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IE 11 Breaks Rendering For Google Products, and Outlook Too

Posted by timothy on from the when-bugs-escape dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Register: "The Windows 8.1 rollout has hit more hurdles: the new version 11 of Internet Explorer that ships with the operating system does not render Google products well and is also making life difficult for users of Microsoft's own Outlook Web Access webmail product. The latter issue is well known: Microsoft popped out some advice about the fact that only the most basic interface to the webmail tool will work back in July. It seems not every sysadmin got the memo and implemented Redmond's preferred workarounds, but there are only scattered complaints out there, likely because few organisations have bothered implementing Windows 8.1 yet." Also from the article: "Numerous reports suggest that IE 11 users can once again enjoy access to all things Google if they un-tick the IE 11 option to 'Use Microsoft Compatibility lists.'" And here's Microsoft KB work around.

57 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by DrPBacon · · Score: 5, Informative

    I guess they were too busy building http://www.hover.ie/ ...

    --
    Spent All My Mod Points
    1. Re:Hmm... by Moblaster · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well they were definitely building something that distracted them. Because in all my years of web development, IE has definitely been the most standards-compliant browser. I've never heard of a situation in which IE did not render something correctly, or in a non-standard fashion, or in any kind of fashion that causes developers to scream at the screen, angrily toss their mouse outside the window, and yell foul obscenities at a Bill Gates they cannot see, in a place far away where they cannot touch.

    2. Re:Hmm... by edelbrp · · Score: 4, Funny

      Can we finally get a Mod total score above 5 yet on /.? This one would go to 11!

    3. Re:Hmm... by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are being funny but ironically the roles have reversed now, now its MSFT and IE that is making the standards complaint browser and Google that is putting in Chrome tags and making their own forks that break compatibility....EEE anyone?

      I guess it doesn't really matter who is on top as being on top seems to automatically turn you into the evil asshole, I'd guess its one part greed mixed with 2 parts fear that someone will come along and beat you that makes these companies start turning nasty when they make it to the top.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    4. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Adding custom extensions, like using -webkit-, -moz- or -ms- (note the last one) for CSS and similar for JS APIs, is not how you break compatibility.

      Making your implementation behave wildly unlike any other - what IE did - is how you break compatibility.

    5. Re:Hmm... by lesincompetent · · Score: 2

      My browser does support WebGL. Why won't it play?

  2. Google products work bizarre in many browsers.. by Kazoo+the+Clown · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would say that Google web interfaces should not be the standard by which browsers should be evaluated, I've found they work badly in a lot of circumstances. Then again, the Hotmail website does too, so Microsoft is also pretty bad at depending on the quirky characteristics of its favorite browsers. I avoid Google UIs as much as I can, preferring to use alternative interfaces where available, simply because they are so poorly designed. While Google does some good things, the Ui has never been Google's strong suit.

    1. Re:Google products work bizarre in many browsers.. by sosume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Gmail has been constantly giving me javascript errors for months now. In Chrome, always latest build. So having a Google product yield errors isn't that unexpected.
      "SyntaxError: Unexpected token https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/#inbox:1"

    2. Re:Google products work bizarre in many browsers.. by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 2

      And now you know why I keep saying we shouldn't be using the web browser as an user interface for everything in the universe.

      --
      There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
  3. Known workaround by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Use IE to download your browser of choice.

    1. Re:Known workaround by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "Numerous reports suggest that IE 11 users can once again enjoy access to all things Google if they un-tick the IE 11 option to âoeUse Microsoft Compatibility lists." ...what kind of shit is this? they put googles sites on compatibility list that's a break-the-sites list??

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:Known workaround by dkf · · Score: 4, Funny

      Not an option on Win8.x tablets, unfortunately

      What, all three of them?

      --
      "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
    3. Re:Known workaround by Pieroxy · · Score: 2

      Not an option on Win8.x tablets, unfortunately - IE is, surpringly enough, the only usable touch browser right now. Firefox and Chrome kinda suck balls in Metro mode...

      Just like every other app not built for a touch interface, so pretty much all apps on a windows tablet except IE of course.

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
    4. Re:Known workaround by KingMotley · · Score: 2

      Two more than the number of linux desktops out there.

  4. Come on Microsoft by ls671 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Come on Microsoft, it is year 2013, 2014 almost. We are not in 2000 anymore, you can't just tell everybody to go screw themselves anymore and act like you are some kind of god. I don't think it is going to work as well as it used to...

    http://slashdot.org/story/07/02/03/1524250/confidential-microsoft-emails-posted-online
    http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t90205.html

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    1. Re:Come on Microsoft by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Given the way they reacted to the popular request to bring back the Start button and menu in Windows 8, I'd say they are still pretty confident in telling everybody to do just that, and ignoring their customers.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  5. What changed? by Yaur · · Score: 2

    A quick Google search is only bringing up superficial stuff. Do we know what they broke/changed between IE10 and IE11 that broke google?
    It looks like the OWA thing is because exchange is doing UA sniffing and IE 11 no longer sends the MSIE string.

    1. Re:What changed? by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Microsoft KB says that all they changed was the user-agent string, taking out the "MSIE". Changing it back supposedly makes Google work. This implies Google has special-case code for Internet Explorer. I thought that went out with IE 6.

    2. Re:What changed? by Xest · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Microsoft's own Dreamspark site (which is relatively simple) didn't work for me in IE11 the other day either. It was just things that should be straightforward in any browser, like clicking a button and having something download, or submit a form when I tried to update my user details, but no, in IE11, clicking said buttons just did nothing.

      I had to use Firefox to download Microsoft's server OS and development tools.

      That strikes me as a rather glaring problem.

      I'm not sure I blame IE11 though, I can't fathom the kind of idiocy that results in creation of buttons on a webpage that do something so fancy in the background that it can actually not perform a simple action like submit a form or trigger a download. I'd expect any software company nowadays especially Microsoft to have at least some basic competence in web development including an understanding of making things like browser buttons work in a simple cross-browser compatible manner, but it seems not.

    3. Re:What changed? by VortexCortex · · Score: 3, Interesting

      a simple cross-browser compatible manner

      Ah, well you see, I write cross browser code, that doesn't run in IE.

      I specifically code some of my HTML5 heavy stuff to not work on certain versions of IE. It's as easy as just not ever checking if the code will run in IE. I do the same thing for Chrome and Firefox and Safari and Opera -- all other browsers; Not checking but in a single browser. That's all it takes to make sure it runs in everything, no problem... Except IE. If folks want to use my stuff they get to use a different browser, IE is dead to me. I really can't hold it against even Microsofties themselves for taking revenge on their own software after IE6.

      IE is purposefully a waste of time, unlike every other browser on the planet. I'm done wasting my time with that shit, it takes so much less time for folks to actually use a different browser vs me break my shit for multiple versions of IE that it doesn't make sense for me to do that -- It's bad for everyone involved, just makes the problem worse. I'm excluding some Market share? Fine. I can put out THREE TIMES the content for what it takes to make shit work with IE.

      Additionally, if I make my stuff work with IE, then I'll also have to deal with the kind of folks who still use IE... Nope!

    4. Re:What changed? by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

      The Microsoft KB says that all they changed was the user-agent string, taking out the "MSIE". Changing it back supposedly makes Google work. This implies Google has special-case code for Internet Explorer. I thought that went out with IE 6.

      Google needed special code both for Internet Explorer and for Safari to get around users' privacy settings.

  6. Great article explaining what has changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    See this article for how the IE11 User Agent string has changed, and how MS has removed a lot of the old non-standard IE ways of doing things.

    1. Re:Great article explaining what has changed by erroneus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And according to the knowledge base, since the problem is the user agent string, it seems to me the REAL fix is on the server side. As the web has gone back to standards compliance, servers which attempt to discriminate against browsers need to discriminate less. Once they stop that, a lot of problems disappear.

    2. Re:Great article explaining what has changed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Chrome and Safari claim to be "Mozilla/5.0" also. There's a reason for this that is probably older than you are. I suggest reading the history about user-agent stings and the earliest browser wars and how this predates Internet Explorer.

    3. Re:Great article explaining what has changed by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, that's great, except that in the real world apps like Gmail have to support all kinds of wacky browsers, including old ones that get kicked to "legacy" UIs, mobile browsers, browsers that are technically standards compliant but are much faster or slower than other browsers and so on.

      I used to work on a server that vended browser specific code based on the user-agent (for a variety of reasons it had to be browser specific choices on the server side). It was a server that vended some self contained code that got embedded into lots of different web sites and properties. Anyway, the most painful browser to support was by far Internet Explorer. It blew my mind how badly they managed to screw this up. It's not that modern IE's are bad browsers, you see, they aren't really - after letting the web rot for years they finally reacted to their retreating market share by staffing up the IE team again, and nowadays it can render things nice and fast. The problem is their totally broken compatibility architecture.

      Modern Internet Explorers are not a single browser. They're actually a wrapper around multiple different versions of the IE rendering engine, along with a horrific pile of heuristics, hacks and magical downloaded lists to try and select the right one. There's actually a giant flow chart that tries to describe what combination of bugs IE will try to emulate in any given situation, although that dates from 2010. Undoubtably it's now even more complicated. This is a total disaster. Firstly, IE isn't capable of always doing the right thing - a notorious example being the case where a top level document requests one kind of "document mode" (i.e. Trident version) and then an iframe requests a different kind, well, Trident can't recursively embed old versions of itself, so the iframe'd document just doesn't get the docmode it requested. If your code is run inside an iframe the only way to find out what docmode you're actually running in is to test it on the client side using JavaScript! If you then discover you have the wrong version of your JS loaded because IE lied to you, well, tough luck. Time to go reload it.

      Combine this with trying to run code iframed into sites like Blogger where users are allowed to control their own toplevel HTML, and you can just forget about anything sane happening. But it gets even more confusing, because new versions of the rendering engine still have "quirks mode". You pretty quickly find yourself having to draw up giant matrices of how IE might behave in any given scenario.

      What's worse, there are lots of different ways to ask IE for a specific mode. There are META tags, magic HTTP headers, DOCTYPE tags, and this Microsoft compatibility list which can override those in various situations, except that it works on a per domain basis and sites like google.com have tons of different apps hanging off different endpoints, some of which might no longer be really maintained, requiring a "flag day" where everyone co-ordinates to prepare for changes in the compatibility list. Oh yes, and users can and do modify their browser settings (as we see in this story), resulting in yet another column in the compatibility matrix.

      Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera ... none of these browsers were such a nightmarish acid trip. Microsoft managed a seemingly impossible feat - dramatically improving the quality of their core rendering engine and yet STILL being the most horrible browser for web devs in existence! They snatched defeat from the claws of victory!

  7. I'd worry about this by stoolpigeon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd be happy if the update had left my wife's laptop usable at all. I can't complain about how IE renders sites in 8.1 because we can't get into the machine at all since we tried. I'm off to the Samsung service center tomorrow as there's no way I can find to get the system to boot without voiding the warranty.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
    1. Re:I'd worry about this by _xeno_ · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have a Samsung laptop and upgraded it to Windows 8.1 too.

      The short answer is you're fucked. The laptop will not work with Windows 8.1.

      The longer answer is that as part of the upgrade, Windows 8.1 installs broken display drivers. You need to disable the AMD graphics device in order to restore functionality. Unfortunately working drivers are flat-out not available on Samsung's site, and it's no longer possible to enter Safe Mode in Windows 8/8.1 by pressing F8 while it starts.

      Instead, start it booting and then IMMEDIATELY hold down the power button. The idea is to get it to power off while Windows is starting, forcing it to allow you to choose to enter Safe Mode. Once you do that, you can go to the Device Manager and disable your AMD graphics.

      At this point you'll have a working laptop that runs really, really badly. Anything you used to use accelerated graphics for is fucked.

      But, hey, working. Sort of.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    2. Re:I'd worry about this by _xeno_ · · Score: 4, Informative

      Aw man, you're fucked. And just because it's hilarious, here's the official way to enter Safe Mode in Windows 8 and 8.1:

      From the Power menu, hold down Shift while selecting Restart.

      Those who know Windows 8/8.1 you will realize that the "power menu" is the menu available either via the power button in the login screen or the power button in the Settings charm in the charm bar.

      And that you need to have already booted Windows successfully in order to use it.

      Meaning that the only way to force Windows 8/8.1 to boot into Safe Mode is to first boot successfully, thereby not needing Safe Mode in the first place.

      The way I got my ATIV Book 6 "working" was because it spent enough time at the boot screen that turning it off during that was able to force it into "recovery mode" that let me choose to boot into Safe Mode.

      Also, the BIOS key on the ATIV Book 6 is F10, so you might try mashing that while pressing the power button to see if that works. It won't help you get into Safe Mode to actually fix anything, of course, but might let you boot from other devices.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    3. Re:I'd worry about this by dinfinity · · Score: 2

      Shift+F8 is a possibility, although the window for being able to press it can be prohibitively short:
      "The trick is to hold the Shift button and mash the F8 key, this will sometimes boot you into the new advanced “recovery mode”, where you can choose to see advanced repair options." ( http://www.howtogeek.com/107511/ )

    4. Re:I'd worry about this by Arker · · Score: 2

      It's just F8 on earlier versions of Windows, and earlier versions give you a decent fraction of a second window to hit with it. On win8, it's shift-f8, and the window is so small that it's practically impossible to hit.

      --
      =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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    5. Re:I'd worry about this by stoolpigeon · · Score: 2

      Here is what ended up getting me out of this mess.

      I opened it up, pulled the hard drive and then started it. This got me to a screen where I could hit F4 for recovery. I then popped the SSD back in and hit F4. That put me into a Samsung recovery program.

      It took a couple tries but finally I got it to recover to the initial state it shipped in. Now I'm uninstalling all the junk that shipped with it and getting it back to how it was when I bought it.

      --
      It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
  8. uninstalled by Aryden · · Score: 2

    Bought a new laptop the other day, it had 8 on it. I thought, why not give it a whirl, haven't touched it since it was in beta. Then the upgrade lands and promises to fix the things I HATED in 8.... but nope, still sucks. Reverted back to 7.

    1. Re:uninstalled by inasity_rules · · Score: 2

      People like you just wine, considering I have a [...]

      FTFY. Wine has come a long way and I have to admit, between Wine, Vmware and steam for linux, I can actually see myself ditching windows almost completely eventually..

      --
      I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
    2. Re:uninstalled by HJED · · Score: 2

      just go into desktop mode and get a startmenu and you are set

      so windows 8 is great as long as you use a work around to avoid one of its core features...

      --
      null
  9. Can you do better? by dutchwhizzman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've wished for a better UI for webmail for years, but I haven't found one yet that meets google webmail yet, FOSS or payware. The same applies to their web search, although duckduck has some nice change features added that google lacks. Unfortunately duckduck's search results are often not good enough so I have to google my query. I'd love to be able to get rid of google, but the fact is that it's hard to get a similar quality service with a similar or better quality UI.

    --
    I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
    1. Re:Can you do better? by Bronster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Have you tried FastMail? We updated the web UI today to make it work more efficiently on small screens (phones and the like), and it has a fairly complete keyboard shortcut set.

      http://blog.fastmail.fm/2013/10/21/faster-than-native-introducing-fastmails-new-mobile-web-interface/

      Free trial, but definitely paid. You're the customer with us, not the product.

  10. Heh. by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny

    IE 11 ain't done until Google won't run.

    Has a vaguely familiar ring...

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  11. Severity by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Windows 8.1 rollout has hit more hurdles...

    ... Which affect the 5 people who are actually using Windows 8. The entire interface is an unmitigated disaster. DOSSHELL looked prettier and was more functional than Windows 8. The OS has multiple personality disorder and the interface looks like it was gang-banged by Crayola. Nobody wants to touch it even with a 10 foot pole. :/

    Did you notice how this wasn't on the front page of any tech section of any major news site on the internet (Slashdot doesn't count -- it doesn't have a tech section, it is a tech section)? It's because nobody uses it. I mean, look at the market share numbers for Windows 8 currently. Windows XP is stomping it. It only just this month beat out MacOS by a tiny margin. Its month over month growth is stagnant.

    This is just another story to add to the growing funeral pyre we're building to honor monkey boy's first major OS released without any input or direction from former CEO Bill Gates. In a few years, I'll be opening specially marked boxes of cereal and finding copies of Windows 8 in it... just like they used to distribute AOL disks in the days of old. Actually... now that I think about it... that may have been where the Metro interface's inspiration came from. Sweet mother of god....

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Severity by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually if you simply remove metro, Windows 8 is quite a marked improvement over 7 (mainly backend changes, but also some nifty things like being able to open an administrative shell to the current directory in explorer without the need for adding registry tweaks, in addition to the copy dialog box being probably the best of any OS I've seen to date in how it shows progress.) Fortunately you can do exactly that, though MS doesn't approve.

      --
      Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
    2. Re:Severity by Howitzer86 · · Score: 2

      I agree they should release Windows for free. Its the ecosystem they should want to built up and profit from. Selling the OS is so last decade.

    3. Re:Severity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How do you "remove metro"? It keeps rearing its ugly head, and some functionality seems to have migrated to it.

      He means that you should spend money on the expensive Operating System you already wasted a bunch of money by buying Stardock's ModernMix product.

      ModernMix replaces the Metro shell and hosts all the craptastic Metro programs in normal windows on the normal desktop.

      The fact that you have to buy third party software to get something which should have been the default Out of the Box Experience is one of the many reasons not to use Win8 ever.

      Hopefully Balmers replacement will either backtrack on this and remove the Metro UI from the desktop or they'll just run Microsoft into the ground of irrelevancy. Either way works for me.

    4. Re:Severity by gnasher719 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      ... Which affect the 5 people who are actually using Windows 8. The entire interface is an unmitigated disaster. DOSSHELL looked prettier and was more functional than Windows 8. The OS has multiple personality disorder and the interface looks like it was gang-banged by Crayola. Nobody wants to touch it even with a 10 foot pole. :/

      Yesterday, I had the "pleasure" of trying to help some people who were using Windows 8 and hated, hated, hated it. After about ten seconds I knew why. So far everybody getting hold of my MacBook has just used it. Windows 8 hides the UI. You can't do things unless you know how to. You can't figure out how to do things. It's just impossible. The bloody start page with its tiles just want sit still for a second. All the time things are changing, so it's impossible to concentrate on anything. Their most pressing question was how to have two different windows in the browser so you can look at two different things (nobody knew which browser it was and I couldn't find out). Took me ages and a web search to find out how to get at browser tabs. Two reasonably intelligent people who are not computer geeks just couldn't figure it out. From the UI, I wouldn't have figured it out.

      And again, so far _everybody_ has been able to use my MacBook with Safari without any problems. Including four year olds and some people who are usually quite clueless.

  12. Use market share properly by aepervius · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you show only 1 month sure XP is stomping Win8. But the real statistic is when you show the last 12 month. In 11 month win 8 rose from 0% to 7.5% and is not slowing down in the last month. In the same time windows XP dropped from 27% to 20%. Win7 stayed stable. So what does it says me ? Everybody getting a replacement is getting win8. Win8 will in time, maybe 1 year, maybe 18 month, win and XP disappear. So your reference to the statistic was misleading.

    That said, we can all agree win8 UI is a piece of crap for desktop.

    --
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    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
  13. No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    /. just doesn't go to 11. IE does, and it shows.

    1. Re: No. by jd2112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Microsoft is showing restraint with version numbers. I've lost track of what versions Chrome and Firefox are at now.

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
    2. Re: No. by RobertM1968 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Microsoft is showing restraint with version numbers. I've lost track of what versions Chrome and Firefox are at now.

      That's easy. Firefox is on version "1.298799e+11" and Chrome is on version "Numeric Overflow"

      --
      StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
  14. Re:How is this surprising... by 2fuf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ever since I started doing web design for a living in 1998, I hated this crazy situation where one has to take into account all quibbles and arguments the software industry has internally and make up for it in your code. Now we are 15 years down the road, I've moved on to greener pastures, but I see the poor sods in web development are still stuck with the tantrums of yesteryear.

  15. IE ? don't bother by Tom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It seems not every sysadmin got the memo and implemented Redmond's preferred workarounds

    I stopped bothering with IE-specific quirks many years ago. If it can't render a standard-compliant page, then use a different browser for all I care. In fact, one of may sites catches IE users and tells them that much. And lo and behold, it works, on that site IE has dropped to #4 or #5 in the browser stats, consistently. Yes, Safari is more popular, and in good months, Opera.

    Stop tolerating assholes and they just might go away, but it's a community effort.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    1. Re:IE ? don't bother by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Agreed.

      Was recently the subject of a blame-placing at work and was asked why we can't just use Internet Explorer (because of a single site-specific Firefox-only bug) and why we don't update INSTANTLY a major patch comes out without testing (because "Microsoft test these things", you know). It's ironic that, within a week of that, a patch is out, from Microsoft, that breaks IE's rendering of websites (including Google Apps, which we used heavily) and which should be one of the most heavily tested patches to come out of Microsoft.

      There's still such a thing as choice and control. If you don't want choice and control, don't bother hiring an IT guy - just let Apple/Microsoft do what they want on your systems. If you do, hire IT people and let them worry about this and then LISTEN to their reasoning. We have testing/production, dev/stable, beta/release, etc. versioning for a reason.

      And just because MS say it'll be fine and "there's workarounds" (well, a workaround is NOT a solution, as far as I'm concerned, only a way to turn stuff off that you might be using so you're not affected by the problem itself) does not mean it's not their fault. In fact, it makes it worse. "We know it's broke, but fuck you - do this to your systems or we don't give a shit" - for a web browser, which should be a separated process and application in ANY decent OS? No. Sorry.

      IE was removed from my network desktops (sadly can't properly get rid it of for several reasons) many, many years ago and replaced with a standalone browser that can be updated independent of the version of the OS that's in use (or even the TYPE of OS that's in use, e.g. Linux, Mac, etc.).

      As far as I'm concerned, still running IE on your desktop means you don't know any better. Notice the wording: It's not rude to home users who literally don't know any better and you don't expect them to, but it's quite damning to professionals who SHOULD know better - you can whine about ActiveX, .NET, Silverlight etc. being in your business all you want - the fact is that you should know better than to tie your company into a single third-party supplier. Even one as large as Microsoft or Apple.

  16. What comes around, works around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They did that with Opera previously on Microsoft.Com webpages. Totally broken rendering with frames sticking out and so on. If you changed Opera's browser identification string to Explorer, Opera rendered the pages intended for Explorer just fine.

    So it looks like this time they are fucking up rendering gratuitously from the other side. Instead of maliciously delivering garbage HTML to browsers they don't like, they display garbage in their browser from websites they don't like.

    Business as usual.

  17. actually a step in the right direction by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Interesting

    before you think it, i'm no MS shill, i use Linux and only Linux. that said, the MSIE team is doing it right this time with IE11.

    while many people here are slamming on the basis of standards compliance, there is something you should know: it's broken because they are striving standards compliance.

    as we all know, there are plenty of MSIE exclusive ways of doing things in the DOM and render hacks that have had to be done so you end up with code that has "browser detection" to apply browser specific hacks. MSIE is making a clean break from all of that. so all those IE only apps like Outlook Web App will now fail because all the IE specific stuff has been removed. they went so far as to remove "MSIE" from their user agent string to prevent any old code from detecting it as Internet Explorer.

    IE10 user agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/6.0)
    IE11 user agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv 11.0) like Gecko

    so while it seems to have growing pains, as far as IE goes, IE11 is a step in the right direction.

    some nice differences:

    Deprecation of file:// based Proxy configuration scripts
    Deprecation of document modes
    Deprecated VBScript in IE11 mode pages
    navigator.plugins -- now a supported extensibility point <-- ironically chrome is removing this support
    ActiveX now behaves like a navigator plugin.
    Silverlight plugin is not installed by default (they got Netflix to support HTML5 via Encrypted Media Extensions aka DRM in the HTML5 spec)

    more info:
    http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2013/07/02/internet-explorer-11-dont-call-me-ie/
    http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2013/09/24/internet-explorer-11-changelist-change-log.asp

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  18. OWA Workaround is Trivial by nuckfuts · · Score: 2

    According to the KB article, all one has to do is...

    Press F10 to display the menu bar, go to the Tools menu, and then click Compatibility View settings. Add the OWA site to the list of sites to be viewed in compatibility view.

    Afterward, the setting will be remembered. Not such a big deal. As far back as IE 8, I've come across the odd site that requires compatibility view to work properly. So you set it, forget it, and move on.

  19. IE ... Really? by Murdoch5 · · Score: 2

    I can't believe people are still using IE, Has it ever really worked properly going back to IE5? If it wasn't rejecting CSS / HTML code or if it wasn't hanging causing non response errors it was failing to load pages. Now lets forward through releases and they are at IE11 which is causing Google rendering to fail! This means not only is IE bad enough to barely work in the best cases, it's causing issues with other software, I think it's time for Microsoft to admit they know jack shit about browser development.

    1. Re:IE ... Really? by Vanderhoth · · Score: 2

      Problem is it's the default browsers with windows, which is the default OS on almost any new PC sold. So anyone that's not technically savvy, that buys a new computer to play the facebook, doesn't know, and probably doesn't care, there are better browsers out there.

      Unfortunately if forces us Web devs into building, and rebuilding, and again rebuilding sites so they work with specific or various versions of IE, which in-turn makes people think IE is ok or good enough. It costs my company a lot of money to constantly develop for all other browsers then retool our things to work with IE or write them for IE and retool them to work with everything else. Also unfortunate is non-tech savvy managers are the ones insisting on it, as someone else said what's the point in hiring an IT group to provide input to set policy if you're just going to ignore them anyway. If web devs stopped tooling sites to work specifically with IE it would die a pretty quick death.

  20. Re:How is this surprising... by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The architecture of web applications on the client side is screwed up.

    It was originally designed so non technical people could create content and now it's been pressed into service doing extremely complex things.

    The web fucking sucks.

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    Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
  21. Broken by chr1st1anSoldier · · Score: 2

    IE10 broke many things. Want to edit your Shortel configuration? Better not do it in IE10 or you will wind up with a corrupt database. AdvancedMD? Stray far from such things, broken in IE9 as well without a registry hack. Inspire E-Learning? Not going to work in IE10 Speaking of Advanced MD, any medical website that any of our(the company I work for) clients use is broken and unsupported in IE 10. Calling the tech support line results in something like this,
    ME: "My client is having such and such issue, I have been looking at everything for 15 - 20 minutes, I can't find anything wrong, do you have any ideas?
    Tech: "We only support Internet Explorer, are you using Internet Explorer?"
    Me: "Yes"
    Tech: "What version of Internet Explorer are you using?"
    Me: "IE10 64bit."
    Tech: "Oh...... We don't support Internet Exploder 10.... I can't help you..." *click*
    Me: "Da Fuq?"

  22. However... it passes ACID 1, 2 and 3 by neilo_1701D · · Score: 2

    Odd how IE11 passes ACID 1, 2 and 3, but some sites break. Maybe the other sites are broken, whilst IE11 is even more standards compliant than ever?