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Microsoft

Microsoft is Finally Retiring Internet Explorer in 2022 (theverge.com) 105

Posted by msmash from the what-a-run dept.
Microsoft is finally retiring Internet Explorer next year, after more than 25 years. The aging web browser has largely been unused by most consumers for years, but Microsoft is putting the final nail in the Internet Explorer coffin on June 15th, 2022, by retiring it in favor of Microsoft Edge. From a report: "We are announcing that the future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge," says Sean Lyndersay, a Microsoft Edge program manager. "The Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10." While the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) of Windows 10 will still include Internet Explorer next year, all consumer versions will end support of the browser. Microsoft doesn't make it clear (and we're checking), but it's likely that we'll finally see the end of Internet Explorer being bundled in Windows either in June 2022 or soon after.
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Microsoft is Finally Retiring Internet Explorer in 2022 More

Microsoft is Finally Retiring Internet Explorer in 2022

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  • I thought . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joey Vegetables ( 686525 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:03PM (#61400746) Journal
    that it was an inseparable part of the OS that could not possibly be removed?

    • Haha. Shhh.. they might go back on this. You are right to point that out of course, but we donâ(TM)t want Microsoft to have any excuse to keep IE in there. We can ask them about it in 2023.

      • I do have a concern. M$ worked very, very hard to ensure that some of their other products - e.g. SharePoint, ReportBuilder, PowerBI - did not work, or worked with greatly reduced functionality, if someone *dared* to use any browser except IE.

        It has been rumored the massive push to M$ Teams and M$ Clowd (OneDrive, Azure) was because they did such a !@#$ing good job that they can't get Chromium-based Edge to work - fully - with those products.

        Microsoft isn't a monolithic organization. And while I loathed S

    • Re:I thought . . . (Score:4, Informative)

      by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:13PM (#61400792)

      Even if it were possible, Microsoft would NEVER EVER remove it. Microsoft confirms it will NEVER EVER remove IE from Windows 10 [windowsreport.com]

      ;)

      • Re:I thought . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Joey Vegetables ( 686525 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:20PM (#61400826) Journal

        Also . . . "Linux is a cancer." :)

        It's entertaining to compare the Microsoft of yesteryear with the Microsoft of today. Especially since in many important respects, it is a MUCH improved company in terms of behavior. It now acts like a stakeholder in the world of technology, with an interest in its continuing growth and health, rather than the destructive organized crime syndicate that it more closely resembled in the past.

        • Which is why every time I deal with a new install of Windows and want to install the browser of my choosing, it does everything it can to prevent me from using it in favor of Edge (which is just a Chromium skin anyways). The reason MS behaves the way it does now is because Apple and Google have eaten its lunch in the smart device world, and Chromebooks are taking a piece out of it in the educational world.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          It now acts like a stakeholder in the world of technology, with an interest in its continuing growth and health

          Good one. Best laugh I've had all day.

          Everyone who makes a web browser has constantly updated and improved it. Everyone except Microsoft.

          IE is a good basic browser. But that's it. Microsoft ignored IE for years, then, instead of updating and improving IE, they created an entirely new browser which was a giant steaming turd that nobody wanted.

          So, they downloaded the Chrome source code and called it The New Microsoft Edge.

          "stakeholder in the world of technology" my ass.

          • Microsoft was never good at browsers. Ditching its poor past attempts, in favor of adopting what has become more or less the standard, de facto browser engine instead, was probably the best thing they could have done, and a good example, IMO, of how today's Microsoft is a vastly more enlightened company than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

          • I didn't think old edge was that bad.

            Granted, I mostly only used it for watching content on Netflix/etc when I wanted max battery life, and for running speedtest.net, because every other browser was CPU bottlenecked.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Stonent1 ( 594886 )
          When I was a contractor at MS in the mid 2000s they would get rid of old books and training materials in the break areas. I grabbed a CD set called "Microsoft Drive Time" which was basically learn while you drive to work, it was a 4 CD set of Microsoft Anti-Linux talking points. So if you are confronted by a customer about Linux, you could use the company approved responses.

        • Also . . . "Linux is a cancer." :)

          It's entertaining to compare the Microsoft of yesteryear with the Microsoft of today. Especially since in many important respects, it is a MUCH improved company in terms of behavior. It now acts like a stakeholder in the world of technology, with an interest in its continuing growth and health, rather than the destructive organized crime syndicate that it more closely resembled in the past.

          I agree that it does seem like that. But I personally can't bring myself to trust them.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by timq ( 240600 )

          Et dona ferentes.

      • Even if it were possible, Microsoft would NEVER EVER remove it. Microsoft confirms it will NEVER EVER remove IE from Windows 10 [windowsreport.com]

        ;)

        Says nothing about Windows 11. Apple bumped their OS number; must be time for Microsoft to follow suite.

    • and it IS an inseparable part of the OS.

      What you won't have anymore is the "front-end" app, but its core and DLL will still be present because they can't be detached from the OS.

      • and it IS an inseparable part of the OS.

        That hasn't been true for a long time. It was true in the past, but somewhere around Vista or later it was changed.

        At one time, Internet Explorer (the web browser) and Windows Explorer (the file manager that is now called "File Explorer" in Windows 10) were all part of the same program.

        Back in the days of Windows XP, you could put a URL into Windows Explorer (instead of a directory path) and it would display a web page in the area where it would normally display a list of files in a directory.

        • Itâ(TM)s part of VB6, .NET 3.5 and is commonly used as an OLE/COM object... I think we can call it inseparable. Especially since itâ(TM)s also a part of CrEdge for its IE Mode too!

          • Windows 95 Explorer update allowed that too (typing in web address into file explorer). I think it was also called Active Desktop. So there was a time when that wasn't a thing. Of course it was default with Windows 98.

      • I'm not sure how much I buy that. I could understand if the OS contained significant pieces that needed a browser engine DLL to render. There wouldn't necessarily be anything anticompetitive about that. But if they were even a tenth as smart as the average developer, then those pieces/parts would have depended on an interface, not a specific implementation. The implementation could then be changed, improved, upgraded, or even swapped out by a different technology, without anything built atop it having t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pimpy ( 143938 )

          You're operating on the assumption that their interface design motivation is one of extensibility rather than one of tight-coupling and vendor lock-in. Yes, they could have designed these things "better", but they wouldn't have seen anywhere near the increase in browser market share if this were the case. It took several court orders to get them to even do the basics in terms of providing interface separation.

          • It was tightly coupled in an era when RAM was precious. HTML help pages, HTML in folder views.. HTML in Word and Outlook etc. all using the same DLL via Component Object Model. It made a lot of sense at the time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edis ( 266347 )

        This makes for worries. My client, hotel chain, is using core Property Management System, which is made of IE + Java app, now provided by Oracle. Since Windows and IE have been staple of business use, there can be many more cases, when app logic has been put on them with even more of longevity expected.

        • There is a very good chance you can still use the app in Internet Explorer Mode in Edge. There is a small spot of work to set it up (adding the site URL to the Enterprise mode site list) but it should work.

          Are you/they buying the commercially supported Java engine from Oracle, or using one of the free versions?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by edis ( 266347 )

            I wonder myself, how magically come, that this product and original maker, also Java, all ended in Oracle's belly. Therefore everything now comes from them, no even need to search for other Java engine. Though many must be still using this solution, particular corporation is in transition to their own product, from what I know, made out of chunks from SAP.

    • That was the first thing that I thought as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Curse you! I was coming here to say the exact thing!!!

      I'll get you my pretty, and your little vegetables too!!!!

    • that it was an inseparable part of the OS that could not possibly be removed?

      It was until it wasn't, I guess.

    • that it was an inseparable part of the OS that could not possibly be removed?

      It is. What you're missing is that the OS in question has since been retired. Internet Explorer isn't part of Windows 10. 20 years of development goes a long way.

  • The main web based system I use at work finally upgraded, and now we have to use Edge instead of IE. Before that, I spent a considerable amount of time using IE. I was dreading the end of IE, because the IE backward compatibility mode in Edge is a pain to use.

  • First Flash, then IE (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:17PM (#61400816)

    What a wonderful time to be alive.

    • I hate pdf email attachments. html5 should be able to properly format text to meet most rendering requirements?

      • Re:First Flash, then IE, pdf next? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:45PM (#61400916)
        People attach PDF when they don't want the document to be modified in uncontrolled ways. If you send locked word document, people get pissed off. If you send PDF, most people have a reader to open it and accept it. Now 'read only' is not generally true, but it is close-enough that in non-tech crowd it largely works.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I do this with recruiters all the time. I've seen them charge CVs before.

        • Hmmm, does blacking out words by laying a splotch over them in the PDF count for legal purposes? Asking for a friend.

          • > Hmmm, does blacking out words by laying a splotch over them in the PDF count for legal purposes? Asking for a friend.

            It does for the government. Make sure you don't merge the layers.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dargaud ( 518470 )
        Why would you ever want HTML emails ?!? Convert to text, always. Gets rid of stupid formatting, ads, garbage, spam, 1-pixel tracking and more.

      • PDF solves a common need that HTML can't so far. [slashdot.org] It's not realistic for every content producer to become an expert in "responsive layouts", which are hard to make work reliably on multiple device types and versions. WYSIWYG means you don't have to worry about a random device butchering your work. Requiring HTML5 may be good job security for responsive UI experts, but economically unrealistic at scale.

        Sure, responsive makes sense for the main website page, but many orgs have to produce hundreds of thousands

      • What makes you think I want you to "render" formatted text? The whole point of PDF is that you do not do that. I do that, and that way I know what you're seeing with a high degree of certainty.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      If you want to do more grave-dancing, ActiveX have been dead for a long while.

    • Re:First Flash, then IE (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @03:18PM (#61401036)
      The problem was never Flash or IE. The problem was one thing dominating the market, forcing everyone to use it "for compatibility", and giving the manufacturer undue control over that market.

      In the case of Flash, it's been replaced by HTML 5.0 and PHP. Except the folks who set the HTML standard are the ones responsible for Flash rising to prominence in the first place. (They refused to add multimedia capability to HTML, causing web designers to search for alterative ways to do it. And looky here, there's this thing called Flash which lets you script and animate websites, who cares if it was never designed with security in mind.) And PHP is a godawful language which is mostly hacks and kludges cobbled together on an as-needed basis. Not designed with important things like security in mind.

      In the case of IE, it's been supplanted by Google's Chromium, which now accounts for nearly 80% of browser traffic. (The largest chunk of the remainder - 18% - is Safari. Where Apple exerts even more control by outright prohibiting other browsers unless they use Safari as a back end.)

      In the 1990s, we fought and prevailed against the companies wanting to turn the Internet into a bunch of subscription services (CompuServe, AOL, GEnie, Prodigy, Delphi, MSN, etc). Our victory meant that anyone could create a website running on their own server, and it would be accessible by anyone else on the Internet. Subsequent generations have reversed that victory, and willingly embraced the walled gardens operated by Facebook, Apple, and Google. If you don't operate within at least one of those companies' spheres of influence today, you're a social pariah.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Noooo my toolbars! All these crappy """modern""" browsers don't even support my Bonsi Buddy!

    • What a wonderful time to be alive.

      Both should have happened a couple decades ago.

  • If you look at Microsoft's FAQ [microsoft.com] LTSC gets IE support until 2029. And of course there will be the mshtml.dll in Windows embedded for probably forever. Of course the public non enterprise web should ignore IE from now on and let enterprises play their legacy games alone.

    • Also, notice this: "will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10."

  • I would cheer for this... (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:36PM (#61400878)
    ... but what replaces IE is even worse. Chromium mono culture controlled by Google is much more dangerous than IE ever was.

    • Not really. The IE monoculture was far more widespread and was headed by a company that didn't give a flying f* about standards and actively attempted to manipulate the internet in a way to ensure incompatibility with the rest of the world.

      Can you point to Chrome/Google doing the same? Last I checked all of what Chromium is capable of gets submitted to standards bodies and is openly implemented by other browsers too.

      Chrome/Google have a lot of power, but they are infinitely more socially responsible and thu

      • headed by a company that didn't give flying f* about standards

        If you think google gives a flying f* about standards you aren't paying attention.

        Can you point to Chrome/Google doing the same?

        Here's two off the top of my head: AMP and FLoC

        • I feel like I'm paying attention far more than you are.

          AMP is not a browser standard, it's a Google product. It works identically in every browser and the AMP content being served is normal web-standards compliant. The choice of use is entirely up to owner of the website, and the entire framework is open source.

          FLoC was submitted as a proposal to the W3C standards body. It's not a standard yet, it's not on the standards track. Critically it's also used precisely nowhere, is not implemented in any Google pro

          • Right, just like ActiveX was "standards compliant".

          • Here's one I saw today on hackernews. Chrome has been ignoring the autocomplete attribute on the input tag since 2016.

            https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=587466

  • Does Microsoft seamlessly emulate IWebBrowser2, for example?

  • One word - ActiveX (Score:3)

    by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:45PM (#61400914)
    There are still enterprise and mission critical software that depend on ActiveX, ClearSCADA is one such application. They have a new client in the works but for now our pipelines are controlled by an ActiveX plug-in. I suspect IE will be around for quite a while.
    • "our pipelines are controlled by an ActiveX plug-in" - Mr Blount of Colonial Pipeline I presume?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Do you happen to work for Colonial?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      There are still enterprise and mission critical software that depend on ActiveX, ClearSCADA is one such application.

      How old is the version you are using? A quick google shows that Geo Scada (was ClearSCADA) does HTML5. Now I may have googled the wrong product, but if you are not upgrading to a better product, whose fault is it if you are clinging to ActiveX?

      • Who said I had anything to do with the decision?
        PHB's and bean counters make those decisions. And I've worked at companies that still use DOS boxes for specific tasks because "If it aint broke don't fix it".
        Did you see the story about a McLaren supercar that needs a Compaq LTE 5280 [extremetech.com] to program?

    • Same in our org. Active-X is about the only way to make PC apps & DLL's talk with the browser. Sure, Active-X sucks, but it's the only semi-standard way to do this that I'm aware of.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Ouch CkearSCADA needs to step up their game, this should have been done already, no one shuld use acrivex fro anything let alone critical infrastructure in 2021

  • ... is now supported under Edge so you don't need to keep IE around to execute that vital old stuff that was never rewritten. Right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Nope, you are on your own. Better spin up a VM or just never upgrade Windows once they kill it.

    • ActiveX was a Bad idea from the start. If someone created a website (even to be used internally) with ActiveX that is a huge red-flag that the product is built by amateurs, and shouldn't be purchased or used.

      By HTML4 standards with Dynamic HTML and AJAX. You were able to do nearly anything in the browser that you could do with a Visual Basic Form App, without all the security problems where your PC is being exposed to running binary code.

      ActiveX was just a way to Kill the Java Applet. (which was/is rathe

  • the graveyard of software of good intentions (Flash, all those fart apps, Leisure Suitt Larry in the Lair of the Lounge Lizards, ascii pr0n print programs, and so on)

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