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Please Stop Using Internet Explorer, Microsoft Says (mashable.com)
Microsoft cybersecurity expert Chris Jackson recently published a post on the official Windows IT Pro blog, titled "The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser." Jackson urges users that it's time to stop using its old web browser, a product Microsoft officially discontinued in 2015. From a report: In his post, Jackson explains how Microsoft customers still ask him Internet Explorer related questions for their business. The fact of the matter is that while most average internet users have moved on to Google Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft's Edge, some businesses are still working with older web apps or sites that were designed for Internet Explorer. Instead of updating its tech, many companies have chosen to just keep using the various enterprise compatibility modes of Microsoft's old web browser. But, Jackson says "enough is enough." It's time to event stop calling Internet Explorer a web browser.
Their whole banking system relies on ActiveX controls that require IE. How about Microsoft pay to fix the damage of 20 years of trying to embrace and extend through the web that's left governments and businesses stuck using abandoned plugins and Microsoft exclusive controls?
That quote is from Matt Binder on Mashable.com in his opinion piece. It is not a quote from anywhere in Chris Jackson's article.
Jackson does have a section labeled "Enough is Enough" but the rest of that sentence is straight from Matt Binder. The location of that last sentence does make it look like it is part of the quote from Jackson but it is Matt that is saying we should stop calling IE a browser. The summary makes it look like Microsoft's blog contains the controversial sentence, which it doesn't.
It is a great way to make everyone read Matt's article though.
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Remember: They spent a decade making sure nobody could use anything but Internet Explorer, making business software use IE+AcitiveX plugins for everything, and now this.
No sig today...
Now that IE is officially not fit for use on the public web, the question is how do we get people to stop using it? For a start my local Bristol City council still uses IE in their libraries, and there are a lot of less savvy people who think the "blue e" is the internet. Some of them might be fooled by Edge, but those using lower than Windows 10 will need educating on a new browser.
We need a really popular website to not support IE to make the phaseout happen. Youtube claims not to support IE but they still show an old version so people can still use it. Microsoft's GitHub also claims not to support it but it still works.
I think once Windows 7 goes out of support is when we should really start pushing for an IE free world, using Chromium Edge as a transition mechanism.
If Microsoft wants everyone off of Internet Explorer. They are going to need to think of a way to easily convert the Past 20 years of IE Only Crap that Microsoft pushed on businesses to deploy.
Active-X and Silverlight (or as I like to call them Active-Exploit and Silverfish) technologies got pushed as core development platforms for those mainframe programmers who needed to keep their jobs after the mainframe and mini-computers were retired from their work environment, to modernize for y2k, but didn't want to learn how to program in HTML/JavaScript and learn how to think in Web Server type of thinking for back end request and responce processing. . These 2 crap technologies, which were a bad idea when they were made are now an anchor to Microsoft growth.
Microsoft was intent on winning the browser war are nearly any cost. Well they now need to pay the cost for their winning. Back in the late 1990's Microsoft could had played the high ground, by insisting on open standards, using the fact that the browser was default and integrated into the OS, to really push the direction on where the open standards went to make sure they were always ready for the first release. But they made IE as part of the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish style. As Microsoft never had put too much faith in the Web. (Windows 95 era, Microsoft though big BBS like AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, and their MSN was the future) However it was getting a lot of press. So they made IE good enough to compete against Netscape, they extended it with IE/Windows Only features. Hoping to keep everyone on Windows so they can extinguish the Web and go to MS Services (like MSN).
Microsoft Messed up the extend part, not realizing the fast growth of cheap broadband always on Internet. Their Security model and the Wide Open Gaps that Active-X did for system security, just couldn't be managed by educating users on how to be safe. Because the nature of the attacks have changed to broad hit any computer as you can. The processing power and showing Ads, and collecting personal data in their home folder was more valuable, then messing up the boot record, or tinkering with system files.
This allowed the fallout of the Netscape/IE wars Mozilla team to make Firefox which was a small fast browser that followed the open standards, to become popular enough to encourage open standards web development, and avoiding MS only Technology which people lost trust in. This with Apple Safari (ditching the aging IE 5 for Mac) and Google Chrome to get popularity as they all wanted to be the fasted browser out there. (Poor Opera, just never made their browser Open enough to get traction fast enough, they hung with add revenue filling up a good portion of the screen real estate or having to buy a commercial copy, while the others started to hit is main selling point)
If MS wants us to stop using IE. We will need a way to cheaply and easily convert our old stuff made by developers who have long retired, and where source code may be lost, to newer technology say HTML 5
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is a cost to Winning. Winning doesn't make you better, or put you on a stronger position in the future. It just means you have met the initial objectives first.
I remember a story on NPR about a Chinese Violinist he was always winning the Violin Contest they have. He went to America to study under one the best Violinist.
While training he was asked "Do you want to keep on winning competitions or do you really want to be good at this?"
Winning a competition or competitive war, strategy isn't being the best. But being good enough to not fall behind, then find ways to make your competitor loose. Wither it being showing all the features your browser cannot do. knowing your competing Violinist may play a rift a little slower then you, so you play faster just to show them off, or find a way to injure your competition and hope the refs (or legal) do not find out (such as hitting a batter known for home runs, and forcing them to walk).
Microsoft won the browser war. But because of that Win, all their underhanded tricks to win, for the short term, is now a generation later biting them back, and is preventing them from future growth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When you say cost prohibitive, are you talking about just the cost to develop new software and a migration strategy, or are you also including the cost of data breaches in that figure?
There are HUGE costs for running outdated software for the sake of compatibility. You just don't know what those costs will be until you're met with a Big Red Screen of Bitcoin Ransom.
It's a real fucking shame that MS decided to get out of the browser business. I have no idea why they'd give up writing their own browser, and hand it all to the Chrome engine. It's not like MS didn't have the resources. No, as far as I know, there are only TWO web browser engines out there: Chrome and Firefox. That's is not good for the web. And since I don't do Google, that leaves me with *one* browser I can use. That's not good.
I don't respond to AC's.