordinary users have no write/change access permission. The browser runs as the user using it, not as root. Even Flash fails to install (I tried it once on a machine I was getting ready to wipe clean and re-install) even though it could have put the shared object module in the user home directory.
Of course, with Windows' holey security model, it might work.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There is a way to opt-out of the upgrade and also to downgrade if you happen to get it.
>Do we want to call MS Big Brother over this, when they're following the example of Firefox?
Sure. Firefox isn't integrated into the OS in the way IE is, for starters. And what this means is that I haven't upgraded IE for some time now because it broke one of the widgets I use on my Win7 desktop. Firefox doesn't do that sort of thing, because it can't, so there's not an issue with beaking stuff outside of itself.
I guess I might as well mention while I'm here that I haven't upgraded to the latest Firefox either: it breaks one of the addons that I use all the time.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
From my basic and possibly incorrect understanding, isn't Internet Explorer an integral part of the OS? This may be why other browsers can get away with it. Also, other browsers aimed to be somewhat standards complaint from the beginning. IE 6 wasn't as standards compliant. So one can get away with upgrading other browsers.
Yeah, F you Australia and Brazil!
We use some banking software that only works with IE8. This is gonna be a pain in the ass.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Hum, last I saw, Firefox only auto-updates if you authorizes it. (What, by the way, I don't do, on any of my computers, for reasons that are completely different from not trusting the updates.)
I welcome the news of no more IE6, IE7 and IE8. But the means aren't good (well, I don't depend on Windows personaly, so I don't relly care - the IT of my workplace may think differently).
Rethinking email
yes, but I trust Mozilla, they have not screwed me in the past.
In my experience it hasn't been so bad in IE8/9. There are still a few quirks but it's a huge improvement over 7 or fucking 6.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For me, my relatives, and other private users, this is undoubtedly a Good Thing. There better be an opt-out clearly defined and honored, though, because there are many big companies out there denying the passage of time.
An unnamed multinational Big Pharma up the road from me still uses a major in-house app which is coded specifically to IE6's foibles. They've actually coded up some horrible hackjob that runs IE6 on Windows 7, rather than fix the horrible in-house app.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
On top of that it will also bring HTML5 features closer. While many sites will still probably use Flash and Silverlight, at least people will have a browser that is capable of showing HTML5 video and supports HTML5 tags. Sites won't start using it before IE9 is more widely used. And then we can finally stop the H264 vs WebM battle, because IE9 will only support H264.
What about all the applications that still don't work with the newest version of IE? We have one vendor who only supports IE and then they're only up to supporting 7 I think in the next release this will change, but if we don't upgrade soon we'll have to wait until October due to business contraints.
Umm Chrome has a lot of broken stuff where IE/Firefox work just fine.
Link for the opt-out tool: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=179
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
I'm a web developer who actually LIKES IE 6 & IE 7.
If a client wants IE 6 compatibility, I get to charge them a significant premium. Please MS, don't do this.
Firefox does not upgrade me automatically. Though every single day it annoys me with a popup asking me to upgrade.
So if you opted out before you're not going to get it. And I imagine you'll be able to back track anyway. Also they have "blocker toolkits" so you can really be sure.
It happened this week. My non-technical spouse was unable to connect to work with Citrix Xenapps and I found an unrequested upgrade to IE 9. IE 8 is generally pretty well supported, but I would not, personally, choose to go to 9 yet. I use IE only for a few apps that require it, and IE 9 breaks most of those just now.
Rolling back the upgrade is pretty easy, you just uninstall the upgrade and IE goes back to the previous version.
There was some significant loss of productivity before I got involved... Probably a lot of calls to the company help desk (and they did not appear to be able to get IE 9 to work, so a lot of the calls must have lasted a while).
I just got moved up to IE8 at work. It was IE6 for years, moved to 7 in September. That choice is made by the IT department, and they have to confirm that there aren't issues with the various bits of software being run on the Intranet.
Not everyone uses their computers exclusively at home / at a coffee shop.
And no, we can't just use portable Foo on a USB drive.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
that they'll force Live Search, Web Accelerators, and their other BS on those users?
A thousand web developers, security professionals, and html 5 enthusiasts will open champaign bottles and celebration!
Normally slashdotters do not agree with Microsofts practices but this is one which is a smart and well recieved.
With XP dying fast in the US where it will have marketshare in just the teens next summer, it means HTML 5. IE 8 wont go away as half of lusers switch back to it from IE 9 because of the gui.
To corp users whinning I have one word. UPGRADE! Its 2011! If you still use IE 6 or IE 7 with no migration plan you are incompentent. Penny wise but dollar dumb if you think saving $500,000 now but loose $2,000,000 because the lan went down due to daqua infecting every client through IE 7 and flash 8 on 10 year old XP. If you work in such an environment then print this story to your boss? The era of developing for one browser every 8 years is over.
Another reason to upgrade? Your now standards compliant intranet app will run on IE 9 also, and IE 10, and IE 14 and so on. The upgrade train stops when you develop to later open standard browsers.
http://saveie6.com/
Yes, this is great in general (assuming they keep aiming for standards compliance) Personal users benefit, developers benefit, browser competition benefits, etc.
However, I know many Corporations that have in-house applications that can ONLY run on IE6. Often these legacy apps are extremely important for the company and are non-trivial to update to more recent browser versions. (or, the company does not have the resources to work on this)
For many corp's this will be an IT nightmare.
(however, I mean really, these Co's have had 20 years to upgrade these app and they have chosen not to, so at some point maybe a 'stick' is needed)
IE8 is here to stay, as Windows XP will probably be upgraded to IE8 - unless they've decided to backport IE9. Well, at least IE8 is a lot less painful to support than 6-7.
Also, IE6 and 7 users still can opt out of the upgrade. It will lower the numbers and will allow to phase out IE8 support for some sites, but some webdevs will still have to deal with glorious mess of IE6.
Yeah, it is great when you have applications that break in IE 9! Namely, Blackboard. Not everyone who uses Blackboard is patched to support IE 9 so any students who end up with IE 9 have to download different browsers to fix their system. Hold on a minute, this is a good thing. Nevermind.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Don't get me wrong; I'm all in favor of this -- I want earlier versions of IE to die a thousand silent deaths, but...
This will hurt some large enterprises who have specifically designed certain website features to work only in IE. Older versions of IE tended to have some quirky rendering behaviors and a lot of sites rely on those quirks. Taking the browser directly to the latest IE will render things in IE "Standards" mode which will break some of these sites.
They better read up on how to explicitly set IE rendering modes:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx
Three ways to do this: 1) do it in the page body with a META tag, 2) do it in the HTTP headers with the X-UA-Compatible header, or 3) push a GPO update to your internal IE clients that forces the browser to render the sites you specify in "IE Compatibility Mode".
Umm Chrome has a lot of broken stuff where IE/Firefox work just fine.
emphasis mine to point out exactly where I disagree. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, & Opera have some slight differences and yes, I do find sometimes minor bugs (like Firefox still calculating CSS margins incorrectly for form fields), but by and large they all at least make a show of abiding by published standards. I.E. only complies with standards seemingly by random chance.
If you're in the situation where your company's web programmers are retards and you are forced to use that company's machines (which is the situation you appear to be in), then you're probably running a corporate network where updates will be managed by WSUS and won't be pushed to your computer automatically.
Please feel free to point out what "widely supported Javascript library" doesn't just work on IE9. Because in my experience those don't exist anymore.
Sounds like your widget and add on choices might need to be reviewed. A poorly designed widget or add on is not necessarily a browser problem. Just like browser performance metrics tend to be irrelevant in the real world. You can have the fastest browser on the market but a poorly constructed web application or web site can drastically reduce performance.
IE9 is configurable to a compatibility mode so it will operate like IE6 for all or specified websites. Most people do not have the time or the knowledge to get it configured properly though. Microsoft went through a lot of trouble to build this compatibility mode though.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I have no problem with this but my main issue is that they bundled C++ 2008 runtimes with IE9... In my office IE9 patched our runtimes and it caused issues with the software we are developing which made it unable to be compiled. I hope for their sakes that they don't do the same thing.
Maybe companies that make stupid "lock-in" decisions should reap the rewards of their own stupidity and short-sightedness.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
The reason other vendors can distribute the latest upgrades is...
Spare me the pretension of nobility; This is Microsoft deliberately breaking stuff in the hopes of selling OS upgrades.
Based on Opera 12 "Wahoo": I've been using it for around 3 hrs. now, & it rocks!
You can download & read about 64-bit Opera for Windows & MacOS X, in these 2 links @ Opera:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/64-bit-opera-and-out-of-process-plug-ins/
or
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2011/12/15/64-bit-and-out-of-process-plugins-builds-now-available-on-labs
* COLOR ME "IMPRESSED" - Especially since works GREAT so far, especially for a "round #1 64-bit release port"...
APK
P.S.=> What I truly DON'T understand though, is that I submitted this 2x to the "recent" section today & it disappeared BOTH times, here & here:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1881720/opera-goes-64-bit-for-windows-finally
&
http://slashdot.org/submission/1881604/opera-goes-64-bit-for-windows-finally
(Yet /.'s own SUBMISSION page states "we're powered by YOUR submissions", well... seems to be untruthful "advertising" then on that account!)...
... apk
Don't know about you, but I (and I'm probably not the only one) felt pretty much screwed over since some time after FF3.5-3.6
After that it felt like "If they're trying to badly emulate Chrome and Opera, why not just go with one of them instead?" I chose Opera.
FF started to worry about looks, while internals are still... meh.
Just a tiny example, try running this simple javascript forkbomb in any modern browser. If it hangs and crashes the whole browser instead of slightly slowing it down by eating a CPU core, you're running Firefox. For fuck's sake, even universally hated IE6 can handle it, but not FF.
I'm so incredibly in favour of this. Stupid people using IE6 still :@:@:@
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
Microsoft has released blocks for both IE 8 and IE 9 which can be applied by IT if they don't want to upgrade, as they have done for every automatic upgrade. If a company is too incompetent to manage the updates being applied to their computers and still needs IE 6 then they brought this on themselves.
Pretty sure there's a way to prevent this.
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
And no i dont give a shit about your internal business app that was so poorly written that it only works in IE6.
This forced upgrade should have been done several years ago (and i mean completely forced without any option or way around it)
When will the IE6-only sites get updated to fix their broken implementations?
If Microsoft doesn't force people to update then the answer is never because there is no reason to update it. These are the same type of excuses people made for not getting rid of ISA, the floppy disk, and Flash.
If someone doesn't take the lead and force people to move forward then inertia will guarantee you are stuck with old crappy technology forever.
Saying the original company or design is lost/gone is a horrible answer... what happens when the office holding that old PC w/an ISA control board gets robbed/catches fire/gets struck by lightning?
Please drag the world into the HTML-5 future (kicking and screaming if you must). Don't let the web turn into dead legacy technology that can't be updated.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Not yet, but it's coming in version 12. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mozilla-firefox-silent-update-browser,14217.html
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Serves yourself right if you hook a Windows machine up to the internet.
Actually, Google provides a WebM fiter (tech preview) that IE can use to display WebM video. The Theora folks could do Theora as well that way.
I'm not sure which school you're at but at my local university we've been using Blackboard on IE9 just fine since IE9 was in beta. Seems like if you have a version of Blackboard so old it can't handle that you probably need the kick in the pants anyway.
How is this "following the example of Firefox"? I never heard that FF will just update itself to the newest version. It will ask if you want to update. But it will not just update.
It's one thing to ask the user if you want to update, but something totally different if you just do it silently. Sure, you can opt-out and de-install, but it's still horrible. Something like this should always be opt-in.
How would you like if you hate the new ribbon interface in MSOffice, but MS just updates your office to the new one, without asking you?
That update shows that MS can do anything it likes with your computer, and will do it if they think it's a good idea.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
It took the company I'm working for a kick from microsoft to upgrade from IE6 to IE8. Someone convinced them sharepoint was the product they needed for their intranet, which nolonger supports IE6. 5000 desktops upgraded and internal apps fixed over a period of a year or so
Too bad that they're still not backporting IE9 to XP, which continues to have a massive market share, especially on the corporate desktop. This really annoys me as a web developer, since it means that until after 2014 (when XP support officially ends) we cannot use CSS3 features and SVG images and expect them to work for everyone.
*Yes, I know, graceful degradation. But management wants those nice rounded corners and drop-shadows to appear in IE8, not just Firefox and Chrome. Using css3pie helps a bit, but it's not bug-free, and in many cases special debugging still needs to be done for IE. And I don't know of any effective workaround to display SVGs in IE8 without making everyone download a plugin.
Also, you can just disable auto-updates and go manual if you're technically inclined.
This is super! This means that a lot of companies will finally bother, or at least consider it, to pay the development companies(and consultants) to replace or patch their old web based intranets and business softwares. This my friends means pretty soon we'll have a lot more work, which means we can bill them adequately(because you can say that this time we built it on the latest and greatest HTML5 standards)! Unless of course some manager decides it's simpler to let their IT department just opt out of the upgrade and pretend they will be OK for the next 10 years using IE6.
Hopefully by 2014 most/all corporates will have upgrade from XP since extended support runs out then. That should bring the implicit upgrade to IE9 that comes with Windows 7
I can live in hope...
Don't blame the software, blame the user. How dare you to have such a bad choice to use a widget that breaks in our latest and greatest software version. Clearly, you should review your choice.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Umm, Firefox and Chrome don't break the system when they update and if they do, it only takes a minute to uninstall and reinstall the desired version. It is also very easy to opt out.
Internet Explorer upgrades are not something to be taken lightly, because:
a) They can affect the Windows shell
b) Programmers may be (correctly or incorrectly) relying on behaviour of its APIs
Internet Explorer upgrades can break shit.
Another example, I have noticed that adding IE8 to an older Windows XP computer slows the whole system down. (That sucks when you don't even use the browser)
Oops, a typo. Meant to say
will allow to phase out pre-IE8 support for some sites
If you can stick a meta-tag into the HTML generated by the application there is a one-line fix that will trigger IE7 rendering/DOM mode in later versions of IE for backwards compatibility. Here is a good overview of how it works, and how to manually trigger it, overriding doctype sniffing.
Do you use an appropriate doc type? If not your site will render in IE 7 mode. Do you use xhtml? IE 8s only major flaw is xhtml can go into quirks mode if not done right if you include ms xml which is not w3c supported anyway.
IE 9 renders perfectly just like chrome and firefox. Only thing missing is text shadow in css 3 and some html 5 which Ie 10 will include soon
http://saveie6.com/
Maybe companies that make stupid "lock-in" decisions should reap the rewards of their own stupidity and short-sightedness.
You mean the decisions based on Microsoft's claims about how great IE6 was when it came out, so they locked critical business apps to it?
Companies can avoid the stick - there is inevitably an opt out provision companies can implement within their environment for updates like this.
Enterprise maintained machines generally aren't accessing Windows Update automatically anyway and use dedicated patch management tools (McAfee, Symantec, Bigfix, et. al) or implement W(S)US internally.
Not that IE6 it matters too much - The majority of windows shops should be past IE6 dependency these days one way or the other with Windows 7 (IE8) rollouts. Maybe MS is just trying to avoid having IE8 stick around for a decade :-)
--- Mercutio was right.
You obviously haven't tried IE8 or 9. Funny seeing as they still command the most market share. Ibet your websites make LOTS of money!
When IE8 came out, it was sent by default through the automatic updates on XP. To prevent installation, they offered an IE8 blocker tool.
Reading the article, there is still a blocker tool for people who don't want the latest update.
So, what is so different now and why is it a big deal?
I'm in IT.
We leave "important updates" on auto-pilot.
The auto-update works well for our customers EXCEPT we keep getting calls about toolbars and menu bars disappearing.
I wish I could send Microsoft a bill for the time lost.
That's very nice, but I don't think Microsoft is going to be auto-upgrading its users to Opera 12 from any version of IE, and so it's not really in scope here.
Well it seems the only logical solution to not having your story accepted is to post the same damn post 6 or 7 times into the same story
The software on your intranet must be a load of crap when it required them until last september to get compatability with IE > 6!
Seriously, if they manage to IE {6,7,8} (and 9?) to below 5%, We're finally saved from being forced to outdated backwards web development styles.
Then the only one still slowing us down, will be FF 3.x (the one before that fully-automated updating started).
Seriously guys, update your Firefox. :)
I know you love all your old behaviors, like no "awesome bar", the status bar, etc.
I do too!
But they are all available as extensions!
All.
What's not available though, is the new CSS3 features & co.
So please... update.
Thanks.
Really, everything works fine in Safari?
That ends your credibility as a developer.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Based on Opera 12 "Wahoo": I've been using it for around 3 hrs. now, & it rocks - Just in time for X-Mas 2011...
Talk about a "BIG THANK-YOU" I've been waiting to give the folks @ Opera (since I'm a Windows 7 64-bit user here).
Anyhow/anyways:
You can download & read about 64-bit Opera for Windows & MacOS X, in these 2 links @ Opera:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/64-bit-opera-and-out-of-process-plug-ins/
or
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2011/12/15/64-bit-and-out-of-process-plugins-builds-now-available-on-labs
* COLOR ME "IMPRESSED"...
(Especially since it works GREAT so far, AND, especially for a "round #1 64-bit release port" - Man, good stuff!)
APK
P.S.=> What I truly DON'T understand though, is that I submitted this 2x to the "recent" section today & it disappeared BOTH times:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1881720/opera-goes-64-bit-for-windows-finally
&
http://slashdot.org/submission/1881604/opera-goes-64-bit-for-windows-finally
(Yet /.'s own SUBMISSION page states "we're powered by YOUR submissions", well... Seems to be untruthful "advertising" then on that account!)...
... apk/b
I agree that IE8 is a huge improvement over 6 & 7, but it still sucks. IE9 is like heaven, still very far from perfect, but after a decade of dealing with IE it feels damn near perfect. There are still gotchas but for the most part I can safely expect everything to work in IE9 with some minor tweaks, whereas previously I had to expect that most thing wouldn't work in IE without multiple hacks or in some cases code overhaul. It's certainly a welcome change of perspective, the problem is that we can't code for IE9 yet because IE8 is still so prevalent, which is why TFA is music to my ears.
Clearly you've never been involved in trying to get rid of an app like that.
It's mission critical, covers a bunch of use-cases that nobody can remember but that are absolutely vital to like two people (but affect millions of dollars of business), and almost nobody who fully understands it is still around. It's impossible to gather requirements because the application has so many exceptions and one-off fixes and tweaks as to make it impossible to know what all it's supposed to do.
I've been on a couple of projects which tried to replace legacy, in-house apps ... it's often a very expensive, time-consuming process that leaves you with a solution which does a fraction of what the original did and leaves the users miserable that they've been "upgraded" to a tool which doesn't do the job.
Sadly, once you have that kind of software, the process of getting rid of it is often damned near impossible. At the very least, it can be prohibitively expensive ... who wants to spend $40 million to end up with software that does less than what you have now?
Nobody sees it as investing in moving away from old creaky technology, they see it as spending money on something they already have. Hell, I've seen someone go through a multi-year process, tens of millions of dollars, huge amounts of man-power ... only to decide that the twenty-year old app that runs on the mainframe is still a better solution because it covers all of their use cases and the users are comfortable with it.
It gets even worse if you try to replace purpose-built with something that does 'most' of what you need. The users won't touch it because they think it's cumbersome, and missing features they can't live without.
Yes, it is short-sighted to not get rid of it, but the sheer cost and amount of pain in ripping it out can make the alternative seem more attractive.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually, its about time that companies invest a little money updating their intranets. Chances are that an intranet that was written for IE6 is an unused intranet.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
If they've got any sense at all they'll be using WSUS - can Microsoft override this? I wouldn't think so.
You'd be surprised. I know of at least one industry (which I won't name here) where franchisees have to connect to a website that's private and exclusive to them.
Guess what? IE only. Even today.
I work on B2B websites and as unfortunate as it is, we have to make sure every nook and cranny of our sites are backwards compatible with ie6. Our customers are in similar situations where their IT departments decide which browser will be used so they can limit the variance of support issues. veeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrry interested to see how this plays out because if I didn't have to support ie6 and 7, I could easily shave 25-30% off of my coding time. IE8 isn't perfect but it's got so many fewer quirks than 6 and 7.
Based on Opera 12 "Wahoo": I've been using it for around 3 hrs. now, & it rocks - Just in time for X-Mas 2011... & PER YOUR QUOTE HERE & MY SUBJECT-LINE ABOVE:
"Opera for the independent smart people" - by Toonol (1057698) on Thursday December 15, @01:47PM (#38386206)
You can download & read about 64-bit Opera for Windows & MacOS X, in these 2 links @ Opera:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/64-bit-opera-and-out-of-process-plug-ins/
or
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2011/12/15/64-bit-and-out-of-process-plugins-builds-now-available-on-labs
* COLOR ME "IMPRESSED"...
(Especially since it works GREAT so far, AND, especially for a "round #1 64-bit release port" - Man, good stuff!)
APK
P.S.=> What I truly DON'T understand though, is that I submitted this 2x to the "recent" section today & it disappeared BOTH times:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1881720/opera-goes-64-bit-for-windows-finally
&
http://slashdot.org/submission/1881604/opera-goes-64-bit-for-windows-finally
(Yet /.'s own SUBMISSION page states "we're powered by YOUR submissions", well... Seems to be untruthful "advertising" then on that account!)...
... apk
APK N OPERA kick some ass!
Try making a cross domain javascript request with IE9 with JQuery.
so Microsoft is going to install Internet Explorer 8 on computers running Windows XP? Does anyone still use Windows XP? I thought Windows XP is outdated cause it came out like 10 years ago or something. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just asking. Me, I use Windows 7 64 bit and a quad core Intel computer.
WSUS requires human intervention prior to deployment. So, no, MS can't override this.
I.E. only complies with standards seemingly by random chance.
This would seem to be untrue of IE9. It has gaps, but not random ones, and what is there complies with standards pretty well.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Yes, and the fact remains that Microsoft is not going to auto-upgrade users of any version of IE to Opera. Since we're dealing with sticks in the mud who don't upgrade of their own volition, this leaves Opera sadly out of scope.
It's not my intent to knock Opera. It's a very nice browser. But it's not in the scope of this discussion.
Honest question: is English your native language?
Especially the 64-bit release for Windows (+ MacOS X too) today which only released a little while ago!
(Yes, I realize MS isn't going to upgrade users to Opera 64-bit too as you stated, but... had to "yell it from the rooftops" is all - )'ve seen others, like myself, who've waited for a full 64-bit release for Windows state that here on /. before is why I state this!).
* :)
(I'm just doing what I said in my subject-line above's all!)
APK
P.S.=> Glad to see you think this much of Opera in general though:
"It's not my intent to knock Opera. It's a very nice browser." - by Millennium (2451) on Thursday December 15, @03:59PM (#38388494) Homepage
It is, & what I put up in my 1st reply to you only substantiates that from reputable sites &/or tests done on it for SPEED & SECURITY over time... it truly is, "good stuff", & only getting BETTER, now that they've FINALLY released a 64-bit model (especially for Windows - I've been using 64-bit Windows 7 since its release, & waiting for this to happen... I haven't been disappointed so far in a few hours using it (stable, & FAST))...
... apk
MS have been actively slowing spreading of HTML5. Any open standard is poisonous for a monopoly. Even new IE does not understand HTML5, MS's tools dont produce HTML5 etc.
IE 6 is a decade old. Three major releases have come out since then. Using "But...but...but they said it would be so awesome!" as an excuse does not quite cut it anymore. IE 7 came out in 2006, and since then at the very latest the writing has been on the wall. And companies are complaining now, another five years later, about how evil Microsoft is? Making a stupid investment once can be excused, we all make mistakes. But they have had more than enough time to move off the Titanic.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I did a quick bit of googling and it seems IE9 handles it as defined by the W3C standard, it's the other browsers that are broken. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd573303(v=vs.85).aspx
Granted I'm not a web dev so I could be way off on this.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Well, thank you very much for letting us know in just about every single thread in this discussion. That is so very kind of you.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I've actually done that before, transitioning engineering software from HP Basic to pascal to delphi to visual basic to c# with out the loss of a single option along the way
If you can't replicate each one of the features, you just basically suck as a developer. There really are no excuses if you have all of the code.
My friends, it's time for a conga line!
This signature has Super Cow Powers
How was safari ever for the people that didn't know how computers operated? Because it came with the os? Please. It was the first browser that used webkit and the absolute fastest browser on osx. Firefox was always a buggy mess on osx.
And then we can finally stop the H264 vs WebM battle, because IE9 will only support H264.
Internet Explorer 9 supports both H.264 and WebM. No other video codecs are supported by IE9. WebM support is added by installing the media foundation components:
http://tools.google.com/dlpage/webmmf/
You can test WebM support in IE9 with Microsoft's IE9 test drive video support demo:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/graphics/videoformatsupport/default.html
The Theora folks could do Theora as well that way.
No, the only codecs supported by IE9 are WebM and H.264. You can, however, shoehorn Theora support into IE with an Active X control:
http://cristianadam.blogspot.com/2011/01/activex-controls.html
The widget came with Windows itself.
It's the mini-desktop calendar.
Installing the IE update (whatever one of the last ones was) glitched it's ability to display properly. Uninstalling that update to IE fixed the problem.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Dumping the worst browser in the world for the second worst browser in order to use the worst intranet platform in the world... When will they be upgrading from ME to Vista?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
what version of IE are you talking about? IE 9 is quite good. I can make most pages work fine without resorting to
I think SharePoint is pretty good; why do you call it "the worst intranet platform in the world"?
AND, I can't help but point out you make the bold, blanket statements that IE8 is 'the second worst browser', and SharePoint is 'the worst intranet platform in the world', and then display a signature that states your world has 'too many shades of gray'.
Seems to me you aren't seeing shades of gray at all. Depending on the environment, SharePoint may be perfectly fine. You might want to re-evaluate your chosen sig before proclaiming rash and baseless judgements.
The software on your intranet must be a load of crap when it required them until last september to get compatability with IE > 6!
You'd be surprised at the quantity and degree of crappiness internal business-specific applications can get when no one wants to spend the money to develop properly.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Conversely, if you can actually do a good job and replace their old software with new software that does the job better, you're sorted.
I replaced a monstrous thing that was a custom facade on a UML modeller with integrated CVS handling with a couple of Eclipse plugins, a small Java program and a few shell scripts. Their startup time went from 15 minutes to 60 seconds, all their basic operations are at least an order of magnitude faster, the editor is WYSIWYG instead of having to paste HTML in from Dreamweaver, and it uses autocomplete to place links instead of some horrendous wizard where you have to find the thing you want to link to in a tree view.
They don't even mind that I left a whole bunch of features out, because they were there to compensate for the incredible suckitude of the original solution. The only thing they'd really like is a few more GUI widgets, but they have a good (self-maintained wiki) manual and nice friendly shell scripts and really, the tasks the GUI would be for are a minor part of their work - the bits that consume the time are already wrapped in GUIs. I just view it as a minor anxiety with command lines - a GUI wouldn't make anything more robust, or even easier to use (really - just LOOK easier to use), and it would make things harder to debug when they do go wrong.
Just the savings on not having to pay the support licenses for the horrible proprietary Java CVS server they were using has paid for the time I spent on it, and then some. The increased productivity is just gravy. I get about 1 support call a month for it, usually asking for a change to one of the XSLT sheets because they need their templates updating.
The key is not to look at what the old app does and try to replicate it exactly. If you take a step back and work out what the actual requirements are, you'll end up with a better product that the users actually want. The old application can help considerably with that - usually the thing that frustrates them the most is the thing that wastes most of their time and needs to be made the most streamlined or even automated away. For this app, that was the linking - instead firing up a wizard and making of a whole bunch of clicks in a tree view, you now just type the first few letters, hit ctrl-space, and find the item you wanted to link in a menu with the mouse or keyboard. And you can actually copy and paste the links now, which you couldn't do in the old version.
So there are definitely benefits. Fortunately, the manager of this team could see that. Even better for me, he's now become greatly elevated in the hierarchy, carrying my reputation as a miracle worker with him...
Not the same scale though.. we're talking in the hundreds of thousands rather than tens of millions.
Your understanding of how things work at corporations in the real world must be a load of crap. Now go upstairs - your mom is yelling that your Hot Pocket is ready!
The big difference would be that the makers of Chrome and Firefox appear at least halfway competent in matters security and standards compliance, and few would distrust them implicitly in that regard
Your mom still corners the market at 7th and Main, I bet she makes a lot of money.
Obviously I've tried her.
"Well, thank you very much for letting us know in just about every single thread in this discussion. That is so very kind of you." - by silanea (1241518) on Thursday December 15, @04:22PM (#38388892)
Per my subject-line above? Thanks! However, I rather STRONGLY QUESTION your "motivations" in your posting!
I state that, because this isn't a "1st" from YOU, silanea, in attempting to "troll myself" either, per these evidences of your doing that before to myself here on /. (or trying to, only to end up with "egg on your face" each time, lol):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1755714&cid=33349528
* That's where others here pointed out that even Microsoft's SENIOR MGT. (one with CSC degree to his name no less) had to agree w/ things I stated... & you "fell silent" right after that. You had to. You were OUTGUNNED & OUTCLASSED (as well as outsmarted, with facts).
APK
P.S.=> So, if you're being sarcastic & trolling as you have TRIED doing to myself here on /. before, per the link above? Well, so much for that...
Heh, because you only ended up with your past haunting you once more here now, per that link above, merely showing you're a troll!
... apk
Wow, you're actually more spammy and more annoying than the average Slashdot Paultard. Never thought I'd see the day.
I support you and do the same (always AC).
Besides, your post is ontopic -- the subject here goes beyond IE, it's about getting better quality browsers by updating or, like you suggest, getting a better browser (like Opera, which is great) and thus bypassing the M$ problem in its entirety).
Someone wants you to have -1 -- for what reasons, I ask? This is getting like Wikipedia, trolls as moderators and no controls against vandalization. /. better fix that before it's late. Look at Reddit for hints on how to improve.
Corps won't be upgraded automatically. Corporate admins will always have the option to accept or decline a new version of IE just as they always have. Loosely managed PCs (those who aren't managed by a Microsoft solution like SMS, SCCM, WSUS Server, Intune, SBS or SCE) can use the blocker toolkit that they likely already have in place to block the original IE9 update.
I think SharePoint is pretty good; why do you call it "the worst intranet platform in the world"?
Wait 'till you get more than 2000 records in a list, or you're on a slow link...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
But you can't tell that to some people around here who will just call you a liar because their blog doesn't need to support IE6 any more.
People who don't want to pay millions of dollars to upgrade a system that works fine are not stupid.
I think SharePoint is pretty good; why do you call it "the worst intranet platform in the world"?
...because it requires four servers to do, what one box running Apache and a competent open-source CMS with a few free modules can still do - that's why.
Yes I know there's a single-box SharePoint solution, but once you start scaling up the SP solution, things start getting ugly.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
There's still the issue of the differences between IE 8 and 9. There's a few issues with some of our toolkit that just can't be fixed without forcing IE 9 into IE 8 standards mode. Granted, it's just a matter of sticking a meta tag in the header, but, funilly enough, if you don't make that meta tag the FIRST meta tag, IE 9 throws a MAJOR wobbly and won't execute it, or any of the other command meta tags. And will still run the controls wrongly.
Just for reference, if anyone else has wondered why their code won't work in IE 9 but does in 8, the meta tag is <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8" />
it's amazing how many extra tags, conditional comments and js hacks have to be implemented just to accommodate Internet Explorer. And yes, many corporate networks still have 10 year old code that only runs in IE 6, that is the crux of their productivity suite. It's an utter shambles honestly. And MS is entirely to blame.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
This is brilliant it means IE six will finally die and I think every web developer on the planet will sleep better at night know that. Also having only two IE versions IE 8 for xp and IE 9 for the others to test against will make life easier. I don't like IE myself but this is still an awesome move.
Seriously. If they will not employ some of the rafts of unemployed programmers out there to upgrade their intranet then they can die in a fire. The same also applies to schools that waste your taxes on forced IE usage.
Link for the opt-out tool: http://linuxmint.com
FTFY
Until there are smooth talking sales people selling other solutions, it will continue to be widely used.
Link for the opt-out tool: http://laughingsquid.com/r2-d2-garbage-can/
FTFY
... [if IE] statements...
Of course, by 2014 we'll all be using Linux.
But it'll only last for a year, by which time we will have adapted to naturally process pure, immaterial data, freed from the unavoidable constraints of software.
--
It takes months for big companies to verify that major software updates don't screw up their system. Microsoft Office was a biggie. For a while at work we could only legally use Internet Explorer, but we installed Netscape anyway. I never understood why we had to have a proprietary company version of Explorer. Maybe it was so all our security adjustment buttons would be grayed out. Yeah, that's it.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
It may be a stupid decision to keep running an old version of IE (or to use any IE at all in the first place) but nevertheless its the right of the person who own's the PC's to decide and control what software is installed.
It is not Microsoft's decision to make.
Clearly Microsoft now think its OK to mess with your installed software without your permission. Who's to say what they will do next?
Silently uninstall any apps competitive to Microsoft?
Delete any files the RIAA, MPAA or any other large corporate who partners with them doesn't approve of?
It is also very easy to opt out.
If it were easy to opt out, every update notification window would have a button marked "Never bother me about this again.".
2000 records in a list is fine... just don't connect that list to an Outlook calendar. (Shudder).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
This sort of shit is why noone likes Linux zealots.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
For that reason it is much better to use a server sent header than the meta tag.
IE isn't integrated into the OS. Trident is, in the same way WebKit is embedded into Mac OS X, and KHTML is embedded into KDE. It really irks me when people talk about IE being embedded into the OS when IE is merely the chrome around Trident.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Cry me a river. Can any of us really imagine the wasted effort over the years of supporting the diminishing few still using IE6? To be kind, it adds 10% to the cost of developing a standards compliant website. Multiplied by the millions of websites... it boggles what's left of my mind to think of what good could have been accomplished with those man hours. So fuck you and your legacy intranet shit that controls the pressure valves in "The Plant". Fuck all of your kind, and, please, die in a pressure-related explosion and watch me as I weep... but not for you. I weep for those of us who've slaved away our youth to fix the bug that is IE6!
Someone wants you to have -1 -- for what reasons, I ask?
Simple. He's posted this no less than 20 times to this discussion. Hence it's incredibly redundant.
As far as I know, compatibility mode didn't used to support anything older than IE7. (Yes, there was enough stuff broken between IE7 and IE8 that they needed this feature.) Did they change that at some point?
I've been through it too. The truth of the matter is that it can be done, and it's not usually as difficult as the people involved want you to think it is. Truth of the matter is that people hate parting with software they're comfortable with, no matter how much better the newer software is. The trick to it, as with most things is building them a new piece of software that's pretty much exactly like the old one. Build it properly, but don't change the look of the ui, or the workflow, no matter how absolutely idiotic or inefficient the workflow is. As programmers, we have it in our nature to want to improve things. We do, we can't help it. It's hard wired into our DNA. But in a project where you're replacing an old system that everyone uses, that initial acceptance phase is critical. So at least for that first step, you're task is to recreate it. You can improve it gradually later, in small steps, over time. Honestly, it's not that difficult if all you're doing is getting rid of xml islands and assorted com objects. But it's like any software project. The success of it is determined at the planning stage. If there's no planning stage, all you're doing is throwing money out the window.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I think I have a general feeling why this is happening:
There are news today that Chrome 15 surpassed IE 8 in market share.
Long ago I noticed (as others did btw) how progressive are Firefox and Chrome adopters and how conservative are IE users. One just has to add 1+1 to know new IE versions were going to face a fierce fight against the other leading browsers. Having a significative slice of your market share running on an old version only makes the whole product look bad. Since XP folks (a great slice of their OS presence) cannot use IE 9 (apparently they can't make that happen), Chrome becomes the best option for those particular users. One you run Chrome on XP -- and browsers probably make up 80% of computer use, considering videos, webmail, banking, online games and, yes, Google Docs.
At work, I can more or less freely use Firefox. We even get subtle positive references as guides for internal software either clearly show FF screenshots or there is, at least, a FF icon on it. But I cannot keep Chrome update. The proxy/firewall won't allow it.
No upgrades means no Chrome (because an outdated Chrome is a risk... though I have one colleague who simply doesn't care and says the antivirus can catch everything bad... so he uses Chrome without updating... oh, well...).
Recently, whenever someone tries to log into Google Docs, a page comes up saying external "data repositories" are against security policies. So no Google Docs in this M$ shop, nananeena no!
Forced upgrade will keep some users with IE, I guess this is how the thinking goes. It's a great risk they run by incoveniencing the remaining IE6 users. If they make these people move, some might move outside M$ influence.
Firefox and Chrome can get away with pushing updates all day long because those updates aren't anywhere nearly as likely to break any existing website.
But Microsoft poisoned their own well with IE6. A forced upgrade means forced incompatibilities because their older stuff was (intentionally) so far off from the standards to begin with.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
>IE 9 throws a MAJOR wobbly and won't execute it, or any of the other command meta tags. And will still run the controls wrongly.
Shouldn't that be expected if the page is to be compatible with some other version of IE? I mean, if you specified some arbitrary number of meta tags, and THEN said, "Oh, by the way, use the compatibility view for IE7", wouldn't that just throw a wrench into things? It suggests that IE is actively parsing the page as it arrives well, probably for the sake of performance.
Firefox and Thunderbird both autoupdate default, unless you configure them not to ahead of time. You don't get asked. The next time you start either up, you get a nice "please wait" screen and you're upgraded.
Wow, and a go fuck yourself to you as well sir.
I hope some day you're forced to maintain the most miserable, old piece of software ever written and discover what it really means to be stuck with something like that.
Maybe you'll realize that it isn't always as simple you think. In the mean time, stop acting like such a punk.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Why should Chinese pirates and corporate IT departments being overun by accountants looking only to boost the company's share price cause the rest of us to suffer and experience the real web only with our Iphones and Andriods? 10% of the lower denominator dictates the rest of the 90%, which in turn empowers the bean counters as they know they can demand IE 7 compatibility.
Look. It is not like IE 6 came out just last year or anything. Hell IE 8 is 2009. Infact it is early 2009 and was developed in 2008. It is 2011 so I think that is a great compromise.
IE 6 EOL was in 2008 and I believe the EOL for IE 7 was a year or too ago as well. CEOs and workers want and need IPAD access to their intranet apps and metro apps for Windows 8 and Windows 7 mobile. IE 6 is a thorn and wont ever go away unless something is done.
They had years and years and years. It is EOL and the rest of the world will be better off not just for HTML 5, but rather OEM computer makes can stop shipping drivers for XP. Windows 7 can not be adopted if these silly old requirements wont ever go away. This will mean cheaper computers for the rest of us.
http://saveie6.com/
I'm a tool.
...apk
But 64 bit opera's great news.
He doesn't post in that format. Your attempt at imitation fails.
That I don't use IE, and that's why it's never been upgraded?
The IE8 blocker tool is here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=14149
There is also this important bit of TFA to consider:
So if your XP is still running IE6 because of IE7's performance issues on old hardware, and you use some other browser anyway, you will be unaffected.
I think you fail to realise just how much money has been sunk into these decade old systems.
It's hard to justify spending potentially millions of dollars on an upgrade when:
1) The system works now just fine.
2) The upgrade does not necessarily add features or make it work any better.
3) The entire saga is classed as a discretionary spend.
As for the rest of your post:
- Designing a system based around a product of the biggest software company in the world who are leading the internet browsing industry in every factor is in no way a "stupid investment". Heck the fact these systems work now 10 years later is a testament to the good investment it is. Designing a system now with IE6 support would be a stupid investment.
- How is IE6 representative of the titanic? The systems work. They continue to work. IE6 continues to run. For the most part subsequent versions of IE even provide dedicated compatibility modes to help keep them running which works well in many cases.
I hate using IE6 at work as much as the next guy but don't come in all high and mighty and pretend you wouldn't have made the same decisions at the time given the information you had at hand. If you did, likely you wouldn't be working at the company anymore.
Based on Opera 12 "Wahoo": I've been promoting it for around 3 hrs. now, & it's so obvious i'm trying to get some extra cash by posting this lots of times - Just in time for X-Mas 2011...
You can see this is the sort of thing i do, like how i got paid $100 for my post on a forum about HOST files
* COLOR ME "GREEN"...
(Especially since they are paying me GREAT so far, AND, i should get some good rep when i point out how good it is for a "round #1 64-bit release port" - Man, good stuff!)
APK
P.S.=> What I truly DON'T understand though, is that I troll and shill all the time & my posts get modded TROLL.
(Yet /.'s own SUBMISSION page states "we're powered by YOUR submissions", well... Seems to be untruthful "advertising" then on that account!)...
... apk
I was going to ask if he was 2 years old.
Seriously, how many times do you have to post this fucking bullshit APK? You aren't really going to get any more views at 0 than at -1. I browse at -1, but I can see your trash posts from a mile away and if I've seen one, I've seen them all. Nigger jokes are are more informative than your tripe.
Get a life, dumbfuck.
Replying to APK with anything other than awestruck reverence is just setting yourself up for personal attacks and name calling.
You can't have a conversation with a cockroach.
You mean the decisions based on Microsoft's claims about how great IE6 was when it came out, so they locked critical business apps to it?
IE 7 was released 5 years ago. By that point, it should have been abundantly clear that the app's days were numbered. If nothing else, they should have at least started brainstorming the migration at that point.
It is certainly most not fine or just works in 2011.
The first and foremost problem is that XP support is going to end. What are you going to do when the next Daqua worm shuts down your lan for a day? How much will that cost? $1,000,000 easily if you have more than 200 employers. Now compare it to the cost to upgrade that intranet app? Get the idea?
IE is the only corporate browser that is not on a 6 week upgrade cycle and it is problematic as suppliers and other companies the employer depends on no longer support IE 6. If you demand them to use IE 6 like Volkswagen does, they make likely not be able to as they will be rushing to Windows 7 before August 2013 when EOL for XP happens.
Infact, IE 6 & 7 already have EOL and are NOT PATCHED.
IT needs to grow a pair and better sell themselves to management. IE 6/XP is a liablity waiting to happen and it is therefor an investment to edge agaisnt rather than a usless expensive for the geeks in the basement.
Even those in the I.T. field do not know Chrome, Firefox, and IE do not run fully sandboxed under XP because the ancient kernel lacks DEP (not just for some services), ASLR, and exception handling api in VS 2010 that are all availabe with Windows Vista and up. Ask any large company that migrated to Windows 7 what the immediate benefits were. The first thing they will say is reduced TCO and downtime from viruses.
And if your company makes its new intranet IE 9 compatible it means it uses open standards. No matter have to use each version and rewrite etc. The app will work in IE 10, IE 11, and so on. Sell that too management as they do not want to go through this again nor stick with more outdated browsers. IE 9 is a great browser today but I sure as would not want to be using it in 2021 10 years from now. That would be crazy!
http://saveie6.com/
They are not supporting my version and I have all updates that I can shut down. They don't have the FUCKING RIGHT to invade my personal computer. Since they have discontinued their support for my version, I have no contract with them and they will be violating my life. I will sue them.
What about those of us who have IE completely disabled? Also, we consciously choose to have chrome/ff auto-update. If this goes through, we have no choice.
Well, there are all kinds of things that I can do, but that wasn't really my intended point. Personally I don't even browse the web much in Windows... I use a 64 bit Nightly just for checking my forums etc. in between gaming. (and I use Windows 7... my XP example is because I am an on site computer service and I observe a lot of systems) Personally I also do not automatically update anything.
For the masses, this amounts to an Internet Explorer enema.
2000 records in a list is fine.
You'd think it'd be fine, but if you run a filter over slow link, it'll silently time out and only show you the results from the first 2000 records.
The day I discovered this "feature" was not a pleasant day...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
No.
XMLHttpRequest Level 2, which supports CORS is the proposed W3C standard. See this. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari implement this spec.
Microsoft's XDomainRequest is Microsoft's non-standard proprietary implementation, though they have attempted to get it ALSO added to the W3C. See this for a response to Microsoft, and why XDomainRequest is a bad idea.
Also see the XMLHttpRequest Wikipedia page as well as the cross origin resource sharing page. Microsoft's proprietary XDomainRequest partially implements the CORS spec, but they don't implement the XMLHttpRequest Level 2 spec at all.
Quoting a Microsoft documentation page isn't any way to prove a point. Nothing in the referenced page says other browsers are non-standard. I can't decide if you are Astroturfing, ignorant, or just can't Google.
Adding indexOf() to Array
different call for creating an Event object
different call for adding an option to a <SELECT>
different calls for Events
different call for hiding / showing some elements
css display still, STILL, can't do positioning correctly
1 thing that i know still affects IE 9: CSS margins / borders. CSS 2 was published in 1998. That is now 13 years of fail.
I prefer to call it "incompatibility mode"
Perhaps this can help somebody
Noone seem to really remember those times. Were you even there? I remember vividly 1998/9. You HAD the choice. Everybody had. You COULD see that IE6 was a piece of shit. That it was NOT a web browser, but a really powerful attempt at taking over it (the web). It worked, BTW. It slowed the whole thing during 10 years. Companies now forced to let blood spill on the servers room ARE responsible for this. Microsoft too, but that's not the point. Stop whining and mop.
pX
This guy is for real, people. They really "think" like that. They *really* say things like "personal computer" whistl using windows in the first place. They do.
pX
This sort of shit is why noone likes zealots.
FTFY
MS backdoor?
this seems like a good place to remind people that one day back in 2001 Microsoft decided to quietly break the internet with an IE update. http://web.archive.org/web/20071016233843/http://www.meer.net/jg/broken-plugins.html
One word: Security.
Yes, while no browser is perfect and some IE alternatives are certainly not "hack proof", the number of issues IE6 has is staggaring. All of the above points are completely moot, it just takes one piece of malware and you could potentially be looking at hundreds of compromised machines, having to rebuild every single one of them, having sensitive data stolen, deleted or both. How much will that cost, compared to upgrading the software?
This year has proven that Security is clearly an afterthought for most companies and there's been enough high-profile attacks that nobody has any excuse for not taking security seriously. Just because it costs money and doesn't get any obvious, visible benefit (In that you could have spent $0 on security last year and had no issues, then $1,000,000 this year and had no issues) doesn't mean it should be cast aside for more important things, like executive bonuses.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
You mean the decisions based on Microsoft's claims about how great IE6 was when it came out, so they locked critical business apps to it?
Exactly. Don't trust the salesman, his job is done once you buy.
A recommendation from an IT guy who has to support the thing once it is rolled out might be a bit more reliable ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Just out of curiosity - what made "Delphi to Visual Basic" attractive (I think I can guess the motivation for the other three steps) ?
C - the footgun of programming languages
Many of the security issues that plague IE6 can actually be disabled through group policy. Most of the attack vectors were through execution of temporary files, Active X and security elevation.
The fact is there are a SHITLOAD of IE6 machines in corporate America. Or in corporate multinationals for that matter. Yet I can count on 1 hand the number of times we had malware compromise multiple of our corporate machines (20000 seats globally) in the last 3 years. One. It was stuxnet, and it hit a few sites in America, two sites in Australia and one in NZ. And it didn't come in via IE6.
Just because a piece of software is unpatched doesn't mean you can't protect yourself against malware. A lot of malware uses exploits like this to get on your machine rather than to deliver a damaging payload. At which point it can usually be detected with an antivirus package.
So how's life in 2021?
Please follow the officer to the line to the left where after filling the banishment forms you are required to turn in your geek card. And welcome to the early 2000's
"Seriously, how many times do you have to post this fucking bullshit APK? You aren't really going to get any more views at 0 than at -1. I browse at -1, but I can see your trash posts from a mile away and if I've seen one, I've seen them all. Nigger jokes are are more informative than your tripe. Get a life, dumbfuck." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16, @05:50AM
Such an intelligent reply (not) from a "courageous unidentified ac", profanity & all: Are you trying to make me laugh?
(Face it: You can't stop me, and that's that, so... take your own advice and go "f" yourself.)
* Plus, face this also: Opera users like myself won't find what I put up here a "trash post"... Especially if they're unaware of a 64-bit build for Windows builds that are 64-bit too (such as I use here in Win7 64-bit)...
APK
P.S.=> In the end? You're truly pitiful, and yes, you DO make me laugh w/ your constant trolling of myself as an unidentified ac here on /.!
Yes - You're doing these ac stalking posts of myself ends up only showing us all that you have NO BALLS in doing it (what's it like living your life KNOWING you're truly a coward? "Inquiring minds want to know")... lol!
...apk
"You can't have a conversation with a cockroach." - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15, @09:36PM (#38393062)
Which is why no one wants to speak to you, oh mindless one ("courageous" (lol, not) unidentified ac poster that you are)...
APK
P.S.=> Your near constant "daily stalking" of myself here on /.'s getting BORING - grow up, get a life, and quit being the cowardly insect you clearly are!
... apk
Yes, but it will have to be done sometime, you guys are just putting it off and making it harder. As less and less people who know what the hell is going on leave the company, you are going to be more screwed.
This stuff should have been documented, of course, but putting it off is just plain stupid.
Basically, I don't really care about this upgrade (I don't use IE), and from a security standpoint, its a pretty good idea, but, I had IE9 installed, and removed it as it does not obey the general Windows ClearType setting.
"But, you don't use IE as a browser, so what?"
Problem is, a lot of programs use IE as their content renderer, and all of those will suddenly have ClearType enabled, and theres no way to disable it .. And I absolutely HATE! ClearType, I think it looks terrible.
Only way I found to disable it was to hack DLL files, and while this might work I find it a very un-elegant solution, and I would have to do this again and again after each update. :(
[...] Most of the attack vectors were through execution of temporary files, Active X and security elevation. [....]
Which, in my experience, is exactly what ties those applications to IE 6 in the first place, so locking it down can only go so far and help so much.
[...] Just because a piece of software is unpatched doesn't mean you can't protect yourself against malware. [...]
Sure. But every layer of protection you build around such vulnerable software breaks something else. One of my previous employers decided to "mitigate" risks by disabling any kind of plugin and disabling any active content, including JS, in IE 6. Which rendered the websites of most of our business partners, suppliers and utilities all the way down to Google Maps unusable and prevented people from getting work done. The result? Everyone and their dog put Portable Firefox on their workstation, completely unsupervised, often unpatched and in insecure configurations.
Of course, you can get it right, given enough budget, time and the right people. But often it will not come all that much cheaper than getting rid of the problematic applications.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Which will introduce its own new bugs. Still not to be trusted.
You don't have to maintain it, does you? When the instalation of Sharepoint you use loses a disk, you'll see one of the problems with it.
It is nearly impossible to take data out of Sharepoint. That is great for Microsoft, because it ensures lock-in, but is not that good for making backups... (Oh yeah, there is a procedure for backup, supported by Microsoft. Seems to work as well as Exchange backups, that is, almost always fails. Also, it is incredibly complex, so hire an expert.)
Rethinking email
The problem isn't IE6. The problem is that MS in all its wisdom decided that IE7 is for XP and better only. If you are/were still using W2K at the time, no matter how much you would have liked to get rid off IE6, you were forced to use it until you upgrade your OS. Stupid decision by MS.
When did XP get a version of IE 9 ?!
Per my subject: The "best you've got"'s attempting to impersonate me?
* LMAO - How WEAK!
APK
P.S.=> My original post here http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2576256&cid=38387834 (before you copied & altered my original)?
Well... THAT still stands for those that use Opera & have been waiting, like myself, for a FULL 64-bit model to use in Windows 64-bit editions!
(Which so far for a day++ here now, works great! Yes, even with 64-bit Adobe Flash's "latest/greatest" build for it as well, this I am surprised on - it's a damned good "1st round port" from 32-bit to 64-bit!)...
... apk
As far as I can tell, all that needs to be done is to implement a system-wide Windows Media Foundation component to render Theora, and IE will pick it up if it sees a Theora video.The MSDN docs there are really bad, though; they will tell you how to build out the component itself, but nothing about how to get the system to pick it up. However, what I guess you can do is run regmon while installing the WebM MF components (which is all the installer does) and see how it publishes its MediaSource implementation out. Given that there are macros to create media type guids for arbitrary FOURCCs, it should not be impossible to register arbitrary filters to be used by this.
As far as I can tell, all that needs to be done is to implement a system-wide Windows Media Foundation component to render Theora, and IE will pick it up if it sees a Theora video.
For HTML5 video IE9 only allows H.264 and WebM regardless of whatever other codecs are installed. Originally it was H.264 only. Then, after Google's announcement and release of WebM, it became H.264 and WebM. Microsoft cites security, consistency and legal concerns as their primary reasons for restricting the number of codecs available for HTML5 video. Here are some posts from the IE blog which chart the changes:
H.264 announced as the only supported HTML5 video codec: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/04/29/html5-video.aspx
Explanation of exclusion of other codecs: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx
WebM support announced: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx
Video format support demo published, only interesting as a convenient test page for WebM in IE: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/03/16/html5-video-update-webm-for-ie9.aspx
It's a shame that Microsoft hasn't joined the WebM CCL yet. Dean Hachamovitch (corporate vice president for IE) called for the creation of such a body, it was created, and Microsoft still haven't joined for some reason. As far as I know they haven't yet said why they won't join.
The problem is that you often don't have specifications or documentations on what the old application is supposed to do exactly and why. Or perhaps you have the original documents from 10 years ago but clearly the application doesn't follow those anymore and the changes have not been documented well. Sure, you can just go through it line-by-line and duplicate it, but then you're just duplicating the old problems in the new application which kind of defeats the purpose of the rewrite in the first place.
Don't change good news (64-bit Opera 4 Windows & Mac is out)...
APK
Don't change GOOD News: 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out...
APK
Don't change GOOD News: 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out!
APK
Don't change GOOD News: 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out!!!
APK
Don't change GOOD News: 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out.
APK
Don't change GOOD News - 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out!
APK
Don't change GOOD News - 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out!!!
APK
Don't change GOOD News - 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out....
APK
Don't change GOOD News - 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out.....
APK
Don't change GOOD News - 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out......
APK
Don't change GOOD News - 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out.......
APK
Don't change GOOD News - 64-bit Opera 4 Windows & MacOS X's out........
APK
Touché.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Since when? It most assuredly does not REQUIRE human intervention unless there is an update that requires you to agree to terms. Since MS is quietly forcing this update, I doubt it requires any user intervention, therefore could go through depending on the auto approval settings in WSUS.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?