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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.
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.
"...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...
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
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
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
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.
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".
Firefox on Linux, I have no idea (aptitude takes care of it for me).
On Windows, Firefox still shows the UAC screen to gain permissions, and Chrome just installs and runs from a path inside the user's home.
Dilbert RSS feed
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.
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".
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.
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
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
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".
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/
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?
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.
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
Try making a cross domain javascript request with IE9 with JQuery.
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?
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.
My friends, it's time for a conga line!
This signature has Super Cow Powers
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.
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
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.
Until there are smooth talking sales people selling other solutions, it will continue to be widely used.
... [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.
On Gnu/Linux systems (etc), it's generally up to the package manager of course.
Windows systems don't have that luxury so they have to D.I.Y.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
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".
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
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.
Sure, why should people update a system which runs sufficiently smoothly by an OS infamous for its resource hoggage?
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 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.
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/
You don't tell netcraft, netcraft tells you.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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.
This sort of shit is why noone likes zealots.
FTFY
IE 6 was a great browser back in 2001. It just needed to die by 2003 when it was starting to age. IE 7 was more advertised as a Vista browser and was not ported to XP until later but by then it was too late. Cost accountants at work noticed they could save a fortune by being behind in the times and viewed upgrading as cost centers. Prior to 1999 they were viewed as assets as ways to outdo the competition by being up to date. That sealed IE 6s fate.
I hated IE for that very reason as I wanted Netscape to still succeed! I resisted using it for a few years.
Netscape 4.7 was worse than IE 6.I myself started using it in 2003 all the way until Mozilla Firefox was in beta.
It made logical sense for any business to use the cutting edge 2001 IE 6 browser before 2004. The mistake was that MS let is become insecure and left it out in the cold for dead and disbanded its IE team.
Sure Chrome 15 is out now and is a great browser and IE 10 is good too which will be out soon. ... however in 2021 I would be caught dead using these apps at their current version. They would blow goatballs as much as IE 6 does today. Keep in mind the hacked CSS was still brand new and never implemented before in 2001 when IE 6 was out. Netscape never supported CSS and the box model was standardized after IE 6 was in RC stage. This made rendering different requiring hacks but the W3c did not have the proper standard implementation yet. You can't blame MS for that back in 2001?
http://saveie6.com/
Keep in mind just last year in 2010 BestBuy still sold netbooks with XP. Almost 2 years ago for a few months after Windows 7 was out. These users think XP is new because their computer is new.
Also corporations use XP because Vista sucked so bad. They upgrade PCs every 4 - 5 years and windows 7 is out less than half of those. That means they used XP and many medium to large corporate buyers who came later, bought the Windows 7 PCS and re-wiped them with XP because their software still requires it or IE 6.
XP is dying and is on its way out. It will be probably 2 more years before all but the largest corporations finally ditch it. For average Joes next year XP will start to trickle as they finally move to Windows 7.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
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.
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.
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?