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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.
It's time to event stop calling Internet Explorer a web browser.??? Everyone stop! Its time to event!
Majority of work sites I know that still use IE have some Java app allowing users to access some program who's native CLI app doesn't work anymore or cost a fortune to license per desktop. Apps you've never heard of but are mission critical for that business and migrating to something else would be both cost prohibitive and cause too much user disruption.
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.
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.
This^
Microsoft cannot be taken seriously. They tried to own everything in the past in a non-competitive way. They should spend more time apologizing and less time lecturing others about a problem they themselves caused.
So make OWA SMIME where it doesn't require it to work Microshits
you only use MS to play computer games on.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Should have put this out long ago, cut it off before it ruined everything.
IE is installed alongside Edge with the latest and greatest version of windows
if you don't want people using it, dont fuckin install unsupported obsolete software on your OS, especially when you make us update the install media every fuckin week
Live by the sword, die by the sword. However, I do not think they envisioned Microsoft Seppuku. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Nothing new. Microsoft also spent a long time getting everyone to use Office Professional, and now it's actively trying to migrate people to Office 365. Microsoft's biggest competitor has since the 90s always been itself.
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.
I wanted to view the contents of an xml file yesterday so I clicked on it in File Explorer and guess what it opened in: yup, Internet Explorer. It was the first time I'd seen IE since the Vista days. I was connected to the Internet so, needless to say, I closed it down quickly and used Notepad++.
But, really, Microsoft! [i]You[/i] install it, [i]you[/i] make it a default, then you tell us not to use it?! I feel an event stop coming on...
Garry Knight
... there are still sites that I want to visit where Firefox does not render the site properly, so I have to use Internet Explorer to view the site.
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.
Well most IE users, only use IE at work because of old Active-X and Sliverfish crap.
Home users, would be for people using older versions of windows and never upgraded.
If the site still works in IE, it isn't really up to the site owner to stop them. Why should they add an extra line of code that could be conflecting with something else only to annoy a customer.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Some of us have been saying this for 20 years. In a very real sense, Microsoft nearly broke the web in the 90s with their proprietary nonsense and lack of ethics. So, from those of us that saw this writing on the wall many years ago: that is what Google, Facebook, and other 2.0 companies are doing *today*, but with their privacy violations and recreation of users as a product or resource, they are even *worse*. You have been warned.
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.
About 25% of the time:
I log in to my Win10Pro laptop.
I go to my network location in explorer to open my sharepoint files.
I get \\blahdeblah@SSL\DavWWWRoot\Docs is not accessible blah blah.
I tut and press OK.
I open internet explorer and log in to sharepoint then close sharepoint
Go back to explorer stab F5 and it lists the files.
It's something to do with renewing the credentials.
This only works on IExplorer NOT edge.
So essentially you cannot use Windows Explorer to open files on sharepoint unless you occasionally log in using Internet Explorer.
It's been like that for years.
I think won win7 pro you have to use iexplorer every single time, to access sharepoint under explorer.
Why would I want to use sharepoint using the explorer (AKA filenamaneger?). So I can move folders and do bulk copies (yes it is pretty slow) easily without struggling through the mess of javascript context menu's.
Not disagreeing with Microsoft's completely new stance.
However, it does imply that basically everything they have said prior is an absolute lie.
Just saying.
Oh wait, that's right, it's supported until January 15th 2020 so deal with it and keep patching it.
They are good at splitting infinitives, in fact they are proud of it.
Great observation. I think it's all the cat shit that I've been eating.
It is very easy to see what browser is being used. If its not current, only load up a page that says update your browser
I find this sort of nagging intensely annoying, even if it still allows me to load the page. I decide for myself when to update my browser (and I don't intend to chase every Mozilla update) and how to manage my own security.
Like WindowsXP before it the only way to get rid of ancient decrepit dinosaurs in IT is to stop supporting it!
Shit I worked at as an IT lead at a call center company up to 2 years ago. We had 8 or 9 customers and 2 still required IE 6! Not IE 11, not IE 8 but 2001 IE 6?! One of them is for HIPAA and takes credit card data even.
Another one requires IE 8, another did require IE 8 but and still requires IE but has been updated to work on IE 11 when I left in 2017.
For IE 6 those shameful customers used Citrix. One requires Java 1.4.2, not 1.4.1 or 1.4.3 but 1.4.2. My guess is their Indian outsourcing partner used a "==" instead of a "=>" and used custom IE 6 specific CSS bug work arounds.
At the end of the day IT is a cost that adds no value. Why uograde? It works fine etc. This post may jaw drop the millennials at Silicon Valley but it's how the rest of the world is.
At work there is a 250 person wait for laptop's. Why? Windows 7 compatible CPUs are in short supply. We have people who have to bring PC's from home to get work done as the CFO needs to keep the share price up and can't bother upgrading to 7.
Rip out support and put legacy crud in Citrix with IE 6 and those who fear change and cost accountants can shut up. A post by Microsoft won't work with these people
http://saveie6.com/
I blame Microsoft for creating ActiveX in the first place.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That caught up to them as we need not to be reminded. While IE 4 to 6 were superior to Netscape (vehemently denied here on /. But is true if you ask any web developer) they got complacent and IE had bugs from being rushed. They just had less than Netscape.
Google Chrome started rendering with 0 bugs and Firefox started slowly removing them from Netscape and the rest is history
http://saveie6.com/
Unfortunately I don't see an alternative to Office. Libra is not it like Mozilla before it. A Firefox or chrome needs to come in.
I suppose Google docs for light stuff is ok but it's also rental.
http://saveie6.com/
You think IE 6 was bad you should try supporting Netscape 4.7.2
http://saveie6.com/
It means your credentials are not saved by default in credential manager. Ask your SharePoint developer to include this? Also it's possible he was instructed to do this for security authentication if your employer is too cheap to use MFA on Azure, Ms federation, or some third party system if security is important.
http://saveie6.com/
There were 40 year old mainframes still running when Microsoft first released Internet Explorer. They damn well knew that software sticks around for a very long time.
I literally can't event you insensitive clod.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Hey Microsoft. Remember when you made this excellent plugin called Silverlight that let you do .NET development on a web browser? It was actually really cool, and light-years better than Flash or even HTML development at the time. Then HTML5 + canvas caught up quick and you deprecated Silverlight? Well some people are still trying to migrate off of Silverlight. When you are doing giant UI-heavy enterprise apps, this takes time. Therefore, we are still going to be using Internet Explorer because using Silverlight these days means using Internet Explorer.
And I'm not being facetious about Silverlight being awesome. It's support for MVVM was *outstanding* - you could do crazy forms with complex validation rules, dynamic help, the whole lot, just by using linked parameters and zero code-behind on the UI side.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Well, if it adds no value, turn it off. Really, just sell all the PCs off and pass out pens and paper. It added no value so I'm sure it'll be just fine. Right?
Exactly. They designed it to be like crack for corporations in their continuing quest for a monopoly. Surprise, we now have corporations acting like crack addicts.
The thing is, they didn't JUST offer their products like crack, first hit is free. They actively worked to introduce their product by stealth (like a dealer dosing peoples drinks in the bar) by obscuring the line between open standards and MS proprietary extensions.
I an many other IT professionals tried to warn them, but we were dismissed as overly paranoid.
Solves all the problems in one fell swoop.
That sounds exactly like those people who don't personally like alcohol so they figure nobody else should have it either.
It's fine to not actively support IE6 users but there's no need to be an asshole about it.
As far as I know, IE is the only browser left that still supports the java runtime environment.. every other browser I've tried stopped supporting NPAPI plugins.
To boldy go... where no browser has gone before.
Not without time travel and wire cutters. Microsoft built I.E. into their operating systems. Need a specific Microsoft OS? You use the web browser that is supplied, no matter what else you run.
Microsoft were told NOT to do this in 1995. They chose to compromise all subsequent computers instead. There is NOTHING anyone can do about it, save break up Microsoft.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
To boldly split infinitives where no infinitives have been split before.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If you don't weigh potential lock in and future availability problems as part of your tech recommendations you are a quack.
It seems to me like the only reason people are still hanging onto using IE is all of these compatibility issues with Active-X controls, etc.
If Microsoft really thinks it's time to put IE to bed, they should develop a browser plug-in or extension that works with modern browsers, and extends the functionality that used to be IE specific.
It could even come with warnings that using it for general purpose browsing may be a security risk/unsafe, but it's simply a "shim" to enable on a case by case basis, on sites that used to require IE.
WHAT??? A misleading article on the internet?
I work at a school and on our secretaries computers we have to run IE 8, for some reason compatibility mode isn't good enough, there are government websites do not function properly at all in anything newer than 8. Then we also have to run java 6 and 7
When ActiveX started being the fad (only a fad on Windows that is), Javascript was still highly obscure (it is entirely unrelated to Java guys). So the mainframe people were not too jaded to learn Javascript as the earlier posted hinted. The real reason possibly is that the mainframe people were so used to the idea of "IBM is never wrong" that they revised their misconception into tbhe "Microsoft is never wrong" misconception. Meanwhile, people over on other platforms were saying "what the hell" from the very first announcement about ActiveX.
Remember, Microsoft is still pushing Internet Explorer. It was included in Windows 10, they advise using it instead of Edge sometimes. In no way has Microsoft pulled the plug on Internet Explorer yet. It's just that it's a dysfunctional company that no longer has internal communications.
Companies that stubbornly keep Internet Explorer as their default web browser because of SAP need to be publicly shamed.
But it is still better than "Edge."
I have multiple browsers on my work laptop and IE is the last choice I use.
Tried "Edge" and it didn't even work well on MS-centric sites.
MS should revert to IE 10 and do security updates for it, dropping their newer efforts.
Yeah Microsoft and you want us to move to Edge. The broken, most unfriendly and unusable browser on the planet. Fix Edge and users probably would leave Internet Explorer. Allow us to completely turn off, cortana, Bing and tracking. Allow us to open our home page {whatever it is} in new tabs or anytime we want. Fix the downloads, NOT everyone saves to "Downloads" on the local system!!!! I sort my files and save them on a server. Allow us to turn OFF download notifications. I know I am downloading something I don't need to know when it finished. Sometimes I am downloading 10 things at a time or they are large like a new IX distro. I don't need messages from all the downloads. So fix Edge and then we will talk!
Any browser that doesn't support Most Recently Used switching is trash.
Oh, and, dear Microsoft, good job following Google's trend and bombing Microsoft Edge (older versions supported MRU and so di IE), perhaps you should change your task switching to "idiotic google chrome style" too?
They deserve what they get. It's 2019. Hardware acceleration, CPU instructions to separate data vs instructions, and more than 4 gigs of RAM are outside the realm of XP. That's just a few examples. Chrome too is not updated anymore.
Go use Linux if you want something modern on your ancient stuff but keep in mind people are under no obligation to support you. 90% of everyone else has moved on.
http://saveie6.com/
believe me, everybody wants to stop using that pos, but thanks to microsoft putting it full with closed integrations only working on IE we are stuck with it.
stop telling us not to use it anymore, and start screaming at developers, developers, developers to get with the times (oh, that also includes some of your own developers).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Wells Fargo check reader - touchy plugin, requires reduced security
Fingerprint scanner for adding users to security system - touchy plugin, reduced security
"eRelocation" service - wicked touchy, 32-bit only, security reducing plugin.
Maybe if MS just kills IE entirely these jerks will have to get with the damn times already.
Make modern browsers work with sites that are not perfect. I am required to use IE not because of some antiquated piece of Java, but because the security settings on modern browsers don't let you connect to sites with self signed certificates. So I cannot connect to my home router, my work routers, my hosting provider, etc. because they use certificates that for some reason or another are not "recognized". IE lets me say "hey this is okay and add an exception". Edge, Chrome, Firefox don't, they deny you access.
And before I get flamed for "well use a better certificate", that is not the point. I don't need a production ready, industrial certificate to run HTTPS on my home router. My server doesn't need something production ready certificate and have a cost just so I hit a URL for some shitty website front end on an app to go over HTTPS. Fix that, and I am with you.
So, a typical Matt Binder article then (no matter where he currently is, this has been his MO).
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.