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Please Stop Using Internet Explorer, Microsoft Says (mashable.com)

Posted by msmash on from the issued-in-public-interest dept.

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.

19 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. What does the last sentence in the summary mean? by risc8088 · · Score: 2

    It's time to event stop calling Internet Explorer a web browser.??? Everyone stop! Its time to event!

  2. Anybody mentioned South Korea to this guy? by Daemonik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Anybody mentioned South Korea to this guy? by Kjella · · Score: 2

      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?

      It's rare that I come to defense of Microsoft but ActiveX has been on death row since Silverlight was released back in 2007, they've had a decade plus to fix their shit. Here in Norway they created BankID in the 2000s, when Java applets was the hot shit and we were probably as dependent on Java as they are on ActiveX. In 2014 we got Java free BankID 2.0 because they owned that problem. They did not expect Oracle (Java) and Microsoft/Mozilla/Google/Apple (browsers) to support it from now to infinity, that's just them being unreasonable.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:Anybody mentioned South Korea to this guy? by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's rare that I come to defense of Microsoft but ActiveX has been on death row since Silverlight was released back in 2007, they've had a decade plus to fix their shit.

      It isn't an overnight, or even over decade, process to remove all legacy apps from a business, and the bigger the business it's harder to remove "obsolete" software. I guarantee you that there are many big corporations out there still reliant on 16 bit or even DOS software (I don't mean "To control this real time piece of hardware", I mean to run something that was written in 1983 and nobody has been able to set the process in motion of getting it rewritten.)

      Now, before you start blaming GM, Sears, Edison, or whatever company you feel is being ignorant by not rewriting all their software using the latest Rust frameworks, and I agree they do share the blame, Microsoft's intention by introducing ActiveX was to get this kind of lock-in. They knew how businesses worked, how big corporations worked in particular, and how smaller businesses needed to be compatible with the big corporations. This is why they actively encouraged people to write "web" software using a technology that gave them full access to the Windows API.

      They knew that once a bigger corporation made the decision to build a giant application architecture based on ActiveX, the company would be locked into ActiveX, and Windows, for decades. That IT directors would almost certainly be opposed to rewriting it, but even if they supported the idea, IT directors would have massive difficulty persuading their superiors to support projects to replace a working technology with something functionally identical at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, and even if it passes that hurdle, the average megacorp is so wrapped up with bureaucracy and politics such projects would be unlikely to succeed, being killed by replacement IT managers, or dying with the next company wide reorganization.

      Microsoft made this problem and they really have to fix it. Short of creating a cross platform plug-in that implements a 32 bit ix86 VM that includes most of Windows 98 in it, I don't see them doing that.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Re:What does the last sentence in the summary mean by CaptQuark · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --

  4. Re:What does the last sentence in the summary mean by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...
  5. Phasing out Internet Explorer by xack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Phasing out Internet Explorer by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      Attrition. Internet Explorer's market share hasn't gone up once in the past 10 years. Even companies are moving away from that, often forced by their vendors to do so.

      We need a really popular website to not support IE to make the phaseout happen.

      NO!!! WE ABSOLUTELY DO NOT! Absolutely none of these problems should ever be solved by forcing some selective non-standard behaviour on the internet. We're only just recovering from the last time this shit happened. Absolutely no non-standard action should be taken. IE will die a natural death as it is no longer being developed while standards continue to evolve.

      The problem will solve itself, give it time.

  6. Re:What does the last sentence in the summary mean by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Event stop by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  8. They not only install it, it's a default! by garryknight · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  9. I want to stop, but... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... 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.

  10. Re:What does the last sentence in the summary mean by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  11. Re:Stop using Java then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  12. And then there were two by DogDude · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  13. Re:ya know ... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Informative

    Can they take it out? They spend years baking IE in at the level of a vital, inseparable system component for legal purposes - it might be difficult to remove without the risk of breaking other things, both their own software and third party.

  14. They need ot sort edge and sharepoint out first! by sce7mjm · · Score: 2

    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.

  15. Re:Event stop by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I blame Microsoft for creating ActiveX in the first place.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  16. Re:Event stop by sjames · · Score: 2

    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.