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Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10 Reach End-of-Life Next Week (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Tuesday, January 12, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, 9, and 10 will officially reach their end of life. A new patch going live soon will add a notification that nags users to upgrade. "What's even bigger about the end of life for these versions is that this means Internet Explorer 11 is the last version of Microsoft's old browser that's left supported, as the company continues to transition customers to Edge on Windows 10."
For Microsoft, "End-of-life" means more control over users by forcing them to use new software that makes Microsoft's methods more dominant. My opinion, shared by many others.
This would mean that IE9 will remain supported on Vista. According to Windows lifecycle fact sheet, Vista's support doesn't end until April 2017, and IE9 is the most current version of Internet Explorer available for Vista.
as outlined by microsofts official policy, the transition path is to follow:
OEM-Vendors: will continue bundling IE10 with no fewer than 32,768 OEM specific plug-ins and search bars, as per "the agreement."
home users: through the dark caverns of innumerable bonzi buddies and search helpers, and through the cloistered mass of trojans and activeX malware, Windows will at first notify, then plead, then insist, and finally quietly download and install Edge with, or without your knowledge. You are to verbally complain (with or without audience) that either "someone changed my icons" or "the internet button isnt working."
Embedded applications: checkout appliances, billboards, interactive kiosks, computerized lathes and mills, and medical devices will continue to run Internet Explorer 3.0 until the last star falls from the heavens or the last operator dives from a major skyscraper.
Banking institutions: please continue to ensure browsers conform to at least windows explorer. The version clearly doesnt matter. Hell, just getting the name to stick with you guys is an accomplishment
Doris in finance: please install the final pinochle/oprah book club toolbar to your barely recognizeable "browser." Doing so will collapse the waveform and upon its arrival, shear the very fabric of reality and spacetime into what you may perceive as a perfect game of web solitare but which is in actuality the very embodiment of a digital christ, if you will. The singularity now ushered upon us, we may finally become one with infinity through your divine portal. The bonzi buddy will confirm this with his signature "flip"
Good people go to bed earlier.
What is actually happening is:
"Beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical support and security updates. Please visit the Internet Explorer Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ here http://support.microsoft.com/g... for list of supported operating systems and browser combinations."
So if you are running Vista SP2, which supports only up to IE9, you are still OK, it is still supported, as shown at the Internet Explorer Support Lifecycle Policy FAQ link above. Running Server 2012 (Not R2), then IE10 is still supported. Yes the article is valid for the operating systems they are referring to, but it doesn't paint a complete picture of what is going on for all of Microsoft's operating systems. Older IEs are supported for some operating systems, just not the two mentioned in the article.
In which ways do you find that the Edge UI is better than Firefox's? In Edge, you can't drag-and-drop files, so you need to resort to Windows 3.1-era browse dialog boxes if you need to choose a file. You can't download files properly either: downloads will stop when you close the browser window, there's absolutely no way of knowing how fast you are downloading, and when the downloads finish, they silently open BEHIND the browser window. The UI has the same nature as that of the Lynx browser, that is text lines, but it has much fewer features and it's perhaps even less intuitive: the text-only links that make up the UI are actually hidden behind cryptic hieroglyphs and when you need a feature, assuming it's one of the few features that Edge actually supports, you have to hunt for it by clicking those pictograms to find out that they reveal hidden surfaces, sliding tabs and other incoherent, undiscoverable UI elements. I really can't understand what's to like in that browser, nor how a browser so limited and buggy could ever be released as part of a paid product. Even searching for text can cause Edge to crash on my machine. And even when it doesn't crash, the text search thingy remains stuck open even if you change tab or close the current one. It's as if the developers hadn't tested even the basic use cases of a browser (searching for text, downloading a file) before releasing it as a supposedly finished application.